One Generation Got Old, One Generation Got Soul
Surrealistic Pillow (1967) - Marty Holding Flute at Top Left
Spent several hours yesterday - and most of the night - watching and listening to old Jefferson Airplane songs and online videos. These songs, many of which were anthems for a generation, brought tears to my eyes . . . especially Marty Balin’s pulsating Volunteers. As many of you know by now, Marty (born Martyn Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, Ohio on January 30, 1942) died on Friday; he was 76. Balin had an amazing voice - one of the greatest in the history of Rock ‘n Roll. With that voice he could, in the words of New York Times writer John Parles, “. . .offer the intimate solace of ballads like Jefferson Airplane’s “Today,” the siren wails of a frantic acid-rocker like the group’s “Plastic Fantastic Lover,” or the soul-pop entreaties of Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles.” Although Balin always scored high with the public and rock connoisseurs for his pliable, powerful voice, few ever recognized the depth and quality of his lyrics; at base, Marty Balin was a poet.
And now he is dead at age 76 . . . which is sounding younger and younger all the time.
Marty was by no means the first member of the Airplane to pass away. In 2005, their drummer, Spencer Dryden (the son of Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother Wheeler) passed away at age 66 from cancer. On January 28, 2016 both Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner and the band’s original (e.g. pre-Grace Slick) singer Signe Toly Anderson passed away at age 74. Unbelievably, Grace Slick, the one member of the band everyone assumed would be first to go due to her excessive lifestyle, is still alive, flourishing and will turn 79 four weeks from today. Think about it: Grace Slick (that’s her standing next to Marty on the album cover above) is nearly EIGHTY YEARS OLD!! But then again, it is an absolute mind blow to consider the current ages of the rock musicians who played the musical score of our formative years:
The Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan is 78;
Eric Clapton is 72, as are The Who’s Pete Townsend and CCR’s John Fogerty;
David Crosby (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) recently turned 78;
The Rolling Stone’s Sir Mick Jagger is 75;
The Kink’s Sir Ray Davies is 74;
The Animals Eric Burdon is 77;
The Hollies Graham Nash is 76;
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are both 77;
Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is 78 and still touring, as is his band mate
Sir Paul McCartney, who is 76.
As I was completing this terribly brief list, a faint memory began to wend its way from the old neocortex to my frontal lobe: a brief piece of fiction I wrote in 1969, shortly after Rolling Stones’ drummer Brian Jones accidentally drowned in a swimming pool; he was all of 27. (Ironically, both Jimi Hendrix and the Doors’ Jim Morrison, who dedicated, respectively a song and a poem to Jones, would die within the next two years . . . at age 27.) Anyway, while contemplating Jones’ death, I began imagining how his eulogy would have read had he died at, say 75, or 80 or even 90? From there, it was but a short hop to writing a fictional news-story about the death of the last surviving Beatle - “Lord McCartney” - at age 93. The year in the story was 2035. Regrettably, the story, which was published in the long defunct City on a Hill Press, was long ago lost to the ravages of time. What I do remember is that it carried the screaming headline “I’M ONLY SLEEPING” - LORD MCCARTNEY, LAST SURVIVING BEATLE PASSES AWAY AT AGE 93. The “I’m Only Sleeping” part of the title came from a Lennon-McCartney song included in their 1966 album “Revolver.” It included the lyric:
Please, don't wake me, no, don't shake me
Leave me where I am, I'm only sleeping
It just seemed to fit. As I recall, my purpose in writing the piece was to engage in a bit of prophecy; what the world would be like more than 65 years later . . . what kind of an effect the generation of peace, pot and beads would have had on the world. As I recall, McCartney was made a Life Peer not only for his stellar contributions to music, but also for the important role he had played in bringing peace and harmony to the world. He had spent the last decades of his life traveling the globe, playing his music and contributing virtually ever cent he earned from these concerts to organizations working to feed, clothe and offer free healthcare to people all over the world.
A bit idealistic, no?
I also recall the story containing a bit of levity: interviews with the extremely aged fans who used to shriek and shout when, as teenagers, they went to Beatle concerts in England, America and throughout Europe. Although they frequently suffered from a bit of memory loss, when came it to John, Paul, George and Ringo, everything was crystal clear . . . as if the concert they had attended were only yesterday.
With the real-life passing of Marty Balin, I know I’m feeling a bit less immortal than last week. When I recall attending smallish rock gatherings headlined by The Great Society and The Warlocks (as The Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead were known back in 1965/66) my memory informs me “Hey bro, like that was more than a half-century ago . . . ya ain’t a hippy anymore!” Funny though, I don’t feel all that much older . . . regardless of what I see in the mirror. Like a lot of aging boomers, I still - despite the current shape of politics and the world - continue to be fueled by a mixture of idealism and anger and refuse to retire from activism; refuse to sit back and do nothing but complain while others turn the world into a capacious cesspool. We are still, in the words of Marty Balin, Volunteers of America, the lyrics of which go:
Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Hey, I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Oh, ain't it amazing all the people I meet?
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
One generation got old
One generation got soul
This generation got no destination to hold
Pick up the cry
Hey, now it's time for you and me
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Hey, come on now we're marching to the sea
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Who will take it from you, we will and who are we?
Well, we are volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
Volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
I've got a revolution
Got a revolution
Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Hey, I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution (got to revolution)
Oh, ain't it amazing all the people I meet?
Got a revolution, oh-oh
We are volunteers of America
Yeah, we are volunteers of America
We are volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
Volunteers of America (volunteers of America)
Back in the day - when Balin, McCartney, Dylan, Clapton, Townsend et al were in their twenties and an oft-repeated battle cry was “Don’t trust anyone over the age of 30!” we marched, protested and campaigned, seeking, as volunteers, to change the world. We were pegged as a generation of long-haired, stoned-out Communistic irreligious immoralists who were all desperately in need of a bath . . . if not a mass delousing. Collectively, we played a pivotal role in ending the Vietnam War, passing Amendment XXVI of the U.S. Constitution (which lowered the voting age to 18), getting people to recycle, and fighting for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community and the impoverished of the planet . . . plus the legalization of marijuana. Although we grew older, many of us, I am proud to say, never truly grew up.
And we still have all that great music.
Rest in Peace, Marty
“Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.”
(We Can Work It Out, Paul McCartney, 1965)
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Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone