Customer Reviews

Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have in my treasure-trove of personal memorabilia a letter from a friend, postmarked from San Francisco in September 1965, where he describes hanging out with a newly formed band with the strange name of "Jefferson Airplane" and auditioning to be their lead singer. He didn't make the band; thus, when their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, was released in mid-1966, he was not on it. My local record store didn't carry it, and no one who worked there had ever heard of them. How things would change within less than a year, when a song called "Somebody to Love" was all over the radio and Jefferson Airplane was all over television.

Jefferson Airplane was a swirling mass of contradictions. Their fan club slogan, "Jefferson Airplane Loves You," was perfect for the Summer of Love, yet the band was split into two, sometimes three, contentious camps. Their politics were extreme radical left; they made no bones about embracing Red China, yet if they had ever appeared in that country, they would have undoubtedly wound up underneath some tanktread. They also embraced, and utilized, the capitalist system in their business dealings to the hilt. And while espousing an idealistic communal style that publicly eschewed materiality, they were poster child limousine liberals. Their music was by turns brilliant and crap, with some of it standing up after hundreds of listenings over three and one-half decades, while others were unlistenable from Day One. Yet their influence on the culture for several mad, insane years was undeniable.

Jeff Tamarkin chronicles the entire process from the beginning to the present in GOT A REVOLUTION!, which is a history of Jefferson Airplane (and its offshoots) collectively and its members individually. It is an amazing work on a number of levels. Tamarkin was able to obtain the cooperation of almost all of the individuals directly or indirectly involved, and he deals with conflicting versions of events colored by time, perspective, and drug-induced illusion. He is an unabashed fan of the band --- to even contemplate a work of this scope and complexity, one would have to really love, or really hate, them --- yet his account of the band, if not the times in which they lived, is surprisingly objective. Grace Slick and Paul Kantner come off the worst, in terms of their wild and destructive behavior, and yet even they possessed some redemptive qualities, outside of whatever musical talent they were blessed with.

Tamarkin additionally does an excellent job of tracing the history of each member of the group, the events surrounding them, and the band members' individual and collective discography. I was constantly and continuously impressed with Tamarkin's accuracy with respect to events involving the band. Though not directly in any of the events that he describes, I was a bystander at several of them (the infamous Akron Rubber Bowl concert of 1972 being but one) and his ability to put the reader into the setting while getting it right is incredible.

While he occasionally lets his worldview color secondary events (the Black Panthers were, alas, not the innocent victims he infers them to be, and Ronald Reagan's presidency couldn't have ignored AIDS for several years before declaring the condition a national emergency in 1981 because he wasn't elected until 1981), he does get everything about the Airplane right while including, well, damn near everything, from Grace Slick's notorious appearance in blackface on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, to the infamous record jacket cupcake tracing, to Marty Balin, valiantly but in vain, single-handedly taking on a contingent of Hell's Angels while the band played on.

A history of Jefferson Airplane was overdue; that the first one should also be the definitive one is a tribute to Tamarkin and his work. It is impossible to read GOT A REVOLUTION! without going to the record collection and pulling out records with titles like Surrealistic Pillow, Crown of a Creation, Volunteers, and After Bathing at Baxters, and listening to them over and over again. If they are not a soundtrack to a life, they are at least the theme of it. And GOT A REVOLUTION! is the story of it. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Because I was too young to be aware of them during the 60s, my first memory of this group was thru the songs Miracles and Runaway during the 70s and it's Starship period. Although I have certain fondness for these songs, many older fans view this era as lacking compared to their Airplane material. Even more fans find their 80s stuff less appealing...a sentiment with which I happen to agree. (We Built This City has to be one of the more excruciating songs of the 80s.)

Learning about the Airplane thru articles and Behind the Music episodes, I was not impressed. All the members struck me as extremely self involved, childish, drama prone and spoiled. There seemed to be a lingering bitterness especially in regards to Marty Balin's feelings toward Grace Slick. But since the 60s are a continuing source of fascination for me, I picked up this book.

Reading the book, I'm still not impressed with the individuals in the band as people. (No one comes off as particularly pleasant) But I did come away with an appreciation for their desire to push the envelope with their music. Even Grace Slick who has often appeared to take a blase attitude toward her music and life in general is shown as a relatively strong composer and musician.

Tamarkin is effective at capturing the environment and atmosphere of San Francisco in the 60s and 70s. He also gives a fuller if not complete picture of peripheral band members such as Papa John Creach, Signe Anderson (the original female singer of Airplane) and others. We also learn of the band's failed business dealings and contract disputes. Overall it's a good history of the culture of the 60s and all it's craziness.

I'd recommend that one read Joel Selvin's Summer of Love as a companion to this book. Those not familiar with the history will receive a fuller picture as a result.

I had waited impatiently for many years for someone to tackle a complete history of one of my favorite bands, Jefferson Airplane, and when I finally saw the book in my local store, and then the author's name on the book itself, I knew right away that all would be well. I had enjoyed Jeff Tamarkin's wonderfully well-written, impeccably researched, enthusiastic and informative liner notes for various Airplane and Hot Tuna CDs for quite a while, and sensed that he was the perfect man to handle this job. Happily, that indeed turns out to be the case, and his Airplane history, "Got a Revolution: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane," featuring all those qualities that made his liner notes such a joy, is the volume that I and many others had been waiting for. Tamarkin not only gives us a thorough history of this seminal San Francisco group--starting in 1965, when Marty Balin (nee Martyn Buchwald) decided to put a new kind of band together--but also follows it through its dissolution in 1972 and on to its various offshoots (Jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna, KBC Band, etc.). Covering the pre-hippy days of the mid-'60s, through the Nixonian years and right on to J.A.'s reunion in 1989, Tamarkin also gives us a concise primer of a fascinating period of recent history. The book is replete with details of the band's principals but not exhaustingly so; that is, it never gets bogged down with excess back story, but rather gives us all the info we need to understand all the band members as fully fleshed-out people, limiting their back biographies to quick 10-page chapters. I have been a fan of Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Spencer Dryden and especially Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady for almost 40 years now, and still found an incredible amount of unknown information about them in this fast-moving history. (Spencer Dryden was Charlie Chaplin's nephew?!?! Who knew?) With chapters arranged in cliffhanger fashion, with a fascinating cast of characters and with many astounding stories, this book really does pull a reader in. And yet, Tamarkin does not yield to the temptation to sensationalize his tale. Indeed, to his credit, he admits right up front that there remain many "Airplane mysteries," and lets it go at that. Yes, there are many juicy stories (I love the one about Jack sitting in the mud puddle on DMT, and Grace's escapades in Germany...not to mention that Reality D. Blipcrotch episode!), but many readers, I suspect, will be surprised that this book remains fairly levelheaded, with a minimum of wild sex and drug anecdotes. The anecdotes ARE there, but only enough to give us a feel for the time, place and characters. (One gets the feeling that Tamarkin could regale us with even juicier tidbits over a few drinks one evening.) The author has been given access to virtually every principal character in the Jefferson Airplane story, and the hundreds of hours of insider interviews have helped make this history practically definitive.

On another note, I myself work as a copy editor and proofreader, and thus am happy to report that the book has also been put together virtually faultlessly. I only counted four typos in its entire 400+-page length, and all those were of the punctuational variety. The rare photographs on display are truly special (I just love the one of Jorma in his Cub Scout uniform!), and the book's index is perfectly composed and quite handy when keeping track of the history's large cast of characters. If there is one complaint that I would lodge--and it is a very minor one--it is that in the book's final third, more space has been given over to the exploits of Jefferson Starship than Hot Tuna. As a fan who has seen Tuna some hundred times in concert at this point, but who has never had much use for post-"Dragonfly" Starship, I would have wished for a little more parity here, but I suppose it could be argued that Starship was composed of more JA members than was Tuna, so I'm willing to let the point slide. Besides, this is a mere personal quibble. The fact remains, Jeff Tamarkin has done all fans of Jefferson Airplane a tremendous service with his wonderful book. I have read it twice already, and will surely refer to it often in the years to come. Thanks, Jeff!

I have been looking forward to the publication of an authoritative book on Jefferson Airplane for a long time! Ten years ago (in my review of `Jefferson Airplane Loves You' in Holding Together #16 in fact), I urged Jeff Tamarkin to use the wealth of inteview material he had amassed in researching the Box booklet as the basis for a full-length biography of Jefferson Airplane. If I'd had the time and the contacts, it's a project I would love to have undertaken myself. Tamarkin did have those opportunities - and it would appear that he's made the best of them, for at long last the book that he's written is out in the world.

It runs to over 400 pages, including 16 pages of black and white photographs, some of which have not been published before. It has a foreword by Jan Wenner and an introduction by Paul Kantner. Tamarkin then proceeds, over the course of thirty five chapters, to tell the tale of the turbulent flight of the mighty airmachine - essentially from its inception in1965 until the Airplane re-union of 1989. In order to do this, he has interviewed most all of the (surviving) key participants in the turbulent tale - not only all the band members from the various incarnations of JA (and HT/JS) but many of the managers, producers, back-room staff and friends of the bands as well - and some of these he's interviewed more than once. (In fact, excerpts from some of the early interviews did appear in Relix magazine a few years ago.) He's taken all that information, some of it conflicting - as people's recollections and opinions inevitably differ - and has tried to make sense of it, forging it into a readable narrative of shape and substance.

But after all the hard work on Tamarkin's part and the eager awaiting on ours, what you want to know is: is it a good book (in terms of style, content, veracity and explication)?

The short answer is yes - at least on three and a half out of four counts; (I personally would have liked to read way much more analysis and interpretation - "the why of making music," as Kantner terms it in his introduction).

What Tamarkin has produced is in fact a very good book. It's a highly readable account of the life and times of the band. The story is built up chronologically by introducing the key players one at a time, in each case supplying enough background to explain how they got to the point where they founded/joined Jefferson Airplane and in some cases how they came to exit it as well. For anyone previously unfamiliar with the detailed history of JA's inception and early days, this will make fascinating reading. Coverage of the remaining five years of Jefferson Airplane gets a slightly less comprehensive treatment and the life and times of Hot Tuna, Jefferson Starship (then SVT, Vital Parts and so on) even less so - though Tamarkin obviously does hit the key events and seismic shifts in some detail.

What they did and what happened to them is entertainingly and faithfully narrated (the Matthew Katz legacy, the sexual pairings, the drug busts, the troubled relationship with RCA, the changes in personnel, the escalating craziness, the gradual emergence of Hot Tuna, Grace's alcohol intake, Marty's uncomfortable role in Jefferson Starship, the collapse of JS to Starship et cetera) and this is tied to the cultural and political events of the years as well (the rise of Hippie, the death of Hippie, assassinations, anti-war activities, the increasing polarisation of American society through the sixties, the long shadow of Republicanism, MTV and the rise of the global media jukebox). On the level of what happened it works well and there are many instances where Tamarkin is very insightful in relating external developments to what what was going down within Jefferson Airplane. He also provides many interesting details along the way: I did not know that Balin's submitted artwork for `Surrealistic Pillow' was blue, not pink; that "Fat Angel" was inspired by Mama Cass Elliot; that Jorma was strung out on heroin during the Airplane reunion; who the inspiration was for Paul's song "Revolutionary Upstairs Maid." This is fascinating stuff. It also has a lot of very funny stories - Hot Tuna's Jamaican escapade and Reality D. Blipcrotch's vision for the `One' album to name but two which actually had me laughing out loud. Naturally, there's also a wealth of great quotes; and generally these have been blocked out from the text for emphasis.

Of course, much of what is written will not be new to hardcore Airplane fans and obsessives; nonetheless it is very valuable to have the whole story laid out end-to-end like this and to read verbatim Paul's or Marty's or Jorma's or whoever's comment on a certain event or individual. I enjoyed it and I'm sure that for anyone less steeped in knowledge of Jefferson Airplane /Hot Tuna/ Starship, `Got A Revolution' will be compulsive and enlightening reading.

Tamarkin rounds the whole saga out with a `where are they now' section which is quite fascinating as it brings us up to date with what happened to over forty of the key and minor characters subsequent to 1989 (for the core crew) or whatever point they ceased to be directly involved in the flow. He then provides some useful reference sections at the end: a bibliography, a discography and a list of online sources/resources and an index.

Everyone who loves the music of JA will want to read it and will come away with a better understanding of how it all happened. So thank you, Jeff Tamarkin, for your devotion to your subject, for your love of Jefferson Airplane and for your perseverance in bringing this book to life. For too long there has existed a hole on the musical bookshelf between The Jam and Elton John - this book handsomely fills that gap. I'm off to read it for a second time.

I'll write a fuller review in the Airplane/Starship fanzine Holding Together.

For any fan of the Airplane, this is a must-read. Very well written and readable; I couldn't put it down. I kept wanting to get to the next part about the recordings I know and love.

Great job.

What a great read this book is! It is hard to put down as the author keeps you hooked on the next installment so that you just motor on smoothly to the end.

Sitting on my shelves is the first book I ever read on Jefferson Airplane, a 1969 book by Ralph Gleason, sandwiched between Hank Harrison's book on the Grateful Dead and the inevitable Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Tamarkin's excellent tome now joins it and will probably become the definitive word on the subject. It certainly fills the void that has existed for some years since the Gleason book was published and the Airplane metamorphosed into Starship. Coming relatively soon after Dennis McNally's biography of the Dead, these books between them shine a spotlight on the musical and social revolution that was spawned in the 1960's and for which San Francisco assumed the mantle of world leader.

Jeff Tamarkin, as others have alluded too, bases his book on his prior research and knowledge of the central characters involved. He has done a tremendous job in being fair to everyone which is to be lauded. He does not skip over the relationships between the band members and the cast of others who flit throught the story, he does not glorify nor condemn the use and abuse of chemicals nor does he try to do anyone down. His writing displays his skill with words which he has honed over the years in his other job and the end result is an excellent read, informative with an insider's view and an outsider's perception.

To me the most telling part of the tale is the story of Matthew Katz whom the author notes would not be interviewed but answered e-mails. That must be an extraordinary tale in of itself. Personally I find thet the author has a gift of bringing the characters alive so that we feel that we know them. Indeed there are many diehard fans who follow the band as it is presently constituted almost everywhere and are long past being considered starstruck.

This book is the story of a community. It places the band in the context of the times and yet at the same time portrays them as human beings as well as star musicians. It is a story of fame and closeness, of rivalry and emnity, of individuality and shared companionship. I am sure that some who read this will be shocked, perhaps awed, by some of the events contained within the book and that many will be fascinated by the twists and turns described therein.

Jeff Tamarkin has certainly succeeded with this labour of love in bringing the inside story of Jefferson Airplane to the world. His story deserves every success and it is a story that anyone interested in the era or the music should read. At least twice.

There's a blurb on the back cover of Jeff Tamarkin's collective bio of Jefferson Airplane/Starship excerpted from Fred Dellar's review of same in MOJO Magazine. Dellar observes how certain rock histories are so good, so evocative of their era, they make you dig out your old records (or actually go out and buy the CD versions) in order to re-experience the music and the mind-set one more time. I can certainly relate. Call me nostalgia, call me hungry for REAL music, just don't call me late for the "Be-In."

Jeff Tamarkin's history of Jefferson Airplane is a case in point.. While reading this book, I dragged out at least a couple of my classic Airplane albums, (the ones I have on CD anyway, since I don't have a working turntable anymore), and I even dug out a cassette version that I once bought of the LAST Starship album LOVE AMONG THE CANNIBALS and finally listened to the damn thing. Cost me all of 99 cents as I recall, and y'know, it wasn't half bad. Not anywhere near great, you understand, but if the Mickey Thomas Starship were hacks, they were at least pros. But I didn't really get into the mood till I found my new copy of BLESS ITS POINTED LITTLE HEAD, the live album which is, in some ways, the definitive Airplane record. It showed just what they were capable of when they were ON (musically speaking, that is, not necessarily pharmacologically).

If you were any kind of Airplane fan, you know that the love and peace thing didn't really take root among the members themselves, at least in their relation to each other. Some may find the pettiness of these young idealists disturbing. Others will chock it up to human nature and just enjoy the music. But that famous bumper sticker and their hometown's love rep notwithstanding, the Airplane never REALLY did qualify as members of what Hendrix called the "Love Crowd." Marty, maybe--when he wasn't badmouthing everyone else in the band, and to some extent Paul, who loved the idea of community and being together, as long as it was on his terms.

Well, almost 40 years on, it hardly seems worth worrying about now. So the Airplane could be jerks at times. They also made some great, daring, sometimes downright astonishing music. And that's what they should be remembered for.

Tamarkin does an excellent job of conjuring up those memories for those of us who were alive at the time--and his text serves as a good history lesson for those who weren't around but are curious about the music, the(counter)culture and general history of the 60s and early 70s. He demonstrates how all those good vibes and tumultuous times morphed into something much tamer and less interesting by the mid-70s. And shows that it was all pretty much inevitable.

The soap opera that was the Airplane spun off in so many directions that it was almost impossible to tell the players without a program. Tamarkin provides us that. If at times, it seems a little sketchy, well, that's unavoidable too. If every group member, hanger on, friend or relative were permitted to tell his or her tale in toto, you'd have a five volume cultural history that almost no one could digest.

But give Tamarkin credit. He paints a much broader, but still more accurate picture than either of the two Grace Slick bios out there. He does so by focusing on the MUSIC and devoting as little space to the gossip as possible. I really did not want to have to read that tired old tale about Grace showing up at the Nixon White House with Abbie Hoffman in
tow for the umpteenth time. Come on, if she really intended to spike Nixon's tea with LSD, she wouldn't have gone there with someone like Hoffman. It was, at best, a bit of street theater (literally, since she and Abbie never got past the gate). Tamarkin includes this and other obligatory bits of Airplane lore and legend, but he doesn't sensationalize any of it. Unlike Grace and ghost writer Andrea Kagan did for her SOMEBODY TO LOVE? tome a few years before.

As a fan, there was quite a bit of stuff that I already knew, and I was delighted to see that Tamarkin's book was well researched and quite accurate. I have a quirky memory, and I can actually recall interviews with, reviews of and articles about the artists I care about. I was surprised at how many of my favorite quotes were included in the volume. Grace, upon being asked how she wrote "White Rabbit," responding, "With a pencil and paper," for instance. OK, OK, so it isn't an Oscar Wilde quip, but it was cute. Even better was her oft quoted (in many variations) dismissal of all the attention she received, "...if you have four goats and one pig, you're gonna look at the pig." I liked it better when it was five ducks and a cow, but you get the point. Hey, I even remembered ol' Lester Bangs calling the band's last studio album LONG JOHN SILVER "one churning vat of fury after another" (in the context of what was actually a pretty negative review), I guess that was because at least someone else realized what fiery, ANGRY music this hippie band was producing toward the end of their brief tenure.

But like many fans, I did lose track of at least some of the band members over the years. Some of the side projects intrigued me still, and I remain one of the few champions of Grace's solo work stil standing. Marty's too. But as much as I loved Jack and Jorma in the Airplane, I did not follow their post-Airplane careers for long. Apparently, I missed out. I had checked out the first few Hot Tuna albums hoping for something as turbulent as "Spare Change" or "Bear Melt," and finally decided that--like everybody else, it seemed--they were going mellow on me. Now I find out, they were soon thereafter doing all-night sets and were burning up the stage. And some of this was captured on tape and may even be available on Amazon. I know what I'll be doing with my next tax refund.

Tamarkin, in fact, includes a fairly exhaustive discography at the end of the book. Even non-fans would have to admit that this was one band this was one band that soldiered on both individually and collectively. This despite the fact that, after having been critical darlings for about four years, they suddenly became critical poison as early as the BARK era. Actually, there was a lot of dissension even around the time of VOLUNTEERS. Rolling Stone Magazine made its name off the San Fran groups, but by the early 70s they had largely written them off--especially the Airplane.

If they Airplane cared at all, they didn't let it show. Years before Paul Kantner actually articulated it, their attitude was "F@#$ You! We do what we want."

I'd been looking forward to reading this book for almost three years and bought it the first day it was offered here on Amazon. It was a true pleasure to read this narrative of the life and times of the Jefferson Airplane and the fascinating musicians that banded together to make something magical happen to the music landscape.

Jeff Tamarkin tells this story with true affection for the music, the band and the cultural revolution that frames this tale. The book could have taken many forms. Thankfully it wasn't told in the muckraking style of Bob Woodward's "Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi". Sure, Jeff deals with the tough issues of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, but his handling of these topics doesn't obfuscate the deeper story of how this San Francisco band informed and shaped the minds of my generation.

I was fortunate to be living in Mountain View, CA (on the San Francisco peninsula) from 1965 through 1967 and was able to experience the excitement of the creation of the Jefferson Airplane's music as it started pouring out of the radio before sweeping around the globe. It was fascinating to read Jeff's book and to realize that the musicians were playing coffee shops and bars all around where I'd lived. Jeff really does a great job detailing how the band members met, and how they interacted with other San Francisco musicians, and describing the nascent music scene that lead up to the formation of the Airplane. I wish I'd been old enough to go have a beer and join in the fun, but alas, I was but a young teenager.

Jeff's writing style is a pleasure. If I may make another comparison, Jeff does not descend to the mind-numbing detail that can make a book like this a chore to read. For example, Timothy White's book "Catch A Fire: The Life of Bob Marley" details every recording session with painstaking detail, and while this is good information, it makes for a dry read at times. Jeff keeps the tale moving in "Got A Revolution" so people that are just curious about the band, the culture, or just want a good book for the beach can buy and enjoy this tome.

Of course, as an unabashed Jefferson Airplane fan, I'd also buy the unabridged version, but of interest, ... Many of us are enjoying this added benefit.

I suppose no review would be complete without a comment on what might have been done better. In this book, Jeff takes a good amount of time to talk about the scene in Haight Ashbury, but I would have enjoyed more of a peak into the giddy hilarity and psychedelic and philosophical insights that obviously informed the music. Having just complimented Jeff on brevity, I suppose I must acknowledge other authors have covered this aspect of the tale. I'm thinking of books like Jay Stevens' "LSD And The American Dream", which appropriately starts with a prologue titled "An Afternoon In The Sixties" and of course, Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Jeff does create the magic of these times, but stays more focused on the band and the music, which considering what this book is about, probably isn't such a bad thing.

Let me conclude by saying that I enjoyed the way Jeff includes the formation of the Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna from the ashes of the Airplane, the Jefferson Airplane reunion of 1989, and the final chapter, which brings the us into the 21st century. For those that don't know, both the Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna are still writing and putting out new music here in 2003 so after you read Jeff's excellent book, you can still go out and see these fine musicians.

A text that will satisfy both the neophyte and the longtime fan, this book is the long overdue history of one of the premier bands of the 60's. Not content to merely recycle often seen promo pictures of the band, Jeff Tamarkin has included many previously unseen photos, including some submitted by the members of the fan list, 2400 Fulton. Being a member of that list myself, and in communication with some of the people who submitted material to the author, I can state that they are impressed with the attention to detail and accuracy of the finished product.
Beyond the technical aspects, it's a very readable book, communicating a lot of information in a succinct and frequently amusing manner. Even edited, as it is, from a much longer text, you don't get a feeling that anything was left out or glossed over. That most of the principals are still with us and made themselves available for interviews adds a texture of intimacy to the material. That Jeff Tamarkin is such a skilled writer makes this a most worthwhile addition to your library.

What a terrific book this is! I was fortunate to be present (I was a carpenter working on jobs at BOTH Pacific High Studios and Heider studios in San Francisco) at a few Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane recording sessions in the very early seventies and they were all mind-blowing experiences. I watched from the sidelines at Pacific High studios as a guy named Phil Sawyer recorded and mixed the Airplane's "Mexico" in the most chaotic environment you could imagine. In the middle of the session, some engineer erased the master multi-track tape!!!! and yet they all cheerfully re-did the tracks and Sawyer did a balls out mix on a many colored wacked-out state-of-the-art mixing console. Maybe the most aggressive mix the Airplane ever had. A few months later I am at Heider studios taking a break from framing as this same guy knocks everybody away with amazing sound effects for the "Blows Against the Empire" album. Then many months later I am out in Bolinas working for a man that is doing custom wood planking for Grace and Paul's swimming pool. One afternoon we watched as Paul Kantner and Jerry Garcia worked on a song I think is called "Wolfpack" and it was the coolest guitar work I ever heard from Garcia. Then we watched as this guy Sawyer strapped a microphone onto his chest, dragged a long cable out to the beach, and ran-in-place while listening to these horrendous roaring sounds coming out of the basement windows. We couldn't fathom what the heck was going on. Then later that year I hear this sound-composition on the Sunfighter album and there's this electronic thumping heartbeat sound. These guys were way out there! But I was hooked. I changed careers about 2 years later and became a recording engineer - eventually owning a studio and retiring with ease. These guys - and Grace, changed my life. This book brings it all back.