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Jefferson Airplane
"Long John Silver" (1972)
Long John Silver/Aerie
(Gang Of Eagles)/Twilight Double Leader/Milk Train/The Son Of
Jesus//Easter/Trial By Fire/Alexander The Medium/Eat Starch Mom!
'Gonna
move out on the highway, gonna make the moment last, 'till it closes with the
future, blending with the past"
Arrrr-harrr me hearties! There stands Long John
Silver, deformed with a lost leg but still larger than life and winning at it,
always getting one over the institutions that hated him, 'plain and pale,
intelligent but smiling'. A figure in charge of a mutiny that will surely come
one day, out to rob from the rich and give to his ragged band of
counter-culture pirates, while dressed up to the nines in the finest clobber of
the day - you can see why the pirate would appeal to the 1960s' leading
counter-culture band. But this Long John Silver, both the song and the album,
are not what you'd expect from the always fiery, always cross, always
passionate Jefferson Airplane - a case of close, but no cigar, despite the
packaging of a cigar box on the cover. Instead this is a humble, muted,
understated affair in which a combination of the rise of Nixon across 1972
(with Watergate still years away), the failing relationships within the band
and the murkiest production values this side of Credence Clearwater Revival add
up to make the last Jefferson Airplane album for seventeen years something of a
miserable, soggy affair. The band go after their usual targets - Christianity,
sexual censorship and televisions - but the band that used to unite six so very
different voices in one amazing partnership have lost all sense of cohesion and
powerplay. This is the sound of a pirate crew when they know the game is up and
they're about to arrested and clapped in irons, made an 'example' of by a
society who've been trying to chase them down for the past six years and no
doubt hung drawn and quartered. After so many years on the run on America's
waters, the 'hippie dream' disappearing into the distance at a rate of knots, the
band are fighting for survival now and seem haggard, fish-tails in their beards
and ringworm in their wooden legs. The sleek streamlined and much more
mainstream Jefferson Starship (or for that matter Hot Tuna) are only a couple
of years away, the moment when the Airplane 'retire' to the mainland, their
cutlasses stowed away.
In truth most people back in 1966 would have been
surprised the Airplane had lasted this long ('miracles only go so far, you
see'). They were a band built for fire and fuel and fury, not for longevity. By
1972 band members had come and gone (they're on their fourth drummer, with
Johnny Barbata hired after the split of CSN one of their better decisions),
controversy has followed to the band to the point where they have recently braved
Nixon's wrath with a song about his incompetency over international relations
(the standalone 'Mexico'- are this album's cigars a comment on Cuba?) and yet
even though their targets have got bigger the Airplane are in danger of being
blemished with the tagline of anachronistic hippies, out for love and peace in
a world that's hungry for war. The Airplane are veterans and no longer cutting
edge. Jack and Jorma are tired of the whole thing, with their side-shoot Hot
Tuna offering a more earthy and 'real' way of making you point against 'the
man', thanks to a combination of folk and blues and traditions (legend has it
that their new hobby of speed-skating was now taking up all their other time,
so the pair missed the rest of the band's frantic phone-calls about rehearsals
and recording sessions). Paul and Grace are more interested in their newborn
child China and their own duo albums - many reviewers assumed they were saving
their better songs for outside projects like 'Blows Against The Empire'
'Sunfighter' and 'Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun', probably with some
worth. Joey Covington has got bored with being the band's token novelty act and
has split to go solo, recording his one and only album 'Fat Fandango'. Marty
Balin is long gone and apparently in hibernation with the band commenting on
how quickly he's dropped out of sight not knowing he's about to re-appear with
the band 'Bodacious DF' the following year. That leaves this album's most
enthusiastic members as being Johnny Barbata, the band's newly joined drummer
and papa John Creach, a fifty-five-year-old fiddle player who gets more to do
on this album than any Jefferson set before or after. The Airplane were a
democratic outfit that once cruised at an in-formation altitude no other band
could reach, instinctively following each other while everyone did their own
thing - but now the band are clearly about to crash big time, recording most of
these songs in pairs or duos.
As a result most fans dismiss 'Long John Silver' as
a last roll of the dice that adds nothing to the band's oeuvre. This is an
unhappy album where even the good bits are so horribly recorded you can't hear
them (although the CD, which didn't appear for the first time until as late as
2008, does a good job at improving on the original vinyl - on the bad side you
don't get the fold-out box of 'JA' cigars with which to 'celebrate' the band's
demise or the inner-box shot of marijuana which drew many raised eyebrows even
in the 1990s when I first bought this
album aged eleven. Well, it beats the fish with the false teeth from the
previous front cover I guess). It's also, I've noticed, one of those occasional
albums you get that's 'unlucky', with the 'bad vibe' of the studio somehow
spilling out into the world when you play it - I always seem to go through
mishaps and miserable times after playing this album as a warning, so if I'm
not around for a while you know the piratical curse has struck again...
However, while no classic and for all its many
faults, I have a real fondness for this album. Even at their disinterested,
bored peak the Airplane are too quirky a band to simply go through the motions
and even if they've given up on politics for now they're still brave and
daring, pushing the envelope as far as any band could in 1972 with songs about
sex, masturbation and the hypocrisy of Christianity. There's a toughness and a
brittleness to this album that really suits the Airplane, so different to their
usual free-flowing easy-going partnership, that brings a heavy feeling of doom
and gloom to particularly doomy and gloomy songs. While Grace frequently
shrieks off-key, Paul even more frequently sings off-mike and Papa John's
violin curls are something only a committed fan could love (especially when
they appear several times in nearly every flipping song!), there are still some
great performances of some great songs here. Grace and Jack's unique
collaboration on the title track is a last desperate attempt to unite the two
different factions of the band together that works rather well and points the
way to how the Jefferson sound might have moulded into the 1970s if the 'Hot
Tuna' pairing had stayed the course. Grace and Jorma's unique collaboration on
last song 'Eat Starch Mom!' is an angry, surreal slanging match which raises
one last pair of weary fingers up to the 'parental' generation in what seemed a
whole song built on slang. Grace follows
this up with the atmospheric Eagle song 'Aerie' which is as haunting as any of
her best songs if not as clearly defined, throws in the jaw-dropping 'Milk
Train' (the Airplane's last great ensemble performance) in which the new mother
tells her husband Paul to stop masturbating because it means he has less left
over for their nights of sex. Jorma excels with 'Trial By Fire', a weary
goodbye to everything the band once stood for because even a musician has got
tired of a decade of jibes about his long hair and unkempt figure with no real
gains to show for it. Paul is on shakier form as he was on 'Bark', but
'Alexander The Medium' is a worthy hippie history tale and an earlier, more
disciplined band with better production values would have nailed the funky
groove waiting to be found on 'Twilight Double Leader'. While for the most part
Long John Silver doesn't compare to past glories 'Pillow' or 'Baxters', lacking
the innocence and purity of spirit, it's still on a par with 'Volunteers' and
'Bark' as the sound of a band maturing against their will. I love the gruffness
of this album, the sound of a down-on-its-luck beggar who knows things are
going wrong still proud enough to challenge for one last fight for the right
causes. Even though 'Bark' was the last cover album to show it, this is the
last Jefferson Airplane to properly have teeth. Far from being a disaster, this
last walk down the plank finds the band still fighting hard and wonderfully
well. Would that every band had ended their careers with this much fight in
them.
The section of the album that doesn't quite come off
is the Christianity section that's split between the two sides. Grace had
always had great fun with the hypocrisy of a religion that talked about peace
and tolerance and then wondered off to have a quick crusade and purge of
non-believers every few years. Both Paul and Grace had been stung by the
backlash of the Christian church in 1971 when they jokingly announced their
newborn girl was going to be called 'god' ('With a small 'G' so she stays
humble'). This was meant to ruffle a few feathers in the hospital where China
had just been born after Grace took umbrage at the very Catholic care she was
being given; it backfired when the nurse took the document Grace had jokingly
signed and sent a copy to reporters. While not quite on the 'Beatles are bigger
than Jesus' level of debate, this was used as a brick to beat the band and
especially the new parents over the head with a few times. Grace, not that
convinced by her own Catholic upbringing, was characteristically incensed.
Unfortunately her digs on this album don't display her usual personalisation of
a big issue which is her strength as a writer (she'll get it right for the
title track of 'The Chrome Nun' where 'nobody need baptise me - anytime I laugh
I got religion!') Instead she's feeling cheeky at Easter, painting some eggs and
laughing at the Pope on the TV. It's exactly what a ticked-off teenager would
write in her room after being told to go there without supper. Paul too gets in
on the act and he's much more used to turning world history into epic songs but
even his song 'Son Of Jesus' reads like a Dan Brown book: 'You think young
Jesus never kissed a lady?' he asks (no he probably didn't, being an INFJ and
all) and you can almost hear the Airplane's publicity machine revving up as he
talks about Jesus' illegitimate offspring, especially his 'foxy daughter'. RCA
should by now have been used to the Airplane's antics but they still took issue
with many of Paul's lyrics which had to be both cut from the lyric booklet and
'mumbled' on the album (though you can still tell what they are if you pay
close attention). At their best the Jeffersons were always blasphemous with no
society, class, institution or tradition safe from youthful truth-loving eyes.
But of all their pot-shots against all these institutions these songs against religion
feel the least developed and the most desperate. It's an odd bee to develop in
your bonnet on your seventh LP too, the album slowing right down in the middle.
Still the songs that bookend this LP are, by and
large, more than worthy of the band name and largely deal with turning villains
into heroes, the band perhaps fearing that if this was their last will and
testament they ought to embrace the hippie ethos and show its longevity. Rather
defensively, this album seems to portray hippies as all sorts of metaphors.
'Long John Silver' just does 'the same thing his father did' fleecing people
with more money than sense and living off the land (was his father a banker or
a politician one wonders? We never find out in 'Treasure Island'). All the
countries he visits are 'ruled by a flag or a game' - only as a pirate can a
man be truly free, Grace clearly identifying pirates with hippies living
outside society with their own rules. 'Aerie' could be anyone with inner
determination to live to their own rules (maybe Paul or Grace herself?), built
with an inner moral compass and compulsion to break new ground compared to an
eagle. Maybe it's even a whole hippie generation given the references to a
'nest' and a 'gang'. 'Twilight Double Leader' compares hippies to hermits
living in the mountains, 'escaping' the cities. 'Trial By Fire' is Jorma's
modern-day unflattering description of being a hippie but it's not the fellow
hippies he fears but the society that still won't accept them and runs after
him with a 'ten gauge shotgun at my head' for no other reason than that he
believes in peace and has long hair. The title, though, harks back to past
civilisations and their treatment of 'outsiders' too - this is almost like a
cannibal tribe' or American Indian tribe's treatment of someone they don't
understand a 'trial by fire' you're guaranteed to lose. And then there's 'Eat
Starch Mom!' in which Jefferson Airplane sign off with a burst of angry hippie slang which the 'elder'
generation must have guessed was being aimed at them but could never quite
fathom. By 1972 Jefferson Airplane and their fans have become a 'tribe' all on
their own, living to a new set of values and morals and even with their own
language. No wonder the elder generations and civilisations were scared!
But were they as scared as they should have been?
Jefferson Airplane were promising that they'd 'gotta revolution!' as recently
as two years ago. Much of 'Long John Silver's mood is down, as if the band
realise that they've 'failed' in their ultimate attempt to overthrow the greedy
world governments and phony leaders. It's easily the most sombre and 'down'
album in their brief discography, without the playfulness of their first three
albums or the big singalongs of the next three (the closest is 'Milk Train' -
and you'd have to be as brave as Grace was in 1972 to sing that song out loud!)
There are no instrumentals to break up the heaviness of the album, no novelty
numbers by singing drummers and no utopian moments escaping to a 'rock and roll
island'. Instead being a hippie has turned into a long-term slog and an effort
the band can't sustain anymore. Living in the real world with Nixon in power
has defeated even a band with as much energy as Jefferson Airplane and you can
tell that the band are frustrated as hell rather than dancing on their leaders'
grave as they usually do. The atrocities in Vietnam are getting worse. Planned
peace talks are collapsing left, right and centre. The Northern Ireland
troubles begin in earnest with 'Bloody Sunday' at Easter, perhaps the real
subject of Grace's song about painting eggs (though it's a tight squeeze for
the album sessions in April, suggesting this was a just-cooked song). There's a
big miner's strike in the UK. This is the same period John and Yoko are
crafting 'Sometimes In New York City' their 'newspaper' album and when Paul
Simon is getting the 'Paranoia Blues': it's no longer safe being a hippie.
Jefferson Airplane, as the band who were in the front-row of demanding change,
feel as if they've 'failed' somehow - desperate to save the world, at the
moment they're facing implosion of the sort that makes The Beatles look like
best friends and the Davies Brothers in the Kinks look like supportive, loving
family members, unable to even save themselves. You wonder what might have
happened if the Airplane had known about the first inklings of Watergate which
broke in June that year, a month before this album's release and delayed their
recording sessions a precious couple of months. Would we have seen the Airplane
skip this album and take off again?
Overall, then, 'Long John Silver' is a last bumpy
ride on the Airplane and at times a slog to listen to. The much criticised
murky and claustrophobic production values are surely deliberate, adding a
sense of weight to the band's usual sprightly dancing legs that suits these
tunes of frustration and hopelessness, though of course that doesn't make it
any easier to listen to. The Airplane's performances, usually so full of life
and excitement, now sound like they're playing in slow motion - a band of
telepathic players trying to play while keeping out of everyone else's way (and
not always managing that). Most of the album's spirit comes from the vocals,
but these just veer on the histrionic, wild and shrieky and raw in a way that's
less likeable than the 'old' way the Airplane used to do things. A couple of
the songs are clearly not up to standard either. And yet this album is so much
more than a farewell album that a band didn't want to make, with much thinking
going on - it's caught somewhere between the rawness of 'Let It Be' and the
discipline of 'Abbey Road' as the band return to their roots and yet go further
into heavy rock than they ever have before. There are some moments across this
album where things really gel and you realise that no other band would ever
have been good enough to do this or even halfway brave enough to try. Whether
it's Grace cackling over her sexual innuendos, the Airplane cruising in majesty
as they soar like a 'Gang Of Eagles', Jorma's last bite of disillusionment on
'Trial By Fire' or the funky fiery rendition of the title track, the Airplane's
last great outsider character, this is an album full of moments well worth
owning. Compared to the sprawling, fragmented 'Bark' there's an impressive
cohesion and unity to this record too, even if for the most part that just
means all the songs are equally grumpy. This isn't the worthy farewell we
demanded at all - and yet neither is it a disaster. At least the Airplane die
out with dignity, fighting right up until the bitter end, it's just a shame
that for such a peace and love era band this end turned out to be quite as
bitter as it was.
'Long John Silver' himself swaggers with a pomp and
circumstance that immediately catches your ear. Jack was probably thinking more
'cool hippy about time' when he came up with the main hook, his one and only
credit on a Jefferson Airplane song that wasn't a group composition. Grace,
though, picked up on the song's peg-legged ambitions, the fact that it's
swagger is held back by a slight waddling beat that does suggest a peg-leg
walk. Even then, however, her lyrics don't quite follow through on this: only
the first verse is particularly relevant to the pirate we all know and hate -
the rest arguably is about a different character entirely (having lost a leg,
it sounds like more than to 'scrape the knee' which is what happens here) and
in 'truth' (well, in the Robert Louis Stevenson book that created him) ol' Long
John is hardly the world explorer depicted in these lyrics. So, given that
we're dealing with an early 1970s 'hippie' song here, is Long John an allegory
for a hippie? Living outside society rules, doing noble deeds to those society
no longer cares, taking money from the rich to re-distribute to the poor for,
living in fear of the state with its guns and a rootless traveller of the world
- that sounds more like a hippie to me than a pirate. In which case did Grace
have anyone specific in mind? This is only a guess, but I think she does. When
Slick joined the Airplane she had a crush on co-writer Jack - something which
didn't stop her going round the band and 'bedding' everyone from the 'classic
line-up' except Marty! Most of them got their own 'songs' - 'Lather' for
Spencer, a zillion songs for Paul - I don't quite know what Jorma got but maybe
he had one too? Jack, though, never got one, till now maybe. He often wore
rings in his ear like a pirate, may well have done 'the same thing his father
did' (biographies disagree as to whether Jack inherited musical genes or picked
them up himself) and has there ever been a better description of his thundering
bass style than 'he's like an electric clock that needs no winding?' The quietest
member of a very loud band, Jack was always being overlooked and overshadowed, but
may well have been the most Jefferson Airplaney of all the band members: as
stubborn as a mule, as brave as a lion and as hardworking as any horse.
Interestingly many of the most 'political' messages on Jefferson sleeves are
from Jack, who felt perhaps more than anyone the drag of travelling round the
world and seeing everyone 'ruled by a flag'. The only thing he's missing is a 'talking
parrot' always on his shoulder, which could even be an in-joke to Grace herself
in the band's early days. Given that the tune was his, shyly handed over to
Grace to write lyrics for in a hurry, is it any wonder she might have turned to
thinking about him and the band's early days, offering up a tribute to Jack for
what might have been the last time? Whatever the cause this is one two last
great ensemble pieces for the album, with Jack's see-sawing riff starting off
jovial and turning sinister by the time Grace picks up on the part on her piano
and Jorma suddenly shoots off the end of the riff to 'walk the plank', dancing
amongst the crocodiles in a superb middle solo. Grace's bark also puts the fear
of God into any landlubber, her voice cutting through the murky production grease
as the whole band 'live' this song for nearly the last time. Enough to make you
shiver, my Jefferson hearties!
'Aerie (Gang Of Eagles)' is much shorter and compact
and yet much more epic. Grace sounds other-worldly as she sings 'against' the
tide of the song, pulling against her own slow-building terrified angular riff
picked out by Jorma on typically scintillating form. Though the chorus speaks
of that old American emblem, The Eagle, the rest of the song seems less...institutionalised
somehow. This song about someone with an in-born compass, always taking them away
from what they're told to new exciting lands is surely another modern-day
hippie; perhaps a whole group of them. It's my guess - and yes it's another
guess - that Grace is bidding farewell to the Jefferson fanbase here, in the
months when Jefferson Starship wasn't even a spark plug in her and Paul's heads
just yet, a tribute to a fanbase that would go anywhere and do anything and
risk everything. 'You can't fly, human master, you can't fly by yourself!'
cackles Grace, yet somehow the Airplane did and they couldn't have soared above
the earth without their audience crowd-surfing them along. What's more they won
this 'revolution' through peaceful means, 'without a rifle on your shelf!' Note
too the track subtitle that this is a 'gang' of Eagles - what better way of
summing up a brave and no-nonsense yet supportive fanbase? Though there's less going on in this track -
the tempo is very slow for all the noise, which makes every line sound as if it
lasts for about half an hour - it really packs a punch, with Grace's vocal and
piano plus Jacks murky bass physically fighting Jorma's guitar and Papa John's screechy
fiddle as they prepare to fly and soar, as if the Airplane are appearing here
with their earthly stabilisers on for the first time. Grace's vocal is a thing
of beauty and one of her best, piercing and raw but magnificently in control as
she 'fights' several centuries of civilisation with such determination you'd
still put money on her to 'win' the fight, while 'aerie' magnificently becomes
at least a twelve-syllable word. Only another murky production, which has
instruments coming and going even though only some of the band play (Paul is
only on backing vocals, for instance) prevents this from being a first-tier
classic.
'Twilight Double Leader' is, by contrast, a bit of
Kantner fluff. The song is based on a slinky and funky groove which features
Jack purring on the bass and Paul slashing away on rhythm guitar and which make
Jefferson Airplane sound more like Cream than their usual material. The lyrics
are oddball though, even by Kantner standards, switching between sex to
politics with even less cohesion than normal. 'Get down now and roll around me,
get down now and be my queen!' seems as oddly outdated misogynistic thing to
sing when your girlfriend is none other than Grace Slick, though she sounds
quite happy shrieking along with Paul in shrill harmonies. I'm stuck as to the
'twilight double leader' of the title - it could be linked to the 'Sunfighter'
cover with the sun setting, with Paul 'coming home to feed' his baby daughter.
But if so what so the next verse, in which 'your brothers and your sisters are
livin' in the mountains away from the city life!' Twilight is suddenly
everywhere in the cities, mass populated areas dying out as hippies retreat to
the country and for those 'lost' a third of the way through the working week a
mysterious 'she' (Grace?) will come to save your soul and show you the way you
should be living. Most of this song is, in truth, a lot of funky words that
rhyme nicely without any true meaning ('charioteer - already been here!') but I
do wonder too if this is an extension of 'Sunfighter' where proud daddy Paul
imagines his daughter at the front of the next generation's revolution (it
speaks volumes what while the rest of the hippie musician fanbase steps away
from dreams of utopia as the 1970s rolls on, Paul is always there dreaming much
the same dreams). Is China the one 'waling on the water' and performing
miracles left right and centre? Though as a song this is sillier and dafter
than most usual Kantner epics, this one gets by thanks to that fat chunky riff
and a feeling of genuine excitement that makes us, too, feel we've 'got to go!'
Hopefully one day this CD might be remixed to sound clearer and less muddy - if
they do I have a sneaky feeling this song would sound a whole load better pared
down to just the essentials.
Grace responds to Paul's slight sense of misogynysm
with some feminism of her own. 'Milk Train' is another ballsy raucous rocker which,
in alternating verses, talks about masturbation, oral sex and her own, erm,
'moistness' and milk-filled boobs. Nobody else would have written a song like
this in 1972, never mind fronted an all-male band to sing it (even Janis Joplin
would have blushed at this!) She tells her partner (presumably Paul) that she
doesn't want to 'stop his milk train running' and 'just wants to ride it some
of the time'. 'It'll cost you nothing!' she purrs, like a hippie prostitute.
Next she urges her partner not to let her baby-orientated milk sacks go unused
with what's leftover in return - 'don't leave the cow juice behind!' she
pleads. She reasons that, as a couple, it's one of the perks - she has always
got an open mouth on tap for oral sex while she, in turn, can choose to open
her mouth to talk and offers a 'free milk tongue bath!' Next Grace looks
outside her family and speaks about the male gender in general - some make her
juices dry and turn her 'rigid', others create 'liquid in the mind' without her
going anywhere near them physically and others seduce her and turn her 'dry'. The
ones she desires most are, typically, 'so hard to find'. She wraps up by complaining
at her gender feeling hemmed in by what can surely no longer be termed the
stronger sex after this song - 'You got nearly all of my body - damned near all
of my god-damned money!' Amazingly, despite the long-standing love-hate
relationship the Airplane had with the censor, this most lurid and graphic of
all their songs was for some reason overlooked, even though Grace's sultry,
sumptuous shrieking vocal alone has 'X-rated film' stamped all over it. This is
the last great ensemble Airplane performance, Paul and Jorma taking it in turns
to reach, erm, climax while Jack and Johnny hit a terrific repetitive rock
groove and Grace competes with papa John for attention, the fiddle player's
greatest moment coming when he, erm, peaks at the end of the song. The whole is
a glorious eye-opening noise. Paul took the same idea and a similar riff to
'ride the tiger', a spiritual metaphor, but Grace is too earthly and horny for
that. My sexual awakening came from here I tell you, no magazine, website or
encounter could ever compare with the sheer lust of this song which would be
banned today - how the Airplane got away with it nearly fifty years ago is one
of life's little mysteries!
It's surely a deliberate blasphemy that a tale about
Jesus' love life comes next. 'The Son Of Jesus', amazingly, wasn't banned
either though only because RCA intervened and ticked the band off for certain
lines which they re-recorded under protest, 'dropping' the new lines in over on
the wider left and right channels to make this obvious and leaving enterprising
fans to fill in the 'real' lines (for the record these blasphemous lines are: 'God
loved his bitching son!' 'So you think young Jesus Christ never fucked a lady?'
changed to the ungrammatical 'smiled' and 'They had a son, they had a daughter'
changed to 'raised' rather than had). Lines that weren't 'airbrushed' with overdubs
include 'Jesus had such a foxy daughter!', 'Mary Magdalene smiled when she
remembered how the people had been looser' and 'Public execution enhanced by levitation and fancy mutilation!'
just to show that RCA didn't take away all the 'good bits'. A Kantner song all
the way from its slow marching tempo to its telling a story in wide brush
strokes to its sheer outrageousness, unfortunately it's almost Kantner by
numbers: gasp at the blasphemy, sink into the slow tempo with no surprises and
strain your brain trying to work out what the hard-to-hear lyrics actually are
(RCA didn't need to insist on re-recordings at all: I've spent many an hour
trying to work out what's actually sung here!) This should really have been a
Grace 'n' Paul song kept for one of their joint records as it has nothing really
for the band to do here and the result is the single sloppiest performance on
the record, the Airplane playing at cross purposes and plodding instead of
soaring. As for the lyric, it's a nice idea with Paul pointing out the
hypocrisies in the Christian Church with the venom with which he normally
attacks politicians, but the band try too hard to make Jesus out to be both an
earthly man with earthly urges and no ability for miracles ('they go only so
far you see!') and a free-minded hippie. All hippies are magical, everyone
knows that! Grace's decision to do what she always does on Paul's songs,
improvise over the 'boring bits', also doesn't work here because she comes up
with far better lines than her partner ('2000 years of your story dancing over
me, Jesus you know God loved that man, you know God got off on his foxy
daughter too!')
Over on side two, Grace is feeling miserable and
turns in one of her typical moody piano ballads. 'Easter?' is Grace trying to
come to terms with what must have seemed like the whole of the Christian church
turning on her for a 'joke' only meant to be heard by one person and trying to
do what Paul always does: turn her personal sorrow and hurt into an epic number
that damns a whole group of people for the mistakes of a few. It speaks volumes
that Grace never again tries to sound like Paul - she's too much of a personal
writer for that and has a greater grasp of sudden spurts of emotion than a
similarly slowed-down melody that never really goes anywhere (it's 'Son Of
Jesus' all over again in fact). Still, her lyrics come with added bite: she
watched Pope John Paul II talk on television with an open mind, trying to
understand his world and al she hears is hypocrisy about peace from a religion
that doesn't practise it. Feeling unmoved, she goes back to painting her 'eggs'
because that's all Easter means to her, memorably rhyming it with 'nails in the
holy legs'. Forget 'The Beatles are bigger than Jesus' this is the real thing: she
dismisses his story as a 'mess', compares his 'story' to the paper-thin wafers
he hands out like sweets, asks how anyone talking in the dead language of Latin
can ever hope to appeal to the young and at the end gets so furious she turns
on the unthinking follower with the cry 'no brains in the stupid Christian!' It
all seems strangely OTT for Grace's usual songs, which usually wrap their
attack in warm humour and often points back to Grace's own faults, but makes
more sense if you understand that Grace has just been attacked left right and
centre in the press of the day and, as the true Scorpio she is, had to get
revenge somehow. The song makes more sense, too, when you realise that Grace
grew up not in the heathen hippie paradise many fans assume but a rich family
of devout believers that even as a child Grace loved to wind up something
rotten. For Grace - and indeed much of her generation - the idea of people
asking her to believe something on 'trust' and 'faith' and then not having any
of that trust and faith in their own believes smacked of the biggest hypocrisy;
this is the sound of a 34-year-old Grace realising that she might be about to
lose the greatest pulpit she ever had and telling her parents 'and another
thing!' as well as all the people who've just done her wrong. She'll re-write
the song to much better effect on the title track of 'The Chrome Nun' the next
year in which she longs to gain insight into this strange mystical world but
even by 'crossing her forehead and her knees' feels no divine intervention and
still feels closest to 'God' when she laughs.
That song isn't even the most defensive on the
album, though - that award is taken by Jorma's 'Trial By Fire'. Characteristically
the guitarist remains unflustered throughout perhaps his greatest song for the
band, though he tells a painful tale about the problems he's faced being a
hippie musician. It's a final reminder that being i the Airplane wasn't all
fun, finding the guitarist even more fed up than on 'Third Week In The Chelsea'
as he 'moves out on the highway' keen to put part of his past behind him even
though he's scared, 'afraid of what the future might be'. Jorma can see his
future playing out and he's not happy: there'll be a policeman ready to pull
him over the minute he leaves the protection of the band, with a look 'that
you'd rather be seeing me dead'. To his followers he was once a God - but from
now on, he's going to be just another long-haired weirdo the rest of the world
who doesn't get 'it' wants to shoot. Jorma's double-tracked vocal stings of
disdain and helplessness, torturing himself and his pals for not being strong
enough to 'finish' the Airplane manifesto of world peace, however much fighting
had to be done to get it. Never had a band sounded more fed-up than here, with
Jack's plodding bass and Papa John's fiddle the only colour darting out of this
bleak song which, as many reviewers have said, sounds more like the guitarist's
'Hot Tuna' work. This song has to be on this finale album though: it's the
sound of a disillusioned man adding up the bill after a party and deciding the
thrills just weren't worth it after all. However, Jorma's too kind to leave us
with such a sour taste in our mouths so he adds in a final, sweet verse that
seems to be his own take on the Jefferson fan. 'We' shared a secret together
and nothing can take away how wonderful that was for us and from now on,
whenever our paths meet in the future, Jorma's going to recognise us and
'smile' our way in memories of time long gone. It's a sweet moment and a
reminder of the solidarity of the hippie movement, away from the police
brutality, narrow-mindedness and the gradual wearing away of the hippie dream.
It was a trial by fire alright and we 'lost', but only because there were more
of them all meaner than we ever were, Jorma vowing to fight to the last anyway,
that 'I won't leave here till I sing this song'. Easily Jorma's multi-layered
composition, this is one of the real album highlights - especially his stunning
guitar playing, both ringing acoustic and stinging electric and Jack's bass
dancing alongside him, while interestingly new boy Johnny Barbata sounds far
more at home on this track than he ever will with the 'Starship' end of the
family.
'Alexander The Medium' is Kantner's farewell to the
band he made his name with and it's a shame that he ends his time as an
Airplaner by simply recycling the music from 'When The Earth Moves Again'. This
song tries hard to be a happy hippie eulogy but it struggles under the weight
of its own pomp and circumstance. Kantner, a keen historian, reminds us of a
time of 'glory and power' when Alexander the Great brought in a new prosperous
age for the young (he was twenty when he got the 'throne'). At least in Paul's
eyes - in reality he had the biggest army of anyone and ruled more like a
tyrant than a hippie, conquering lands and moving on oblivious to the hurt he
caused, but then that's ancient Greece and myths and legends for you. In Paul's
eyes he's a hero who made everything possible: there was a unity back then and
an understanding of nature that man has since lost and the tale portrayed here
is one of Paul's earliest utopian tall tales, all the more unusual in that it
comes from our 'past' not a possible 'future'. The hint is that Alexander was
just the 'medium' by which people could experience change, perhaps the
'Beatles' of his generation' allowing the young to do things their way. Paul
dreams that this time will come again: that as we're all products of 'fame
fortune and liberty' anyone of us could take the reins and make the world a
better place so we shouldn't give up believing in the hippie dream ourselves. Paul
remained attached to his vision for much of his life, even naming his second
child Alexander after the ruler and song. However for many fans it's the
hardest slog on the Airplane's hardest slog of an album. The song lasts for 6:39
and never breaks away from its Greek parable feel for anything throughout - no
chorus, no middle eight, no guitar solo, nothing. 'I don't even know your na,e'
sighs Paul, 'but I thought I'd tell you all about it just the same!' like a pub
bore who won't shut up! It doesn't help that both his double-tracked vocal and
Grace's shrieking lead are all three wildly off-key, making this song sound as
if we're being shouted at rather than told a story. Perhaps the album's weakest
track.
At least Long John puts his Long Johns back on for
the fiesty, fiery finale, even if it's a song that also happens to make less
sense than perhaps any previous Jefferson lyric in their history, 'Eat Starch
Mom!' is one last kick in the teeth for the parental generation, Grace setting
a lyric full of gibberish slang to Jorma's angry and wild guitar riff. In many
ways it's a sequel to Marty's 'Plastic Fantastic Lover', a much loved Jefferson
song despite being similar gibberish as Grace also sings a love song to a TV,
her 'man made mechanical mover' which we're clearly supposed to think is some
sort of love toy following on from 'Milk Train'. 'When was the last time a
television set gave you any shit about who you met last night?' Grace adds
though, wrong-footing us again, as she praises the only 'lover' with the
stamina to stay awake with her all through the night. The song then moves on to
an oddball attack on someone who swears by only natural produce -a vegan you
might say today. 'Preservatives might just be preserving you!' Grace snarls
'but I think you might have missed it!' For Grace life has to be full of raw
meat and excitement and energy or what's the point of living at all? So she
offers a last bit of advice to her fanbase, telling the women to stay 'warm and
wet' for his 'machine' and add a little starch to spice things up. Jorma then
has what sounds like a nervous breakdown on the guitar, with a wilder ride even
than 'Milk Train', as he tries to buck Grace off his bronco. She's firmly in
charge as always, though and is having great fun cackling her way through her
daft lyric. Though not up to the band's best, deepest or greatest and a poor
man's 'Plastic Fantastic Lover' (which was a lot funnier and made a lot more
sense), it's a fun riff and another great performance, even if Paul seems to be
missing once again. The last words on a Jefferson Airplane album? The highly
unlikely 'Vegetable lover!' screamed at full pelt.
Overall, then, 'Long John Silver' is the sound of a
fighter still giving it all even though the clock is ticking and he can't get
up off the floor and knows he has to give in. Compared to the Airplane of old,
none of the songs here dance as Grace-fully as they used to and there are no
'escapes', no little nuggets of collages or novelty songs to break up the flow,
which combined with the all-on attack of every last song (even the ballads!)
makes 'Long John' a very exhausting album to listen to. However, it's also
great to hear the Airplane giving their all throughout and offering up nine
songs that could never ev-uh have even possibly have appeared on an album by
any other bands/. There's a cohesion and sense of righteous indignation missing
from 'Volunteers' and 'Bark' and even if the execution isn't always the best, two-thirds
of the material is amongst as worthy as any in the Airplane's illustrious
history. It's an end of an era, with the band going out all-guns blazing, which
was the only way they ever truly could have done and on that level is a success,
even if at times it feels like the band wish they'd never 'taken off' at all
and want to get everything over and done by - the cigars on the cover being
perhaps an ironic gesture that the end is a 'celebration'. You miss the clarity
of 'Surrealistic Pillow', sense of adventure of 'Baxters' and daring of 'Crown
Of Creation', but that's not to say that 'Long John Silver' is in any way's a
poorer relative. Rockier than any previous album and a lot angrier with it,
this record is more of a wild animal than the other tamer beasts out there but
this one too has a lot of heart, a lot of head and a lot of courage the old
Jefferson way, if not the blissful harmonies and romantic ballads. 'Long John
Silver' is a last bumpy ride for Jefferson Airplane before they go all
luxurious and cruise-class with the Jefferson Starship albums, a by-the-seat-of-your-pants
experience that will make you air-sick more often than show you the great sights,
but which of us doesn't want our Jeffersons at least a tiny bit ramshackle and
'real'? 'Silver' is the real-lest 'Airplane out there by some margin and worth
your pieces of eight for its bravery and courage even if it sometimes loses out
on pure musicality and magic.
Other Jefferson-related articles you might be interested in reading:
A NOW
COMPLETE LIST OF JEFFERSON ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'Takes Off!' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-116.html
'Takes Off!' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-116.html
'Surrealistic Pillow' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/03/jefferson-airplane-surrealistic-pillow.html
'After Bathing At Baxters' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-15-jefferson-airplane-after.html
'Crown Of Creation' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/jefferson-airplane-crown-of-creation.html
'After Bathing At Baxters' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-15-jefferson-airplane-after.html
'Crown Of Creation' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/jefferson-airplane-crown-of-creation.html
'Volunteers' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/jefferson-airplane-volunteers-1969.html
'Bark' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-91-jefferson.html
'Blows Against The Empire' (Kantner) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-44-paul-kantner-and-jefferson.html
'Bark' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-91-jefferson.html
'Blows Against The Empire' (Kantner) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-44-paul-kantner-and-jefferson.html
‘Sunfighter’ (Kantner/Slick) (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/paul-knatnewrgrace-slick-jefferson.html?utm_source=BP_recent
'Long John Silver' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/jefferson-airplane-long-john-silver-1972.html
'Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun'
(Kantner/Slick/Freiberg) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/paul-kantner-grace-slick-and-david.html
'Dragonfly' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/news-views-and-music-issue-51-jefferson.html
'Dragonfly' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/news-views-and-music-issue-51-jefferson.html
'Red Octopus' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/jefferson-starship-red-octopus-1975.html
'Spitfire' (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/jefferson-starship-spitfire-1976-album.html
‘Earth’ (1978) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/jefferson-starship-earth-1978.html
‘Freedom At Point Zero’ (1979) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/jefferson-starship-freedom-at-point.html
'Dreams' (Slick) (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-39-grace.html
'Modern Times' (1981) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/jefferson-starship-modern-times-1981.html
'Winds Of Change' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/jefferson-starship-winds-of-change-1982.html
'The Empire Blows Back'# aka 'The Planet Earth Rock
and Roll Orchestra (Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship) (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/paul-kantnerjefferson-starship-planet.html
'Nuclear Furniture' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-87-jefferson-starship-nuclear.html
'Nuclear Furniture' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-87-jefferson-starship-nuclear.html
'Jefferson Airplane' (1989) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/jefferson-airplane-1989.html
Non-Album Songs 1966-1984 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/jefferson-airplanestarship-non-album.html
The Best Unreleased Recordings 1966-1974 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/jefferson-airplane-best-unreleased.html
Surviving TV Footage 1966-1989 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/jefferson-airplane-surviving-tv-footage.html
Tribute Special: Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/tribute-special-paul-kantner-and-signe.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/Hot Tuna Albums Part One
1966: 1978 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/jefferson-airplanestarship.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/Hot Tuna Albums Part Two
1979-2013 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/jefferson-airplanestarship_16.html
Essay: Why Flying In Formation Was So Special For
The Jeffersons https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/jefferson-airplane-essay-why-flying-in.html
