RIP Paul Kantner

davismanLV

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Holy CRAP!! This year is just.... just.... I dunno. It's just a lot to process. DAMN! RIP Mr. Kantner. Thanks for all the amazing music. :upset:
 

adorshki

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Did you catch this in the slide show?:

1024x1024.jpg


I don't think I ever knew he had a Guild.
My first music book was After Bathing at Baxter's
One of my favorite tunes on it was "Martha":

I'd like to think he'd like to hear that at his wake.
 
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twocorgis

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Completely in shock Al. This guy was a HUGE part of my musical fabric.
 

txbumper57

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This has not been a good year so far for aging Rock Stars, RIP Paul Kantner, Thank you for the Music and the Memories.
 

txbumper57

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Al, does that Guild he's playing look like it used to be a 12 string??

Now that you mention it Davisman it does look like a converted 12 string, Not only is the headstock long but it doesn't have any fretboard marker inlays either.
 

mavuser

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RIP Paul Kantner! This photo from Jay Blakesburg of March 4,1988 is from a reunion show. It looks like Jack has an acoustic Guild bass.
rAP4k6.jpg
 

twocorgis

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RIP Paul Kantner! This photo from Jay Blakesburg of March 4,1988 is from a reunion show. It looks like Jack has an acoustic Guild bass.
rAP4k6.jpg

I remember asking Jack about that bass (a B50) the first time I saw him playing it. He told me that he bought it at Mandolin Brothers, and that they didn't have any more!
 

fronobulax

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Another One - Paul Kantner

R.I.P.

One article, which may be back behind a paywall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...antner-jefferson-airplane-founder-dead-at-74/

"The cause was multiple organ failure and septic shock" which is sometimes cynically interpreted to mean "picked up a fatal infection while hospitalized for something else".

Jefferson Airplane 1965-70.

'nuff said.

Edit: So I posted this and then saw twocorgi's post. Then I moved and merged so it was where all the other recent RIP threads.
 
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walrus

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RIP. 2016 is not shaping up well for the music world.

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One of my favorite quotes " it's a fresh wind that blows against the empire" Glad I got to see him a few times.
Thanks john
 

adorshki

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Now that you mention it Davisman it does look like a converted 12 string, Not only is the headstock long but it doesn't have any fretboard marker inlays either.

In the initial shock I'd forgotten about the endorsement thing Hans mentioned and pics we've seen of him with 12-ers.
I did notice the headstock looked a little funny but shrugged it off because the body looked small, I thought it might be an F30.
If you blow the image up to max it does look like a 12-er with 1/2 the keys removed, looks like pretty wide bridge too.
 

adorshki

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One of my favorite quotes " it's a fresh wind that blows against the empire" Glad I got to see him a few times.
Thanks john
You might find this interesting.
I originally found it on the Philzone.
"PER&RO" is "Planet Earth Rock'n'Roll Orchestra"
Heavily edited, complete story in that link.

"On 8/23/91 a copy of the several PERRO reels were compiled onto a DT 120 DAT on request by Paul to Graham (since the tapes where kept in the latter's vault) for a copy.

When the Crosby, Stills & Nash box-set was being put together, some mystery reels were found.
All of the CSNY tape collection was brought in to one place for the first time, including personal collections of Barncard, Joel Bernstein, Nash and Stills. One of the PERRO tapes had a small pipe with weed in it and somebody smoked it! It was still good.
The material on the PERRO tapes was very interesting, but had nothing to do with CSNY. There were 4 reels of 2 track mixes made in 1971 during the sessions (obviously there is more that has never been mixed). The tapes were put into storage in Nash's vault.
Paul called Nash in 1992 and requested DATs of those tapes. This was the first time they had been outside of the CSNY organization. They were copied at
A&M Post Production audio and my personal DAT was made at that time.
The roots of PER&RO go back a lot further than 1971. 1 guess it had its inception in the early years of the '60s (prior to the Airplane, the Byrds et al) when Kantner, Crosby and Freiberg used to hang out, play music, get high and rap together around Venice Beach. That was the initial bond, the start of it all.

Later, when they were in bands of their own, there were occasional points of interaction - like Garcia sitting in on the 'Surrealistic Pillow' sessions, like Crosby giving "Triad" to the Airplane when he couldn't get the Byrds to record it, like Kantner, Crosby and Stills writing "Wooden Ships".

Then, as the '60s drew to a close, two sets of circumstances combined to bring the Planet Earth Rock And Roll Dream a whole lot nearer. One was the opening of Wally Heider's studio in San Francisco - because now the local SF musicians (Airplane, Quicksilver, Dead) had a place on their doorstep where they could record. This gave item freedom from the corporate studios to record and produce as they saw fit, to come and go more as they pleased and to invite the musical neighborhood in if they chose. (It hadn't been so easy when they were holed up at RCA's or Warner's studios in Hollywood.) The other catalyst was the state of flux that a lot of bands were falling into by 1969/1970, for Crosby had left the Byrds, the Airplane was a less cohesive force with Dryden out and Hot Tuna splitting off, and Dino Valenti's arrival had unsettled QMS.

Things had come pretty much full circle by the end of the decade. Kantner was again hanging out with Crosby (quite often on the latter's yacht) and with David Freiberg - and, when Paul came to assemble musicians to record 'Blows Against The Empire', it wasn't just to his Airplane cohorts that he turned but also to Crosby and Garcia and even Graham Nash - who'd just bought a house in Frisco and ended up producing the whole second side of the 'Blows...' album at Heider's studio. 'Blows..." was the first album by that collection of musicians whom Paul liked to term the Planet Earth Rock And Roll Orchestra.


The fact that he billed the album as being by Jefferson Starship shouldn't mislead anyone. Kantner, Crosby, Slick, Freiberg, Nash, Garcia, Kaukonen, Lesh, Casady, Kreutzmann, Hart - these people were the Planet Earth Rock And Roll Orchestra, supporting each other on key projects.

As Grace recalls, "These sessions were like 'Uh, do you wanna play guitar on this one?' 'No, man, I have to go to the bathroom.' 'Okay, David, you wanna play?' 'Sure'. Whoever felt like doing something did it. Parts interchanged, people interchanged."

Graham Nash says "They asked me my opinion and I just jumped right in. Grace, Paul, David - they let me do whatever I heard. I was searching for this kind of environment when I came to America and when I was mixing in the studio our imaginations were running rampant. We were creating virtual kingdoms with music."
The second such PER&RO project was David Crosby's debut solo album, 'If I Could Only Remember My Name', which features all of the above-mentioned Planet Earthers plus the likes of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Greg Rolie and Mike Shrieve.
But enough of this preamble, and on to the tapes in question. They come from sessions at Wally Heider's San Francisco studios in 1971. Crosby had sailed his boat up to Sausalito harbor. Nash was resident in the Haight. Kantner and Slick had moved out to Bolinas and the Dead were in Mill Valley but they would all head for Wally's of an evening to work on PER&RO songs. Some of these things ended up on Crosby's solo, a couple on Garcia's solo, one on Grace's album, one on Paul's 1983 'Planet Earth...' album - and some have never seen the light of day, in which case we've had to guess at what they might be title.

"The Mountain Song - 1" (5' 11"): This is the first of several attempts at what would eventually become a slice of classic Airmachine. However, at this stage, the only fragment of the song they had to work with was the line "Gonna make the mountains be my home" and the chord-sequence that supported it, so it's quite amazing that from such a meager base Kantner, Slick, Crosby and Garcia (possibly with Casady and Hart) are able to conjure 23 minutes of undulating beauty. There's a banjo featured prominently, plus two acoustic guitars and Grace's distinctive piano. The banjo is Paul K.& the touches are so accomplished, it's Kantner on the five- string with Garcia and Crosby on guitars. Surprisingly, there's no trace of Paul's vocal - though the other three take care of that handsomely enough.

Early on, it's Jerry singing the line in orthodox fashion, while Grace embellishes with some improvised lyrics around the theme. Then Crosby takes Grace's place and scats around Jerry's vocal for a while. As you'd expect, the playing is loose and slightly tentative on this first version, but no less affecting for all that.

"The Mountain Song - 2" (5' 17"): Grace is back providing an improvised descant to Jerry's straight vocal at the start here, and she's singing about the sky and the river as he eulogizes the mountains. After a minute or so, Crosby introduces his scat and Grace leaves the chorus to concentrate on her keyboards. Her vocal chords are re-engaged towards the close.

"The Mountain Song - 3" (3' 44"): This version begins with Jerry and David singing the line and Grace gliding around them. Briefly, Crosby supersedes her in this role but soon the two of them are improvising around the structure as Jerry perseveres in the middle.

At the end of this effort, Paul is heard to remark "It sounds like everybody's going in and out of time" to which Crosby responds "No, no, no, it's all working - and it works perfectly." The listener is strongly inclined to agree with him.

"The Mountain Song - 4" (8' 20"): As you'll see, this is the longest version and undoubtedly the most satisfying of the four. This is where Crosby's embryonic "Walkin' In The Mountains" suddenly reemerges and he goes through the verse and various chord sequences as an introduction to "The Mountain Song," to which it bridges seamlessly and beautifully. It's a remarkable segue which makes the listener keenly aware of how the song could have developed in a very different direction had Crosby stayed to contribute throughout its evolution. Speculation aside, what we do have is a return to the familiar pattern of banjo, guitars, bass, piano and percussion. Crosby reverts to his scatted counterpoint before it slips into a stunning instrumental section. Herein, the music weaves a genuinely hypnotic spell as it rolls effortlessly along the bed of Paul's banjo and Grace's piano, with Garcia picking exquisitely. After several minutes of this, the vocal pattern is re-introduced, now in a more restrained vein against instrumentation which has become subdued, with Grace and the Cros gently dancing around Jerry to the finale of a wonderful excursion.

"Eep Hour" (4' 44"): A very dissimilar reading from the one which appeared on 'Garcia' and which had keyboard and pedal steel dominating the sound. This is just the acoustic guitars and bass and has a very Spanish ambiance. Presuming that Jerry isn't multi-tracked and playing everything himself - as he did on his album -
At the close, there's a whoop of triumph from somebody and what sounds like Kantner's voice saying 'everybody just have a little break from their guitar strings!'
 
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