We lost another rock and roll great, Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. He probably wasn’t as well-known as Glenn Frey, but Paul had a big impact on the music industry:
“In 1967, the greatest rock and roll city in America was San Francisco,” Rolling Stone wunderkind Jann Wenner wrote in 2005. ” And the most exciting and successful rock and roll band in San Francisco and the country was Jefferson Airplane. … [They] were both architects and messengers of the psychedelic age, a liberation of mind and body that profoundly changed American art, politics and spirituality. It was a renaissance that could only have been born in San Francisco, and the Airplane, more than any other band in town, spread the good news nationwide.”
Now, one of those who spread that good news is gone. Paul Kantner, guitarist for Jefferson Airplane and one of its founding members, is dead at 74. The cause was multiple organ failure and septic shock, as SF Gate reported.
“Paul was the catalyst that brought the whole thing together,” Jorma Kaukonen, Jefferson Airplane’s lead guitarist, told the New York Times. “He had the transcendental vision and he hung onto it like a bulldog. The band would not have been what it was without him.”
