Marty Balin
Singer and songwriter who co-founded the American counter-cultural group Jefferson Airplane
MARTY BALIN, who has died aged 76, was a singer, songwriter and founding member of the acid-rock group Jefferson Airplane.
In the mid-1960s San Francisco was a thriving site of cultural experimentation, given added stimulus by drugs such as LSD and mescalin. The hippie “counterculture” was centred in the Haight-ashbury district (dubbed “Hashbury” by Hunter S Thompson) and the Airplane, as they would become known, provided its soundtrack – a blend of vocal harmonies with strands of blues, rock, folk and more exotic influences such as Indian music.
Jefferson Airplane took shape in 1965 when Balin, who had been playing acoustic guitar in the folk group the Town Criers, met Paul Kantner, a 12-string guitar player, at a club called the Drinking Gourd. “I wanted to go electric,” Balin explained, “so I looked for an electric guitarist and a drummer.”
After some early shuffling around, the lineup comprised Balin (vocals and guitar) and Kantner (rhythm guitar), with Jorma Kaukonen (guitar) and Jack Casady (bass), Spencer Dryden on drums and Signe Anderson as female vocalist. Jefferson Airplane (Kaukonen came up with the outlandish name) were signed by RCA and their debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, was released in 1966. Most of the songs were Balin’s, notably the catchy folk-rock single It’s No Secret, on which he sang lead vocals accompanied by Signe Anderson and Paul Kantner.
Signe Anderson left to have a baby, however, and the former fashion model Grace Slick joined the band. Her thundering contralto, dubbed “the voice that launched a thousand trips”, would define the Airplane’s sound in anthems such as White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, both of which appeared on the second album, Surrealistic Pillow (1967).
The dynamic Grace Slick was the authentic star of the group, and tensions developed, audible in her frenetic vocal jousting with Balin on the 1969 live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head.
One of Balin’s compositions with Kantner was Volunteers, with its rousing chorus, “Look what’s happening out in the streets/got a revolution”. It was the title track of the band’s fifth studio album, released in 1969, and Balin performed it with Grace Slick at Woodstock. Jefferson Airplane appeared at all three hippie gatherings of the era, the other two being Monterey and Altamont.
Balin was knocked unconscious at the Altamont festival while trying to intervene when the Hell’s Angels security guards were “beating this guy with pool cues”, as he recalled in Jeff Tamarkin’s Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane: “When I woke up I had all these boot marks tattooed all over me. Jorma [Kaukonen] said to me, ‘Man, you’re one crazy motherf-----.’”
Balin left the group in 1971, later blaming cocaine: “I personally just drank alcohol. But some of the chemicals made people crazy and very selfish, and it just wasn’t any fun to be around for me.”
He formed the short-lived Bodacious DF, then in 1975 rejoined his old band. The lineup was changed but still led by Grace Slick and Kantner, and renamed Jefferson Starship.
Balin was credited with successfully refocusing the group. His lush and melodious love song Miracles, on Jefferson Starship’s second album Red Octopus (1975), was a smash hit, reaching No3 in the Billboard Hot 100. The album was certified double platinum.
Reviewing the follow-up, Spitfire, the Rolling Stone critic Stephen Holden rhapsodised about how Balin’s “erotic singing and writing complement Slick and Kantner’s operatic mysticism”. Balin left in 1978: the sound had become pop-tinged, bland and corporate.
He continued recording and in the early 1980s enjoyed several US hit singles, many written by his protégé, Jesse Barish. Among these were Hearts, which reached No 8, Atlanta Lady and Do It for Love.
He was born Martyn Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 30 1942, the son of Joe, a lithographer of eastern European descent, and Catherine, or “Jean”, née Talbot. His father would take affectionate pleasure in his son’s success.
The family, including an older sister, moved to San Francisco when Marty was four, and he attended George Washington High School, where he discovered a love of acting and singing. He went to San Francisco State University to study Art. Johnny Mathis, already a star, spotted him and encouraged him to pursue singing, and he adopted the name Marty Balin in the early 1960s.
In later years Balin joined various revivals of the band.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Jefferson Airplane in 1996 and in 2016 received a Grammy lifetime achievement award.
Marty Balin is survived by his third wife, Susan Joy Balin, and by a daughter from his first marriage and a daughter from his second.
Marty Balin, born January 30 1942, died September 27 2018