Rock legend Marty Balin, at 76, founder of Jefferson Airplane
NEW YORK — Marty Balin, a patron of the 1960s “San Francisco Sound” both as founder and lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane and co-owner of the club where the Airplane and other Bay Area bands performed, has died. He was 76.
Mr. Balin died Thursday in Tampa, Fla., on the way to the hospital, spokesman Ryan Romenesko said. The cause of death was not immediately available.
The dark-eyed, baby-faced Mr. Balin was an ex-folk musician who formed the Airplane in 1965 and within two years was at the heart of a nationwide wave that briefly rivaled the Beatles’ influence and even helped inspire the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album. The Airplane was the breakout act among such San Francisco-based artists as the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, many of whom played early shows at the Matrix, a ballroom Mr. Balin helped run and for which the Airplane served as house band.
The San Francisco Sound was a psychedelic blend of blues, folk, rock and jazz, and the musical expression of the emerging hippie lifestyle. Mr. Balin himself was known for his yearning tenor on the ballads “Today” and “It’s No Secret,” and on the political anthem “Volunteers.” In the mid-1970s, when the Airplane regrouped as the more mainstream Jefferson Starship, Mr. Balin sang lead on such hits as “Miracles” (which he co-wrote), “With Your Love” and “Count On Me.” He later had solo success with “Hearts” and “Atlanta Lady.”
The Airplane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, but Mr. Balin would long have mixed feelings. Pride in the band’s achievements was shadowed by its eventual breakup and by Mr. Balin’s acknowledged jealousy of Grace Slick, the other lead vocalist. Slick joined the group in the fall of 1966, soon before the Airplane recorded its landmark second album, “Surrealistic Pillow.” One of rock’s most charismatic singers and performers, she displaced Mr. Balin as the perceived leader, on stage and on the Airplane’s best known songs, “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.”
“Every time I did something, it was always Grace Slick and the Airplane and Grace Slick and the Starship,” he told Relix magazine in 1993. “Even if it was my voice. I’ve even done songs of mine on my own and people come up to me and say, ‘I’m surprised you do that song. I always thought it was Grace’s.’ For a while that hurt my feelings, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Mr. Balin was married twice, most recently to Susan Joy Finkelstein, and had three children.
He had been in show business well before the Airplane. Born Martin Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, he ended up in the Bay Area as his father, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, struggled to find work. Marty was a brooding, artistic child who dropped out of San Francisco State University to pursue a career in music. He recorded a few singles with some of Phil Spector’s session musicians in the early ‘60s before joining the folk group the Town Criers. He also changed his last name to Balin.
Like many of his peers, Mr. Balin switched to electronic music after seeing the Beatles’ 1964 movie “A Hard Day’s Night.” Through the local club scene, he brought in songwriter-guitarist-vocalist Paul Kantner, singer Signe Anderson (whom Slick replaced), guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Cassidy and drummer Skip Spence, a novice given the job by Mr. Balin because he supposedly looked like a rock star. (Spence would leave after the first album and was replaced by Spencer Dryden). The name Jefferson Airplane, suggested by Kaukonen, was based in part on bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson.
In recent years, he released such albums as “The Greatest Love” and “Good Memories,” a retrospective of his Airplane/ Starship songs. He also reunited on occasion with old bandmates, whether appearing in concert with Casady and Kaukoken and their group Hot Tuna, or bringing Signe Anderson on stage to perform the Airplane’s first single, “It’s No Secret.” And he liked returning to his folk roots, doing club performances as part of an acoustic trio.