Jefferson Starship is often derided as the bastard child of Jefferson Airplane. As if they are AOR monsters. Certainly in the UK anyway where only two of their albums charted - Spitfire and Freedom At The Point Zero. But when I revisited the albums recently, I found some excellent, imaginative rock records, especially those released in the 70s. Dragon Fly (1974)
Red Octopus (1975) Spitfire (1976) Earth (1978) Freedom at Point Zero (1979)
Dragonfly is a really varied record and features some great guitar work by Craig Chaquico and even some electric violin by Papa John Creach. Ride The Tiger, which they opened their shows with for years, opens the album. A great riff and solos with the lyric ‘look to the summer of ‘75, the whole world is gonna come alive’ now rather amusing in its faith in the future. Hyperdrive closes the record and is another 7-minute song with extended solos.
It sold half a million in USA and got to #11 but didn’t chart in the UK. Red Octopus went to #1 in America for 4 weeks but again didn’t chart in the UK. An absolute classic AOR album Miracles was a top #3 single too.
But we didn't really get exposed to them much in the UK until the ‘Jane’ single and the album it came from. Dragonfly got to #3 in America and even charted at #30 in the UK. Song to the Sun: Part I: Ozymandias / Part II: Don't Let It Rain was a Kantner sci-fi trippy special
Earth had a huge promo campaign in America and even in the UK. There were ads everywhere for it and it woke me up to the band. They had three hits in America from it and it went to #5 but despite the promo it still didn’t chart in the UK. They did play the Knebworth Festival on a bill which included Genesis. My friend Kev went and says "it was 24th June 1978.
They were second on the bill to Genesis but still played for the best part of two hours. It was during their European dates a week or two earlier that Grace disappeared after an alcoholic bender so apparently they booked the Rainbow for a few days to work up some different tunes to replace the Grace tunes. So on the day no White Rabbit or Somebody To Love but a great selection of tunes from Dragonfly / Octopus / Spitfire / Earth plus a smattering of airplane (Wooden Ships / Volunteers / Have You Seen The Saucers spring to mind) and Freiburg did Pride of Man. A lot of the tunes were much rockier live than on record so it showed they were were top rockers, Chaquico particularly on the lead guitar."
This is where it substantially fell apart and the next album had a different line-up. Now they were less far-out and more straight ahead rock. Kantner always provided a sci-fi seasoning.
The thing about Starship is you can pick up the albums cheap, even 80s albums Modern Times (1981) Winds of Change (1982) Nuclear Furniture (1984) have good stuff on them and should cost you no more than £5.00. They had 18 charting singles in the USA, but only one in the UK, despite them all being released over here.
If you’ve always flicked past the records in the past, you can probably get all the 70s output for less than £20 and get a very satisfying selection of records that don’t really sound like anyone else.
