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A Sunday Morning Conversation With Paul Kantner
"Welcome to the strip bar," is how Mr. Paul Kantner greeted the crowd before launching into the band's second song of the night during their concert in Morristown, New Jersey, on May 30, 2003. "We're gonna do a little Jesus song to keep you from the temptation in the other room," he continued before playing Good Shepherd from the Jefferson Aiplane's 1969 Volunteers album. The other room was the Double D's Gentlemen's Club, attached to the Double D's Rock Club, where the band was booked for the night. The Double D's Rock Club venue was an interesting and intimate room, with a maximum capacity of 600, and two separate overhanging balconies which offered the best view in the house.
Marty Balin's absence on this evening allowed for extra-focus on Kantner compositions and tunes sung by the band's current female singer, Diana Mangano, the stunningly attractive and immensely talented brunette who follows in the path of Grace Slick and Darby Gould. This configuration provided for some rarities including 'Lather,' 'Flowers of the Night,' and 'Sketches of China'. The evening's near 2-hour performance also included 'The Baby Tree' from Blows Against the Empire, Lilith's Song from the PERRO album and concluded with 'The Blows Suite' and the always anthemic, 'Voulnteers'. Mr. Kantner took time out to speak with Kweevak.com on Sunday morning, May 11, 2003 for a 27-minute conversation which explored varied subjects including space travel, rock music and revolution. Travel with us through time and space with one of the founding members of rock's psychedelic movement — Paul Kantner. KT: Hi Paul. Thanks for talking with Kweevak.com on this Sunday morning! PK: Hi Richard. Good morning. KT: So, the band just returned from a week's worth of shows in Italy. PK: Yeah, we had a nice show here in Marin County, too, before we left. [Editor's Note: PK is talking about a Jefferson Starship reunion show of sorts which took place on 04/05/03 – see the Jefferson Starship website for some great pictures from this event.] KT: I had heard that you we're going to play in front of the Pope in Rome. Did that ever happen? PK: That got scotched with all the Italian politics and we changed our dates. So, we didn't bother with the Pope. KT: And you were going to perform for Castro as well? PK: Well, that also got screwed up with all the Cuban business going right now. KT: But, you did play in Rome, right? PK: Yes we did. KT: Then you went from Rome, Italy to Rome, Georgia to kick off your current touring leg... PK: and in Rome, Georgia on a Friday morning, the only place I could find an early morning expresso was in the Christian Bookstore...
KT: Ah... any good reading?
PK: I checked their stuff out. It was amusing. Nothing really good, though.
KT: In preparing for this interview I did learn a little more about your Catholic upbringing.
PK: Oh yeah, I put that long behind me. As much as I have my civics classes in high school. Both sort of irrelevant. Irrelevant and tedious.
KT: But you did end up in a Christian Bookstore, though?
PK: Oh, I go anywhere [laughs]. I have no fear. I've been in Catholic school. Fear is no longer an element in my life.
KT: I can relate to that. Recently, I listened to some past radio broadcasts with the band ("Rock Around the World [RAW] August, 1978" & "The RCA Special Radio Series #21 from 1983"). In the Rock Around the World radio show from 1978 you were talking about how America's role has changed in the world — describing how she had become the big Rome with the guns, money & wealth. You were also talking about how America is essentially controlled by the corporations...
PK: Always has been.
KT: And how she's no longer the gallant, innocent, hero she once was...
PK: She never was. But, that's not necessary. It's better than most others. You know what they say about the jury system?
KT: What do they say?
PK: It's like the worst system going except for all the others [laughs]. It's the same with our democracy.
KT: It sounded like you could of been talking about the world today, though.
PK: Well, yeah. It's like I say... its been going on long before Babylon and the Tigris and Euphrates. It was around in their first incarnation. Short of a major change in the DNA code it's likely not to evolve too quickly within our lifetime to the point where we can take note of it and see any great movement of evolution going on. It's a very slow process. Like I say. It's remained unchanged since written history began. So, what are you going to say about that?
KT: Well...
PK: It's good to know the ocean you travel in. There's a lot of beauty on that ocean and you can choose to focus on the beauty, or the danger, or a combination of both, ideally.
KT: It also makes it hard to be an optimist in some respect.
PK: No, it makes it hard to be a naive 20-year-old idealist. Which is good to be when you're 20. And likely... hopefully you won't lose it... but you got to add on to it a certain element of reality, and how to deal with the world around you in a constructive fashion as you move forward.
KT: Would you say you were a 20-year-old idealist?
PK: Of course. Weren't we all? If you're not you're missing something... you had a bad childhood. That's part of the process.
KT: Getting back to the tour for a second — to have gone from Rome, Italy to Rome, Georgia — was that a coincidence in scheduling?
PK: We just amuse ourselves with that sort of thing.
KT: Was there a statement against the empire in there?
PK: No, no, not at all. We've done our statements against the empire. And they are, as you say, as irrelevant today as they were twenty years ago. Because that doesn't change, the player's change is all.
KT: Yeah, but the actual mechanism maybe doesn't...
PK: ... the mechanism, as I was in Rome, Italy, and watching all the statues, and looking at all that shit... I opined to myself that some of these statues are people like Strom Thurmond, the Jesse Helms(es) of Rome... they put up statues of themselves. They're not all bad but you gotta keep this perspective in mind.
KT: I have read that there is now major emphasis on playing material from your science fiction-themed albums, Blows Against the Empire (1970) and its follow-up in your live shows.
PK: Yeah, the PERRO album. I just finished putting out a novel from that album. We've given it to our super-secret fan club at the moment but it's going to be available on our web site sooner than later. There's a CD and a novel that will both be available.
KT: Blows Against the Empire was critically-acclaimed and was nominated for the prestigious Hugo award for science fiction and that album also had an incredible cast of players on it.
PK: That's true.
KT: Still, it's kind of an underground record...
PK: Medium.
KT: Do you find that more and more people get turned on to it as time goes by?
PK: You know I don't really catalogue that kind of stuff. Enough people know about it and enjoy it to make it worthwhile. And we're doing the PERRO album now in selected concerts and that's working out quite well, as well.
KT: That was 1983's Planet Earth Rock n Roll Orchestra?
PK: Right.
KT: That CD placed an emphasis on the potential of technology as well as the empowerment of women. Do you still feel that space pioneering will level the playing field in terms of equality between men and women?
PK: Just the man on top business gets a little revolved... start with that and work your way up into the more ethereal. Women have been downgraded since probably the advent of Christianity and probably before that in Judaism and the like. Religion sort of tended to put the woman into the background. All of the goddess cultures of early the civilizations — Greek, Rome, Macedonia — all that kind of stuff, all the goddess cultures like Athena, and the Oracle of Delphi, et cetera, et cetera, got pretty much trampled by the advent of Christianity who saw themselves as very patriarchal. And I think we lost something as a result of that. We lost a certain balance. And you get all of these A-types and war-like-men business going on, which I don't mind at all on certain levels. It's part of the cutting edge of exploration, actually, is the military. But, involving women in the military, it's starting, but whether you're going to really back to that balance remains to be seen, but there's good portents in the heaven's that that's occurring as we speak.
KT: I guess that's why I was a little surprised when I heard you we're going to play for the Pope, I didn't see the connection...
PK: We play for anybody. From Hell's Angels to Republicans [laughs].
KT: He would of dug you though, right?
PK: No, he's too hunched over with all the sins of the Catholic Church on his shoulders right now to take much note of anything, much like Bush in his own way.
KT: Your 1999 release with the current line-up, Windows of Heaven, seemed to tie in thematically with Blows Against the Empire.
PK: Well, there's a continuation of thought and science fiction there.
KT: I was just wondering if there is a chance that there will be another installment that continues the series or was Windows of Heaven conceived in that role?
PK: It has its place, and that's sort of its place. We don't do like, what do you call them, Blows Against the Empire number two, or anything along those lines.
KT: But wasn't PERRO the follow-up to Blows Against the Empire?
PK: As an alternate quantum, if you will, to Blows Against the Empire. Another way of doing the same thing, just in a different way, if you know what I mean.
KT: While were on the subject of Windows of Heaven, that album sounds great, real fresh, with a strong collection of songs. Do you have a new studio album in the works?
PK: Yeah, we're working on stuff right now... got everything from a song called "Teaching the Computers to Dream" to a rehash of an old sea shanty, called "Santy Ano", translating it a bit into a space shanty if you will. And another song called "The House of Torah" which sort of focuses on that woman thing we were just talking about. The ascent of women, or the re-ascent of women. It focuses on Mary Magdeline as the Holy Grail, and My Rose/Lightning Rose works its way into the picture. Yeah - strong women are good to have in your midst.
KT: You certainly have a lot of themes in your music that have continued over time and repeat.
PK: With good cause.
KT: The Rose, the number people on the Starship, that stuff is kind of interesting to me.
PK: Well, space travel as we live is part of our future, obviously.
KT: That gets me to my next question. Were you disappointed that there wasn't a real Star Trek-styled starship ready for the taking in 1990?
PK: Well, of course [laughs]... that was thanks to all our politicians who muck things up generally as they're getting other things done. But, it's a difficult slow process and it got sort of mucked up by that whole process. No, we were looking towards being walking on Mars by this time and not to be able to do that is really a great loss and ought to be paid directly to the responsibility of those who supposedly run that sort of thing, politicians et al. It's sort of backwards. Everything gets down to economics generally in the world and that's part of the problem.
KT: Paul, your music has always been associated with revolution in one form or another...
PK: Not all of it, certainly... much of it is science fiction and much of it is, it's more like an observational point, if you will, an observatory, and a critical observatory perhaps, but an observatory none the less.
KT: Well Blows Against the Empire was about taking on the establishment, dressed in a science fiction story but songs like "Volunteers" and "Flowers of the Night" seemed to be blatant in their statement and warning of revolution.
PK: Well, all revolution is an ongoing thing. It's not something that starts and stops. It just moves around. A song called "The Wheel" off the KBC album, no the Jefferson Airplane '89 album, sorts of reflects upon that situation as well. Is that that wheel keeps on rolling and whether you're on it or not it does not stop.
KT: I guess to me the line in the band has been blurred a little bit. I was just wondering if you see yourself more as a rocker who writes with science fiction in mind, and tells tales of revolution therein, or as more of an idealistic, reality-based revolutionary figure yourself.
PK: No, no, I'm not a revolutionary figure in the sense that I'm going to be leading anybody down the streets with flags and all that. I get the privilege perhaps even, if you want to call it that, of dealing with all of that through poetry and music, which is a very non-specific, undefined, and having no preconceptions of what's going to occur. Because, people don't know why music works. So, we're dealing with this very, even call if metaphysical if you will, force, that even we don't really know what we're doing. We have of few handles on how to handle it. Much like earth people can handle electricity and direct it sometimes and other times it gets out of control and causes disasters and fires and things. But, being able to exist in that world of words and ideas and music is really self-sufficient, I think, unto itself.
KT: Is it that you work in the world of influence?
PK: I don't even think of it in those terms, no. I don't think I'm influencing anybody. I don't write to influence anybody. I write to observe as a painter paints a scene. And hopefully, or congruently maybe in the doing of that, some value comes out of it for this, that or the other person, ourselves included. And what that is, though, is very strictly undefined and I like that. Having come from a very orderly Catholic military boarding school upbringing, it's a nice balance. It almost exists in the world of chaos theory. There's all of these forces coming at you. You don't have a book on how to deal with them. I've always likened it to white water rafting. You get in the boat, and try to keep afloat, and even if you don't you can still get back in the boat and ride it. So, you take chances and you explore places that, at least by you, haven't been explored before. Sometimes we have to call on our Lady of Panic, however, to help us get through this that or the other thing...
KT: Or, you can hit your head on a rock and out go the lights.
PK: Right, right, but at least you can wake up again if you don't die. It's an exploration really. Our whole career has sort of been a Lewis and Clark expedition into unknown territory.
KT: You are one of the pioneers of rock having gone through the sixties and the Summer of Love with the Airplane and then forging new territory with a more aggressive style in the 70's. What has it meant to you having been a part of this history and what does the band mean to you today?
PK: You know all of that is almost relatively meaningless. It's not something you sit back and consider. It's like happiness. People are always supposedly looking for happiness. Whereas in my consciousness happiness is more of a by-product than a goal, you know what I'm trying to say? Is that just by doing what you think you should be doing, that alone should bring some degree of happiness some of the time, when you're either successful, or you communicate, or you touch some particular place that you should be touching. But, that's not a goal in itself so I don't really think about that kind of stuff. It occurs as a natural by-product of what you are doing. And what we are doing again, getting back to it, is making these imageries and music and vibrations per second, cycles per second that somehow emotionally effect both ourselves and other people as we do it. I haven't really had the time to get much beyond that... I hope that doesn't sound conspicious. I'm still learning. I'm but a journeyman if you know what I mean, and most of my time is taking up learning to and then, doing what we do. So the time to reflect on it is left to others, really.
KT: You've been involved with some of the greatest and most historic rock events in history—Woodstock, The Monterey International Pop Festival, Altamont & Loreley in Germany...
PK: We had a good time ... [laughs]
KT: These events that were marked by conflicting tendencies of human nature—our violence and communal spirit. In your song 'Hijack' from Blows Against the Empire you sing "Where do we go from here, chaos or community? Can't you see on this and future Sundays"—so on this Sunday, I ask you, where do you think we're going?
PK: You don't know. You have a few ideas in front of you and you see things that are obvious, and you see things that are stopped up, and you try to affect all of them in your own way. Or, be part of the process. But, where you go from here, comes at you. Where you go on Monday will come at you more than enough on Monday than you really having to plan it beyond a really basic planning kind of mode, datebook kind of way...
KT: The times certainly remain interesting that we live in.
PK: Oh, the times are always fascinating... filled with both dark and light.
KT: In your opinion, what are the top-three recordings or songs that you've been associated with throughout your career?
PK: I couldn't even tell you. It's not something I would even think of. It's like asking you who your favorite child is in your family.
KT: I see you're tentatively scheduled to play the Cannabis Cup in the Netherlands later this year. What is your position on the legalization of marijuana?
PK: It seems rather criminal, to start off, to deny it to people who it helps medically. And that should really say all you need to say about it. I think the number of marijuana deaths in the last 25,000 years [laughs] is not even in double digits, probably.
KT: How about the potential of hemp as a viable economic natural resource?
PK: Hemp makes great paper, clothing, ropes... if you have a ship.
KT: What's your take on MP3 & Napster style file-sharing?
PK: I've really not ever been concerned with worrying about that. We do what we do and how people take it once we let go of it, we're usually on to something new rather than worrying, haven't got time actually to worry about that sort of stuff. It's part of the dues of the music business, and where it goes, and how it goes. We usually let people tape our shows free, with no problem, and pass them around non-commercially amongst themselves, and most uphold pretty much to that thing. In our present moment we're not like top-40 radio stars, so we don't have to worry too much about that particular element of it.
KT: So, anything that helps spread the word about the band...
PK: If you will, sure. You get to do that with through the Internet, too, which is a whole new force in the world in the last 20-25 years. That's been very much a frontier. Nobody quite knows what they're doing there, I like that [laughs]... exploring it...
KT: How have you used the Internet in the promotion of the Jefferson Starship.
PK: Well, we have a really good, I like to think, website that goes into any number of interesting places called JeffersonStarshipSF.com—science fiction, San Francisco, so fine—Jefferson Starship SF—and there's everything from bits of this novel on it, to music, to poetry, to art work and graphics, communication centers and this, that and the other thing. It's a pretty wide-open area...
KT: Have you ever thought about releasing a movie or animated film based on Blows Against the Empire and its follow-up, PERRO?
PK: When I wrote the Planet Earth novel, I wrote it with the most extreme movie budget in mind [laughs]. So, it's not likely that it could ever be made right and it's really a figment for the imagination. In that it's sort of like a template, a framework maybe, to hang some of your own aspirations on those levels. If you like science fiction. If you like the ideas of those explorations and what they portend for all of us. Just to explore those from the most low, base level up to the most ethereal, metaphysical level is a wide scan to start with. So, the novel as it is, is sort of a template, like I say a framework to hang your own aspirations on and perhaps maybe amplify them with a nice little turn of a phrase, or a musical passage. Blows was very undefined. The PERRO thing, just by the nature of having a novel there, defines it a little more thoroughly, which I sometimes wonder about. Because, I like the amorphousness of not specifying and leaving the field a little wider open a bit more for your own imagination.
KT: Plus, I think that's reflected in the music where Blows seems a lot more improvisational and free, flowing, and not as structured. But, they're two great albums. I've told a lot of people about Blows Against the Empire.
PK: Well, if you're out to see us and we're playing small you're likely to see some PERRO material as well.
KT: Very good. I'm hoping to come out and see you at the Shark Bar (now called the Double D's Rock Club) in Morristown, New Jersey.
PK: You might see some there, then.
KT: Are you concerned about a possible loss and rollback of liberties and freedoms in America post 9/11?
PH: Again, that's an ongoing wheel. It goes back and forth from Kennedy to Nixon for example. From Clinton to Bush, for example. And yeah, you always have to, what do they say, be aware, stay alert, "Don't Tread on Me!" We're sort of in the grip now of a bunch of yahoos who are abusing that process to the nth degree. We're a little insulated here in San Francisco just because of San Franciso being what it is. So, we might take ourselves for granted a little too much. But, yeah, it's an ongoing problem. And, not only the forces of people observing it and dealing with it, but, just the role of the history wheel itself usually takes care of a lot of this stuff. Like so many of Nixon's and Reagan's advisors and people got arrested for this, that or the other thing, or thrown out of office. The same thing is happening with Bush. Maybe the best known notable example is the William Bennett gambling business that's going on right now. They always get caught up in their own little petards and it keeps them from bothering us too much. But, yeah you have to keep your eye on them. You have to keep your head to the wheel.
KT: Are you active in the environment?
PK: We're doing a benefit actually for the Redwood anti-logging people up in Jenner in early July. That's part of our whole generation and world is taking care of the world around you...
KT: Is the Starship Foundation is still looking for members and volunteers?
PK: Always. I think we already have them implied. They know who they are. They don't even have to make contact. It's an encouragement towards that, you know. It's an applauding of people making note of the fact that that's ones of the things going on. On the scale of evolution it's one of the things that's going on. As well as just the more mundane things, like on Windows of Heaven, it talks about fucking in space... which in zero gravity becomes a whole new experiment is physics or something else [laughs] ... and getting to the ethereal and more metaphysical idea of the first child born in space, in zero gravity, is likely to be somewhat of a different creature, than those born on this planet. Much as the early Americans were perhaps greatly different or subtly different than the mid-Europeans who were still over in Europe at the same time. There's a new thing going on there. It's evolutionary on some levels, it's poetic on other levels, and it's just mundane dirty old fucking in space kind of porno on other levels. And they all contribute to a really nice, large picture, human picture, of things that are going. Things that you could either choose to be involved with or not.
KT: Wow! Hey Paul, thanks for taking the time to talk with us.
PK: Celebration.
KT: We're looking forward to seeing you on the road.
PK: I'll be there.
KT: Okay?
PK: Take care.
KT: Bye now.
PK: Over and out.
 Related Links: For more information on Paul Kantner and the other organizations mentioned please visit the following links -- JeffersonStarshipsf.com
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