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Singer/songwriter and rhythm guitarist
Paul Kantner was a founding member of
Jefferson Airplane and
Jefferson Starship.
Kantner was the first person approached by singer
Marty Balin about putting together a folk-rock group in the mid-'60s in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jefferson Airplane was among the first and the most commercially successful of the San Francisco acid rock psychedelic groups of the '60s. The group began to fragment at the end of the decade, and
Kantner released a solo album,
Blows Against the Empire, in 1970. It was followed by a duo album with his partner,
Airplane lead singer
Grace Slick,
Sunfighter, in 1971, and a trio album, Baron Vol Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun, with
Slick and
David Freiberg (who had replaced
Balin in
the Airplane) in 1973.
Kantner and
Slick reorganized
the Airplane under the name
Jefferson Starship in 1974.
Kantner released a second solo album,
Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra, in 1983, and left
Jefferson Starship in 1984, after which the band's name was truncated to
Starship.
Kantner then launched the KBC Band. In 1989, he was a member of a re-formed version of
Jefferson Airplane, and beginning in the '90s, he toured a new edition of
Jefferson Starship, which gradually became a
Kantner family band by the 21st century. That lineup released an album in 2008 titled Jefferson's Tree of Liberty, also featuring contributions from friends and family including
Grace Slick,
Marty Balin,
David Freiberg,
Cathy Richardson, Slick Aguilar, and
Prairie Prince. On January 28, 2016,
Kantner died of multiple organ failure in San Francisco at the age of 74 (coincidentally on the same day, and at the same age, as original
Jefferson Airplane singer
Signe Anderson, who predated
Grace Slick in the band). ~ William Ruhlmann