Jefferson Airplane's Kaukonen is still on embryonic journey
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Long before he wrote and recorded the Jefferson Airplane classic "Embryonic Journey," Jorma Kaukonen was on a decades-long journey of discovery of his own.
From shy, sometimes bullied upperclass son of a globe-trotting U.S. diplomat in post-colonial Pakistan, Kaukonen would evolve into a hard-drinking, hellraising teenager racing his motorcycle through the streets of the Philippines in the mid-1950s.
Then it was on to a Jesuit university to study Aristotelian logic and other lofty subjects when not playing lead guitar for the Jefferson Airplane, a band he co-founded with Marty Balin, Jack Casady and others and that helped bring psychedelic sounds to the forefront of music.
Oh, and in his spare time Kaukonen would co-found another iconic band, Hot Tuna, which is still recording and touring 48 years later.
"It's really funny, it's hard to rate one's own life" the 77-year-old guitarist says, smiling broadly as he reflects on how an embassy brat turned intellectual academic seemed to morph so easily into a rock star in 1967's Summer of Love San Francisco.
"But all things considered, I have had a pretty interesting life," adds the friendly self-effacing Kaukonen as he relaxes in a deserted VIP section of Hollywood's El Rey Theatre hours before taking the stage for that night's sold-out Hot Tuna show.
He lays out much of that life in the justpublished memoir "Been So Long: My Life & Music" (St. Martin's Press).
A quick, engaging read at 288 pages, his prose is followed by the lyrics to dozens of songs he's composed over the past 50 years as well as a five-song CD tucked in between the final two pages. The latter includes Hot Tuna chestnuts like "Been So Long," River of Time" and "In My Dreams," a selection that seamlessly connects with the prose that precede them.
It's a book that's been generally well received, although Kaukonen acknowledges some have complained it doesn't contain enough Jefferson Airplane photos or anecdotes along the lines of, "What's Grace Slick really like?"
Slick, one of the band's principal vocalists, wrote the book's forward, which somewhat answers that question. But raising it seems to annoy Kaukonen slightly.
"The Airplane is a huge part of my life. I don't trivialize it on any level. But it was A PART of my life and it has to fit into the scheme of things," he says emphatically.
Then, regaining the jovial attitude Slick says she remembers him best for, he adds impishly, "If they continue to complain, I go, 'Write your own book.'"
What "Been So Long" clearly describes is a love affair with the guitar that began when a 14-year-old persuaded his father, Jorma Sr., to buy him a Gibson Sunburst J-45 acoustic and then pretty much never put it down.