Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers
Ah, Jefferson Airplane, those fair-weather freedom-fighters who set the American folk-rock/psychedelic scene ablaze between 1967 and 1970, before falling from the perch and metamorphosing into Jefferson Starship. Granted, there were albums released either side of this three year catchment zone, but none that would have the influence or raw power of Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxter’s, Crown of Creation and this one, Volunteers.
Jefferson Airplane weren’t afraid to play with politics. They were the self-appointed spokespersons of a generation, riding the revolutionary wave of the time and profiting handsomely from it. 1969’s Volunteers is the result of all this fragmented rhetoric, packaged neatly onto a slab of vinyl and sold back to “the kids” for a nice little earner.
Not that there’s anything wrong with musicians voicing their political views – just that it’s hard to stomach a call for an uprising from people living in communal mansions paid for by the record company and travelling to gigs in private helicopters. Nor is there anything wrong with this album, it’s a corker in fact, but it might be even better if the artistes’ convictions were truly sincere. The title track ‘Volunteers’, for instance, paints the band as “… the volunteers of America”, the frontline of the impending revolution who are prepared to take their country back from “The Man” by any means necessary. Yet they didn’t. After all, why fund a revolution when you can take the money and run? It hadn’t done the people they were criticising any harm, and the system they sang about smashing was keeping them in their comfortable mansions and magnificent motors.
But I won’t let the plundering of radical ideals and revolutionary posturing for financial gain prejudice (ahem) what is, after all, an album review. Like I said, it’s a corker, and I find myself agreeing with drummer Spencer Dryden, when he said “Volunteers, I think, is our best album.” It’s certainly the most rounded of the four albums previously mentioned.
Its political manifesto kicks off in fine style with ‘We Can Be Together’, which uses a less urgent variation of the chord progression on ‘Volunteers’ to deliver a similar message of unifying to smash the ruling order. However, lines such as “All your private property is target for your enemy, And your enemy is we…” ring hollow when you realise its actually a pampered rockstar delivering them… There I go again.
The dual vocal partnership of Marty Balin and Grace Slick is at its crackling best throughout, being particularly strong on the title track and the aforementioned ‘We Can Be Together’, but lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen also comes up trumps with his sterling rendition of the traditional folk/gospel ballad, ‘Good Shepherd’. The phoenix of peace and love rises from the flames of the impending apocalypse on the gentle ‘Wooden Ships’ (also recorded by Crosby, Stills and Nash), imagining distant shores away from all the war and hatred in which to start afresh. A concept that the band’s resident firebrand songwriter would turn into an entire album with 1970’s Blows Against the Empire by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship.
Also worthy of note is the light-hearted, country-rock biography of the group ‘A Song for all Seasons’, written in a splendidly self-deprecating style by drummer, Dryden. Paul Kantner’s decision to include the instrumental ‘Meadowlands’, a Red Army song, as a “snub to the establishment”, brings us back to the point of radicalising for the sake of credibility, but leads nicely into the album’s closer ‘Volunteers‘. Claimed by Balin not to originally have been a political song, but inspired by getting woken one morning by a “Volunteers of America” truck, in the hands of Paul Kantner ‘Volunteers’ becomes an exhilarating car-bomb blast of agit-rock and a worthy closing salvo from the classic Jefferson Airplane line-up.
Following the release of Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane played the Altamont free concert, (dis)organised by the Rolling Stones and documented in the excellent film, Gimme Shelter. The resulting chaos, violence and murder dragged the 60s kicking and screaming into the new decade and as an indirect result of the newfound disillusionment Altamont spawned, they never recorded in this celebrated incarnation again. Following a further two mediocre albums, neither of which could capture the essence of what had come before (however sincere or insincere it happened to be), the remainder of the band drifted apart and retired the name, some going on to form the even more out-there Jefferson Starship.
This release is the 2004 BMG remaster, featuring five live bonus tracks recorded at the Fillmore East in 1969. The sound is a little muddy throughout despite it claiming the original master tapes have been used. I must add there is a 2007 RCA remaster also available, featuring different bonus tracks and, one hopes, a clearer sound. That, and the rich-kid revolutionary posturing aside, Volunteers is a fizzling fusewire of an album, and a fitting showcase for a band at the top of their game, just prior to it all going wrong.
Volunteers is released on the RCA Victor label and available from Amazon.co.uk
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