Jefferson Starship: Jane (1979)
Jefferson Airplane
The band that was known as Jefferson Starship throughout the 1970s and early 80s evolved out of Jefferson Airplane, the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock unit that formed in 1965. Jefferson Airplane is best known for “Somebody to Love” and the “Alice in Wonderland”-themed “White Rabbit”.
Jefferson Starship
Tensions among band members and side projects such as offshoot band Hot Tuna led to Airplane members Grace Slick and Paul Kantner to put out solo albums and collaborate on other material. The Slick/Kanter group pulled in Marty Balin and others from Airplane to become Jefferson Starship, and subsequently attained much higher commercial heights than the original Jefferson Airplane. The group, characterized by a more AOR-oriented sound than Airplane, had a string of four straight top ten albums from 1974-1978, including “Red Octopus”, which hit #1. Singles from this period included Balin’s “Miracles” (#3, Pop Singles), and “Count on Me” (#8, Pop Singles). Slick’s alcoholism and drug abuse caused her to leave the band in 1978 and Balin followed suit. Mickey Thomas, who had sung Elvin Bishop’s 1976 #3 hit “Fooled Around and Fell in Love“, was brought in as the new vocalist. Thomas has, of course, one of the highest voices this side of Brad Delp. The revamped Thomas-fronted Jefferson Starship put out album number five in 1979, “Freedom at Point Zero”, which climbed to #26 behind the top twenty success of the single Jane (#14, Pop Singles).
Starship
The band reinvented itself again in 1985 as the commercial pop-oriented Starship, and scored two number one hits with “We Built this City” and “Sara“.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Excellent guitar work on this song courtesy of Craig Chaquiso. He brought a very clean and powerful guitar sound to the band lifting many of the Starship songs out of the ordinary. After leaving the band, he became a very successful New Age instrumentalist and continues in that genre today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Chaquico
March 19th, 2009 at 8:44 am
This site fucking rules. Love hearing/seeing all these old tracks again.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Craig Chaquiso, by the way, had one of the greates and least heard guitar solos of that decade on Starship’s “Save your love” from the poor “Modern Times” album. Save your love is a great tune and totally worth listening to if for nothing else than Chaquiso’s outstanding solo.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Thanks, I just need to update it more often!
April 3rd, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Jane is one of the best AOR songs.Listen Starship Knee deep in the Hoopla and Non protection too, with greatest classics AOR, pop rock music songs.Mickey and Grace in top form.