Paul Kantner & Jefferson Starship
Blows Against the Empire

There was a time when a colorful airplane flew high over the skies of San Francisco, spraying them with peace&love. It was the summer of 1967, and that airplane flitting across the Californian sky seemed never to want to land: its fuel was freedom, its engine music. Just a bit lower, two Americas: one gray, canonical, systematic, wearing cold uniforms and flaunting chauvinism, and the other blossoming, mischievous, passionate, which after making love used to turn its gaze towards horizons of eternal youth. To this latter, a young bespectacled and long-haired enthusiast of music and science fiction belonged, a certain Paul Kantner. But Paul wasn't a young man like many others: despite resembling Woody Allen more than Mick Jagger, he was also a rock star: the music of his Jefferson Airplane had been the soundtrack to the psychedelic summers that warmed the Bay Area. Even for him, at the time, it would have been difficult to imagine that such a real and vibrant oasis could evaporate into a dream, and the dream into utopia.

In a short time, the Movement began to crumble: the "exiles" of Hoffman, Sinclair, and Rubin were a reflection of the surrender of the young volunteers of America; the ideology that changed from pacifist to revolutionary became a double-edged sword; if Wooden Ships were fairy tales, Altamont was history. For that generation, cognizant and contemporaneous with the ghosts of Nixon, a turning point arrived: capitalism and nationalism began to be ignored, their decisive rejection prevailed over fruitless protest. And Paul Kantner was about to translate into music the acknowledgment of all this.

To abandon the pitfalls of society and start searching for an unspoiled land, the airplane was no longer enough; a spacecraft was now needed. Hence, the symbol "Starship" appeared next to Kantner's name: the "technological" evolution led to the loss of old crew members (Balin, Dryden), the half-service of others (Kaukonen, Casady), and the hiring of new ones (Jerry Garcia, Crosby, Nash and other members from Grateful Dead and Quicksilver M.S.), for a project so ambitious it even deserved a nomination for a literary prize, the Hugo Award, as the best science fiction "fiction" of the year.

But 'Blows against the empire' is much more: socially it's a Bible, a Manifesto, a sacred text of hippie ideology; musically it's an impeccable summation of all that rock music had, until then, been nourished by (folk, garage, hard rock, psychedelia, blues, country, jazz, electronic, progressive); literarily, it's an impressive mass of quotes and highbrow references (Homer, Marx, Gospels, Huxley, Leary, Shakespeare, Einstein, Blake, Clarke); historically it's a prestigious source of credibility, on the threshold of a crucial decade not only for America.

But, more generally, it is the dream of the '60s of rejecting the mainstream brought to its extreme antipodes.

Based also on the ideas of science fiction writers Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon, Paul Kantner and his new life companion Grace Slick thus give life to a titanic rock-opera imbued with musical creativity and socio-political allegory.

In ten tracks, the cosmic journey of a spacecraft of hippies wandering between galaxies in search of a pristine oasis untainted by earthly capitalism is narrated; they will find it on the moon, colonizing it and procreating "pure and immaculate" generations.

"Hide witch, hide! There's good folks coming to burn you, with their harsh delight concealed by a gothic mask of moralism", Kantner and Slick shout in unison at the start of "Mau mau (Amerikon)", with a rage that was already characteristic of Volunteers, but especially of generational spokespersons. The continuation of the track marries the raw sound of Detroit: obsessive rhythm, ferocious guitars, harsh and provocative lyrics ("Dick" is Nixon) but also hopeful ("The dawn comes" / "A new world today"), brief acidic inserts punctuating the structural progression.

The subsequent "The baby tree", a cover of Rosalie Sorrels, is a fabulous folk ballad for banjo and acoustic guitar; it illustrates the purity of a world where children are born in trees, and it's naive and touching in its utopia.

Traditional rock is definitively abandoned with "Let’s go together", a liberating farewell anthem to planet Earth that would have suited the previous "Volunteers". It’s at once a complex and enchanting piece, with the swirling vocal intertwining of Kantner and Slick chasing each other among her insistent piano and the whims of Garcia's banjo; the rhythm section even lacks effectiveness. Overflowing.

The autobiographical "A child is coming" (Slick was expecting) is the starting point for populating a new land; China (this is the name of Slick's baby girl) arrives almost as a prophetic signal. Crosby's voice, but also his hand in the composition, are evident: from the warmth of the country ballad with three voices celebrating the imminent birth, it transitions to the fear of the world that will open to the newborn's eyes, manifest in the dark introspection of counterchants, solemn basses, oscillating carpets of piano and distorted guitars accompanying somewhat ambiguous lyrics. A track that, rather than certainly taking on characteristics akin to progressive, turns it inside out like a sock, with grace and wisdom.

"Sunrise" by Slick welcomes the new dawning: her overlaying voices, against Garcia’s pedal steel backdrop, illuminate the day.

With the nostalgic "Hijack", the space journey is in full progression, the search for freedom in its various forms explodes in the fiery piano and the exasperated singing, with Kantner in a state of grace in his epic procession; the soft jazzy/electronic finale almost pacifies the osmotic collective ecstasy. Hats off.

"Home" simulates the spaceship landing on kraut territories, we might say.

"Have you seen the stars" is the sweet vision of a ship rocking in the cosmos, with Garcia and Hopkins breaking the astral silences.

Once again supporting the concept's structure, "XM" is a compilation of sounds taken from science fiction film soundtracks.

The concluding "Starship", with Slick’s piano still dominating, is a celebratory chorus, celebrating the newly colonized lands and the survival methods to be adopted; finally, the wanderers escape the cage and roam in the immensity of the cosmos, and it is here more than ever that one notices the equation psychedelic jam=quintessence of freedom.

Unfortunately, the legendary upward arc named Jefferson, and perhaps the hippie dream itself, ends with this colossal work. But dreaming was beautiful...