Jefferson Starship members on band's 50th anniversary and celebrated music
Like Goldmine, Jefferson Starship are also celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, with singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, and keyboardist David Freiberg being the sole remaining co-founding member. Drummer Donny Baldwin joined the group in 1982 and made his record debut with the band for Nuclear Furniture, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Freiberg, Baldwin, and singer-songwriter and guitarist Cathy Richardson, who Paul Kantner brought to the group in 2008, spoke with Goldmine about Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship and Starship songs they perform in concert, including a classic flip side.
GOLDMINE: Welcome to Goldmine and happy 50th anniversary. It was such a treat for my wife Donna and I to see the current lineup of Jefferson Starship here in Daytona Beach earlier this year. I was so happy to hear the flip side “Lather,” which I missed in 1968, but learned later through the compilation album The Worst of Jefferson Airplane.
CATHY RICHARDSON: That is where I also learned it, yesterday years ago, with that being the first Jefferson Airplane album that I bought. I found some of the music to be strange when I discovered them at age fourteen in the ‘80s. It is such a haunting song, silly and funny in a way with the weird noises and background chatter. They were obviously having the best time doing whatever they wanted to do in the studio, which is what I love about Jefferson Airplane.
GM: You mentioned a musical discovery at fourteen. When I was fourteen in 1972, I bought the New Riders of Purple Sage album Gypsy Cowboy with Spencer Dryden on drums, formerly of Jefferson Airplane, who Grace Slick referred to in “Lather.”
CR: Yes. The first time I met Grace it was at one of her art shows and the song was playing over the sound system. I asked her what the song was about because I always thought it was so weird and cool. She said, “In those days, we had a saying, ‘Never trust anyone over thirty,’ and Spencer was turning thirty, so we were just kind of making fun of him with the song.” When I perform the song, I act it out in a way that has nothing to do with him.
GM: Speaking about acting out one of Grace’s songs, Donna and I were amazed on your delivery of “White Rabbit.” The sound quality was so clear on that song, and it was dramatically wonderful.
DONNY BALDWIN: “White Rabbit” is my favorite memory from my early days with the group, being on stage, playing drums on that iconic song with Grace and the band in the early ‘80s. It’s hard to explain, but when the song would begin and the crowd would realize that it’s “White Rabbit” and then Grace would start to sing, the audience would go wild. They loved it and you could feel the energy coming from them onto the stage, it was such a rush then and it still happens today when Cathy sings it.
CR: Thank you. I always have a lot of fun with that song. When I first joined the band, Paul said to me, “You know that weird stuff you do on stage, well do more,” ha-ha. I take his inspiring words to be weird or funny when performing “White Rabbit.” I sometimes look for props from backstage to bring on. I’ve worn costumes to perform that song, even a Bride of Frankenstein gown.
“‘White Rabbit’ is my favorite memory from my early days with the group, being on stage, playing drums on that iconic song with Grace and the band in the early ‘80s. It’s hard to explain, but when the song would begin and the crowd would realize that it’s ‘White Rabbit’ and then Grace would start to sing, the audience would go wild. They loved it and you could feel the energy coming from them onto the stage, it was such a rush then and it still happens today when Cathy sings it.” – Donny Baldwin
GM: I was so thrilled when the concert opened with “Ride the Tiger,” which is not only the first song on 1974’s Dragon Fly album but also the first song on the early 1979 Gold compilation. The vocal power took me back to when I first heard it on the radio when I was sixteen. David, you were there in the latter days of Jefferson Airplane in time for the live album Thirty Seconds Over Winterland and at the very beginning of Jefferson Starship with Dragon Fly and “Ride the Tiger.”
DAVID FREIBERG: It was more like the latter day of Jefferson Airplane, ha-ha. 1974 was the year of the tiger in the Chinese zodiac tied to the Chinese calendar. “Ride the Tiger” is such a powerful number, just made to be an opening song, with lots of nice harmonies, and it keeps on driving.
GM: You updated the future looking lyric from “the summer of ‘75” to “the summer of 2025.”
DF: Paul had made that update. I don’t know what we are going to do next year.
CR: I guess we’ll have to change to “the summer of 2035.”
GM: There was an article on desert island albums, and what few albums would you take with you. After a lot of thought, with the variety of that the eight of you in 1975, male, female, black, white, young, and old, brought to Red Octopus, that became my choice for all-time favorite album. In the spring of ‘75, I saw early artwork for the album in a Billboard ad showing a white album with the red octopus in the center and Grace was quoted saying something like, “If you don’t like the sound of a group with four lead singers, you’re not going to like this album,” almost a dare, which I gladly accepted, and bought the album when it was released with enhanced artwork. “Miracles” became such a big hit that it ended up charting higher in the mid-‘70s than either Top 10 hit “Somebody to Love” or “White Rabbit” did in the mid-60s. David, the dreamy keyboard sound you created for the opening, blending with Papa John Creach’s violin, really set the stage for this classic song.
DF: Thank you.
GM: When the single was released, the flip side, also from the album, was “Ai Garimasu.”
DF: Grace wrote that song with the theme of “There is Love.” There are so many love songs on the album, “Play on Love,” “There Will Be Love,” and “Tumblin’” which begins with the line “When love comes tumblin’ down,” which I wrote with Marty Balin and Bob Hunter.
GM: Marty delivers that song so emotionally. By the end of 1978, he and Grace had left the group, and in January of 1979 the hits compilation Goldwas released. I thought that was the end of Jefferson Starship. Then, in November of 1979, on the same Cleveland radio station where I heard “Ride the Tiger” years earlier, I heard “Jane.” What a great song you co-wrote, and what a powerful vocal from Mickey Thomas, who had joined the group for what has become my second favorite Jefferson Starship album, Freedom at Point Zero. Oh my goodness!
DF: Oh my goodness, “Jane,” bless her evil heart.
CR: I remember hearing that song on the radio and that was the Jefferson Starship that I was familiar with growing up. I later learned songs like “Miracles,” “With Your Love,” and earlier songs, listening to the radio with my mom. I saw Jefferson Starship in concert for the first time in 1984, with Grace back in the band, and David, Paul, and the rest. Donny you had just joined the group. I loved that Mickey Thomas era so much, it seemed more geared toward my age group at the time.
GM: That era brought the group two gold singles with a pair of songs in the No. 1 spot for two consecutive weeks each in the mid-‘80s, beginning with “We Built This City” about San Francisco.
DB: Two San Francisco performances come to mind where we, of course, performed that song. One was at Candlestick Park. We did a halftime show on the field at a 49ers/Rams game. The San Francisco mayor at the time, Diane Feinstein, gave us the key to the city and a proclamation naming that day as San Francisco 49ers and Starship Day which was cool. The other one was at the Fairmont Hotel for the Benefit for Safe Drinking Water Act. It was a road trip that a group of Hollywood stars organized, starting in Southern California, and ending in San Francisco.
GM: The other No. 1 gold single was “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”
DB: That one was co-written by Diane Warren and Albert Hammond and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song in 1988 for the movie Mannequin. We had the opportunity to perform it at the awards show, which was a great moment for us.
GM: Your most recent album is 2020’s Mother of the Sun, dedicated to Paul, who passed away in 2016. When I wrote his In Memoriam article, I quoted lyrics from “Ride the Tiger.” The lineup on this album is the same one that Donna and I saw here in February with the three of you, Jude on lead guitar and Steve on keyboards. I was pleased to hear you perform the album’s opening number “It’s About Time.”
DF: Doing that song is great. All the songs are fun to do, and we have performed almost all of them live. “Runaway Again” that Cathy wrote with Jude is one of my favorites.
CR: My favorite is “What Are We Waiting For” that Donny and I co-wrote as the first song that came out of the sessions at David’s house with the stereo microphone hanging from the ceiling over Donny’s drums, which are the same drums he played on with Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” It is such a powerful song. We played it for Grace, and she was moved to tears. She said, “This song sounds like Jefferson Starship. It sounds old yet it sounds new. It is relevant and I love it.” I boldly suggested that maybe she would like to write a song for the new album, and she agreed to do that. I told her that it’s about time for women to rule the world. Let’s write a song about the women’s movement. This is right after the women’s marches were happening in 2017. I received a letter in the mail with a very thick envelope with Grace’s return address. It contained five pages of handwritten lyrics, stating, “Take what you want and throw away the rest.” I grabbed some lines and made the chorus centered on the “It’s About Time” theme. Jude’s guitar part is something he had been playing at our soundchecks and it has a such a triumphant essence, so I said, “Let’s marry that sound into this song.” It is very anthemic. The National Organization for Women have used it for awareness. The Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified to be part of the U.S. Constitution because several states held out in 1982 and ran out the clock with just 35 out of the necessary 38 state three-fourth majority ratifying the amendment. Women in this country still don’t have equal rights. We are more than half of the population. Paul always used his microphone to sing about what he cared about and felt was important in the world. The true honor of getting to write music for this band now is that we can keep that spirit alive.
“Paul always used his microphone to sing about what he cared about and felt was important in the world. The true honor of getting to write music for this band now is that we can keep that spirit alive.” – Cathy Richardson
GM: Speaking of keeping the spirit alive, David, Donna and I were so impressed that you stood for the entire concert, singing, and playing guitar, never sitting at age 85.
DF: Hey, I’m 85-and-a-half. Go figure and it’s more fun than it’s ever been. Bless your heart.
DB: Thank you for having us for your Goldmine series.
CR: Thank you so much. We truly appreciate it. We love speaking with a musicophile such as yourself.
