Marty Balin

Surrealistic Pillow was a favorite album of mine at age 15. I listened to a hundred times and I still play it on occasion. The Jefferson Airplane are now somewhat sadly consigned to anachronism and nostalgia. They are dismissed by many who never outgrew their anti-hippie prejudice adopted soon after they lost their own shaggy hair and flares. It is even worse for the noble and beloved Donovan, who first mentioned the Airplane in a song called "The Fat Angel" on his seminal psychedelic rock album "Sunshine Superman."
What I've heard of them on radio recently consists of a only few well-known songs when their entire catalog is rich with songs that seem to never get played. It must be said though that the Airplane are partially to blame for the lack of abundant serious reconsideration of them. They were too eager to form frothy splinter outfits like Jefferson Starship. Only to have the name wind up in the hands of plasticized show-biz types playing the songs of the 70s in Reno--"We built this city...". Indeed. They milked the franchise to the extent that a re-union was rendered superfluous even if Jorma could be enticed back.
But back in the day, they were the formidable edge of a world-wide cultural tectonic shift. They always had a smart, creative and provocative sound. If you still doubt it, watch the short film of them by Jean-Luc Godard (available on YouTube). They are playing " The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" on the rooftop of the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Tough-looking cops show up to put an end to the possibility of an encore. It's very exciting and it's well over a year before the Beatles stage-managed the same stunt. One can be certain the Beatles knew of Godard's film, as well.

I saw the original Airplane play at Providence College in 1970. I remember it being fabulous and thrilling, but not much else. The opening set by John Hammond still has an image in my mind. but, other than that I really enjoyed myself, only Grace Slick's unbuttoned shirt is still vivid from the Airplane's set. Uncharacteristic of me really, I might have over-fed my head.
And I was still young and romantic enough in the mid 70s to fall for the song "Miracles." I went to see the Jefferson Starship featuring Grace, Paul Kantner, and Marty Balin, again in Providence but this time at a cavernous civic center. It was not a complete loss yet, but they were in the process of losing the thread.
Marty Balin was the founder of the Airplane and of the San Francisco nightclub The Matrix. The club was in North Beach, as I recall reading, and was one of the very first venues for psychedelic rock. The Matrix pioneered the use of arabesque, day-glow, and otherwise trippy posters to advertise shows as well. It was the third-eye chakra of the electric zeitgeist, or something.
In every respect Balin was not only a gifted singer and song-writer but he was among the very few true visionaries who led the way into the international psychedelic cultural movement via the look, the rap, and, most crucially, the "San Francisco sound." They loosened the moorings on the rec-rooms and dens of homes across America with LPs, artwork and clothes and accessories of a massive collective inward journey and outward celebration. "Saturday afternoon, Acid incense and balloons..."

By the mid-eighties, I had been living in and around San Francisco myself for five years. I recall seeing Paul Kantner several times sitting nearby in the small Old Waldorf club in downtown. I commended him in my mind for turning out to see some of the new wave, post-punk, and ska bands that I was digging too. There was yet another false dichotomy fanned by the media concerning a generational disaffiliation taking place at the time. The punks certainly made a show of hating the hippies who were in some cases their parents. I bought into that a bit because, after all, it really represents kind of a bohemian house-cleaning or renewal.
Similarly, the print media had also gotten mileage in the 60s by announcing the the hippies rejected the beatniks. Yes, and the existentialists rejected the surrealists. It is really just a way for successive waves of artists and others to get attention and to tell the oldsters that they can't make the new scene.

Besides all that, a band called SVT with Airplane bassist Jack Casady opened for new wave juggernaut Blondie at a show I attended in Oakland in 1979. And that same year I saw the phenomenal Jorma Kaukonen play outdoors in front of the SF city hall a few weeks after seeing the Ramones play in the same spot. There was no contradiction in my mind. Good music was good music. I'm glad I managed to hang onto all the records that I did, instead of periodic purges to fit in with some contrived notion of what hip is. Hot Tuna, amen.

In 1984 I began to work at City Lights. I had never been overly star-struck and I was by then philosophically quite cool about the proximity of the famous. At the bookstore the reigning attitude was an even more blase. It was considered better form to ignore a star's presence in the store if possible. You might even raise conspiratorial eyebrows with one when someone else approached them.
Marty was a regular customer at the store. He may have lived within walking distance. He sustained an abiding interest in Surrealism, lingering at a narrow Surrealism bookshelf just across from the front counter and purchasing the new titles quite often. I would ring him up but other than that had never indicated that I recognized, him let alone that I was an old admirer. A taciturn manner, almost a loner way about him, made it easy to be quiet oneself.
He was in one afternoon when a even better-known face entered with a small entourage. It was the type of celebrity I definitely fade out on. But even though I did not watch the most popular show on television at the time, I recognized the actor who played the notorious beer-loving character "Norm."
So in comes George Wendt, assistants, and handlers, looking like I'm supposed to greet him like they do when he walks in to the ersatz bar on TV. I didn't. He was one of the many tourists who would come into City Lights but who were obviously not, shall we say, book-lovers. He walked around a little and looked at the place but not the books.
Thankfully no one accosted him and they all piled out again. But then they stopped on the sidewalk to have a little conference. Next, one of the assistants was delegated to return and approach Marty. I could here the pitch, "George would like to meet you and wonders if that would be..."
Marty says, "Sure."
The assistant goes out and retrieves the big shot. Wendt comes back in and Marty comes to the front to meet him. The TV star mumbles a spiel about how great it is to meet him. He was a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane, etc.
"That's great. It's nice to meet you," says Marty in his cool way.
The star and the entourage turned around and left, perhaps for a drink next door at Vesuvio's.
A customer and I wait a minute for Marty to disappear again into the back of the store, then start laughing.
"That was strange. Marty probably didn't even know who he was," I remarked.
From the back of the store, "I knew who he was."

Marty, I thought you were cooler before you told me.

postscript.
Fast forward 20 years and it was the Summer of Love 40th anniversary concert in Golden Gate park. Of course everyone who knows, knows that 1966 was the real summer of love. By the summer of 1967 the Haight Ashbury scene was no longer an inside tip-- the song "If You Go to San Francisco" was on the top ten worldwide. It was a second, more public and populous summer of love in '67. Nevertheless, it's like Plymouth rock, that's where the marker was set in contemporary and subsequent history.
So the reunion was in 2007. I went, arriving sometime after a hundred thousand others had. But using my extensive knowledge of the Polo field gleaned from many a recent Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. I found a perch, literally, a horizontal low branch to sit on. I lit a fist full of incense sticks and attached them to the branch with tin foil. Then I smoked some special herbs and got into the spirit of it. There was a big screen blowing-up the events on-stage, slightly creaky as they may have been. Wavy Gravy married a couple on stage. And various dinosaurs of acid rock assembled what was left of bands with legendary names.
The geezers and the youngsters were gathered there as far as the eye could see. I realized a childhood fantasy to be in a be-in at Golden Gate park while the Jefferson Airplane (of sorts) performed "Volunteers." It was fun in a white-haired sort of way--I mean the band as well. Marty can still sing and Kantner can still strum a mean hook and yowl.
I read in the rather obviously obsolete SF Chronicle recently, that Kantner now hangs out at the Trieste Cafe in North Beach a lot these days, holding open discourse and planning his next blow against the empire.