Paul Kantner

As vocalist, composer, and rhythm guitarist, Paul Kantner co-founded Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship. Singer Marty Balin first turned to him when assembling a folk-rock ensemble in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s. Jefferson Airplane ranked among the earliest and most commercially successful of the psychedelic acid-rock outfits that emerged from San Francisco in that decade. Fragmentation set in toward the close of the sixties, prompting Kantner to issue the solo set Blows Against the Empire in 1970. He next collaborated with his partner, Airplane frontwoman Grace Slick, on the 1971 duo release Sunfighter, then joined Slick and David Freiberg—who had taken Balin’s place in the Airplane—for the 1973 trio album Baron Vol Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun. In 1974 Kantner and Slick reshaped the Airplane into Jefferson Starship. Kantner returned to solo work with Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra in 1983, then departed Jefferson Starship the following year; the remaining members shortened the name to Starship. He subsequently formed the KBC Band. Kantner rejoined a reconstituted Jefferson Airplane in 1989 and, from the 1990s onward, led a fresh incarnation of Jefferson Starship that evolved into a family-oriented lineup by the twenty-first century. That configuration delivered the 2008 album Jefferson’s Tree of Liberty, which also included input from Grace Slick, Marty Balin, David Freiberg, Cathy Richardson, Slick Aguilar, and Prairie Prince. On 28 January 2016, at age 74, Kantner succumbed to multiple organ failure in San Francisco; coincidentally, original Airplane vocalist Signe Anderson, Grace Slick’s predecessor in the group, died the same day at the same age.