My Life and My Music
By Jorma Kaukonen
There's an old joke that goes
"If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there." Those 60
and over go ha-ha, ho-ho, I get it, too many flashbacks, too many bong hits,
far too many uppers to balance all those downers, and , too many long drum
solos. The conceit was that there was too much experience crammed into too-few
years; many of us who thrived and jived on the wide, permissive mores of the
Sixties ought to still be overwhelmed, asking ourselves what happened. Who
among us might recollect that glorious experiment in living? Jorma
Kaukonen, founding member of and lead guitarist for the definitive 60s/San
Francisco band Jefferson Airplane, remembers, and brings his recollections
together in a new memoir Been So
Long: My Life and Music. It's worth noting upfront that the
musician, a stalwart figure who preferred to remain in the background, quiet
though attentive while fellow JA members Grace Slick and Paul Kanter did the
many media interviews admits early on that the book is composed of his
recollections of how he remembers events transpired, but that some of what he's
recounting might be vague or incomplete in the telling. He offers a disclaimer
in the introduction mentioning his imperfect recollection: "...this is
my story as I remember it as seen through the prism of my mind's eye. I can do
no better than that."
However reticent Kaukonen was to speak
with the press at the peak of his fame with the Airplane (and later with Hot
Tuna, his long-term folk and electric blues project with JA bassist Jack
Casady), the author’s memory seems to serve him well in these pages. A second
generation American of Finnish descent born in Washington DC in 1940, young
Kaukonen had already seen much of the world, particularly Philippines and
Pakistan courtesy of his father’s diplomatic corps assignments. His early years
seemed a case of accidental wanderlust, his family from moving city to city,
country to country, with Kaukonen easily making friends in each new home
through, it seems, shared interests in music, cars (“gearheads” as they called
themselves) and, to be sure, girls. While in Washington he acquired a guitar
and began learning traditional folk songs, learned the advantages of keeping
his guitar tuned, and made a lifelong friendship with future JA bassist Jack
Casady. What Kaukonen realized was that playing music was pretty much what he
wanted to do, and muses that music seemed the elixir that made brought a
dimension to his life than just merely existing and putting with boring jobs
and mean people. Laconically and tersely, he concludes “Music seemed to me to
be the reward for being alive.”
The first half of the book is full of
reminisces about his family, his two sets of grandparents from Europe in the
quest for the opportunities migrations to America promised, and he speaks
fondly, lovingly of his parents, aunts and uncles and shares what he recalls of
their expectations of a new life in the promised land. Most tellingly, though,
was Kaukonen’s seemingly slow but eventual immersion into music. We see in
negotiation with his father for a guitar, his playing DC clubs with Casady,
with fake IDs, when Casady was playing lead guitar and Kaukonen played rhythm.
And we see his growing interest in folk music styles that would become the
defining essence of what would become his electric guitar style with Jefferson Airplane.
Developing into a fine finger picker and with an affinity for the simple and
elegantly articulated patterns of folk-blues, Kaukonen incorporated these
techniques into his eventual electric work for the Airplane, giving them a
rattling guitar sound unique in an era where every other guitarists fashioned
Clapton impersonations. Kaukonen’s style slid and slithered, his leads full of
peculiar tunings, odd emphasis on blues bends, and a jarring vibrato that made
teeth chatter and nerve endings fire up. It was a style that informed the
Airplane’s best songs— “Lather”, “White Rabbit”, “Greasy Heart”—and which was a
sound that was an essential part of the complex and wonderful weave that
characterized this band’s best albums, from Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
through Volunteers.
At a point, Jefferson Airplane were
among the top bands of the era, one of the top bands in the world, originating
in the counter cultural environs of San Francisco and adventuring beyond those
city blocks to perform historical rock gigs such as the Monterey Pop Festival
and Woodstock. It was something of a charmed life, Kaukonen was earning a a
good amount of money. He was, he admits, willing to start spending it, buying
homes, new cars, new equipment. The band was at the top of their game, and on a
Dick Cavett, Show following the last night of the Woodstock Art and Music
Festival, a myriad of performers—David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, the Airplane,
Steve Stills among them—sat around a rather casual set for the program and
bantered breathlessly about the monumental experience they’d all just been
through. In the afterglow, at that moment, it seemed as though Ralph Gleason’s
mid Sixties prediction in Rolling Stone that the Sixties Youth, spearheaded by
the music, musicians, troubadours and poets of the time, would change America profoundly,
enact a revolution without bloodshed or bombs. The music would set you free.
Believe me, I was there, watching the Cavett show at least on my parent’s
basement TV, as well as reading the newspaper and 6pm news reports on the
massive concert. For a few minutes, just a few, it all seemed possible,
especially when watching the beautiful and brilliant Grace Slick and the
Teutonically authoritative Paul Kanter lay it out what many took to be a
forecast of the American future. Kaukonen was on the set as well, in the
background, sitting with his guitar. He was happy to let Slick and Kanter do the
talking; as reiterates through the narrative that he was happy to play his
guitar and let others be the prophets.
There is much ground Kaukonen tries to cover in Been So Long, but there is a lack of
urgency on the author’s part to offer detail, specifics, characteristics or
insights connected to the material progression of his story. He is an able
writer that conveys a personality that’s sufficiently humble after the long, strange
trip he’s been on. He has a gratitude for the gift that have been bestowed upon
him and humble in the face of the hard times and deviltries he’s survived. But there is a kind of cracker barrel
philosophy in tone, a succession of incidents, occasions, fetes, celebrations
and disappointments in his life, told in sketchy detail summarized with a
cornball summation, a reworked cliche, a platitude passing as hindsight. He
mentions family, wives, children, famous musicians in a continual flow of
circumstances, but does not actually say much beyond the convenient sentiment
when you expect him to give a hard-won perspective of his adventures before and
after the Rock and Roll Life.Despite having a life’s story that might otherwise seem impossible to tell in a
dull manner, Kaukonen seems intent on doing just that.
He does not tell tales out of school, he doesn’t reveal the quirks
of his friends. what he might consider
the essence of their genius; structurally the book reads as if it were compiled
from note cards and handwritten journals, arranged in order (more or less),
assembled for a rapid walk- through rather a revelation of what drew an
artistic temperament to this kind of life at all. Kaukonen’s reticence to write
more deeply prevents a fascinating and unique tale on the face of it from being
more compelling. It’s as if he’s talking
about things he would rather not disclose; the half-measured commitment shows
up when he mentions his increasing reliance upon and addiction to alcohol through
the book’s chapters. Using phrases from the principle writings of Alcoholics Anonymous
as well and peppering his text with 12 step mottoes, it’s apparent from those in
recovery where the musician got help for this alcoholism. A large part of the A.A.
program is for members to find a God of their understanding, a power greater
than oneself which can help them with their problem. For those who have a “God
Problem”, the fellowship also refers generically to “a power greater than
oneself”. A god of one’s own understanding?
Perhaps an as-told-to memoir like Keith Richard’s memoir Life would have eased more nuance and
insight and crucial detail from the hesitant Kaukonen. Richards, speaking at
length and on-the-record with collaborator James Fox , the Rolling Stones
guitarist speaks frankly and at length about the highlights and low spots of
his life in music; free to speak as he pleased to Fox’s probing questions and
not having to worry about censoring himself while at the typewriter or with pen
-in-hand, Life is a witty, harrowing,
bristling account of one remarkable musician’s life. On the surface, Kaukonen’s
tale is as full and intriguing as a rock and roll biography requires— worldly
as a young man, ROTC, a lover of music and cars, a founding member of one of
the most significant bands of the Sixties in the midst of a major cultural
revolution, drugs, money, fame, glory, flaming out, regrouping—the outline is
here, yet Kaukonen does little to flesh it out or reveal the sex, sizzle and drama
under the facts and their note-card descriptions. Richard’s work with a
collaborator allowed his mouth to run as long as it needed to tell the best
story he had, his own, the final pay off being an engrossing read blessed with
Richard’s hard-won and refreshingly off hand wisdom. The Jefferson Airplane
guitarist is not so garrulous, is reflectively taciturn and terse, in fact. One
needs to respect his right to tell his story as he sees appropriate; the shame
is that what is likely a great story doesn’t so much get told as it gets mentioned in passing. Mentioned in
passing.Been So Long remains an fascinating read and is an
interesting addition of first hand accounts of the psychedelic revolution in
the 60s from a key player. The irony here is that Kaukonen does indeed remember
the decade—he just doesn’t see the need to get into the weeds , dig in the dirt
and relate something fuller, an account of a life fully lived.
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