The Nation s Best Free Music Magazine NEVER-BEFORE P U B L I S H E D PHOTOGRAPH. Marty Balin

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1 The Nation s Best Free Music Magazine M O R R I S O N NEVER-BEFORE P U B L I S H E D PHOTOGRAPH Marty Balin The Founder of Jefferson Airplane Tells Us Why Love is His Favorite Four-Letter Word PLUS: Marlowe B. West Takes You Backstage to the 60s, Paul Stanley of KISS, Florence and the Machine, Dead Country, Catholic Radio, Night on Fire, and More! THRUST MAGAZINE VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2 FEBRUARY THRUST MAGAZINE, LLC.

2 Love is the Answer Jefferson Airplane Founder Marty Balin Photograph by Christopher R. Phillip Is Still Turning The World On to His Favorite Four-Letter Word By Thrust Magazine Senior Editor Christopher R. Phillip Thrust Thrust Magazine February January Page 8 Photographs by Christopher R. Phillip

3 Many admirers of Marty s songwriting, including this author, consider him the best lovesong lyricist/songwriter in modern history, and comparable, at times, to John Lennon in the genre. It s no surprise. Both men knew intuitively that Love is the magic word, as Marty says in Miracles, when it comes to changing the world through music. Marty Balin the founder of Jefferson Airplane, hit songmaker of Jefferson Starship, gold status solo artist, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame icon is one of pop music s most enduring living icons. He has traveled and continues to journey down a prolific songwriting and lead-singer career which has spanned five decades, including one of music s most magical six-minute-plus-length singles Miracles, which soared to #3 on the pop charts; four more singles in pop s Top 20 Count on Me (#8), Hearts (#8), With Your Love (#12), Runaway (#12); and one No. 1 album (Red Octopus with Jefferson Starship). He appeared at all three of the 60s mostnotorious rock festivals, Monterey (1967), Wo o d s t o c k (1969), and A l t a m o n t (1969). Of course, Marty is synonymous with a variety of San Francisco sounds that crossed across two decades, inc l u d i n g garage rock, psychedelic rock, and political anthems for the Viet Nam War-torn generation of America s youth. Many admirers of Marty s songwriting, including this author, consider him the best lovesong lyricist/songwriter in modern history, and comparable, at times, to John Lennon in the genre. It s no surprise. Both men knew intuitively that Love is the magic word, as Marty says in Miracles, when it comes to changing the world through music. Of course, Marty s still alive, and he continues to perform his career s most famous love songs, and create new ones for future generations. Thrust Magazine had the joy of watching him perform a private show at Studio 212 Arts Guild in Tarpon Springs, Florida, and then interviewed him for this story. Jefferson Airplane, circa Marty is on the top row, far right. (Photograph by Herb Greene, used with permission.) If your curiosity is piqued as to why Marty performed at a small fishing town s art gallery instead of the concert halls, arenas, and outdoor festivals where he has earned millions of fans, the answer is simple. Marty s an accomplished artist the paint and brush kind and enjoys painting his memories of his friends in the San Francisco and national music scene Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, and the members of Jefferson Airplane; his friends from across the pond John Lennon, Elton John, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant; and some acts you wouldn t expect can you say Kiss? He also enjoys performing his music while surrounded by his paintings, as he did at this event. (Read more about Marty s art career in the accompanying story, I ve Got A Brush On You. ) Marty s newest solo release is called Blue Highway and it s available from his official fan site, He was happy to tell us about it, and of course, we had plenty of questions to ask him about his career, too. THRUST MAGAZINE: I d like to talk about some old stuff and then, of course, talk about some new stuff. Is that cool? MARTY BALIN: Yeah, sure. Go ahead. THRUST: Your second single way back in 1962 before you founded Jefferson Airplane was called I Specialize in Love. Is that a statement that you believe is true today? BALIN: Yeah, I guess so. THRUST: From that solo release, through Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, KBC (Kantner, Balin, and Casady), and back to being a solo artist, how has your career followed those four inspired words? BALIN: Well, you know, everything I ve ever learned seemed that love s the way to go. You give love to people and help people; [you] try to find love in life. What else is there? Money? Hate? Love ain t too much else going on. THRUST: Though your first singles were released before The Beatles invaded America, your debut Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, was recorded after The Beatles Rubber Soul, but before Revolver. How did the Fab Four affect your developing songwriting style when you heard those two albums? BALIN: Everybody loves The Beatles. They were doing such great songs and work. I mean, every two weeks they d come out with a single, and both sides would be phenomenal. It was inspirational what they were doing. THRUST: Is there any one Beatles song that you feel changed your songwriting career? BALIN: I can t pick any one out, but the body of work. It was The Beatles, man. Even today, I ll put on a Beatles album and just listen to it. You look back and say, Jesus, this is great. THRUST: Let s talk about the Summer of Love. That s something you helped create. BALIN: Yes. THRUST: When did you know that 1967 was a magic year? Is there a place and time when you thought, Man, there s something really incredible going on here? Thrust Magazine February 2011 Page 9

4 That s love, right. When you re in love, and you re making love, it s like the energies of the stars. Don t you feel that when you re in love? We re all made of the stardust. We re all the same energy. We come from the stars. We go back to the stars. When we make love, we disappear and become stars. Marty Balin BALIN: Well, I knew something incredible was going on when it was going on, because there were all the dance halls [and] the ballrooms. One night I d go down to the Fillmore, I d go to the Winterland, I d go to the Avalon, I d go down to the Family Dog. I d go to different clubs. There was music everywhere. New things were happening art, clothes and the war people were making statements against the [Vietnam] War. Plus, there were the drugs, women were coming out, and gays were coming out. There was so much going on. It was quite a time. THRUST: The public may think that Woodstock stands as the most significant event that you played in your role as the leader of Jefferson Airplane, but in the history of the shows you ve played, which ones holds the greatest meaning to you. BALIN: There were good shows; there were bad shows. There were good auditoriums; there were bad auditoriums. There were good outdoor festivals; bad ones, [too]. It depended on the day, the sound system, the way the band was playing. I don t think Woodstock was our finest performance in any way, but it was fun to be a part of it and watch everybody else hang out there. As a performance, I think, in general, there were great moments here and there. I can think of gigs that we did that were phenomenal, but nobody knows about [them], unless they were there. I remember one in Illinois. I don t know if it was Chicago. We had been touring a lot and we were all tired. The road manager he was standing by the side of the stage as we all went on and we all took a sniff of what we thought was cocaine. It turned out it was acid. So we re on stage and we all started to take off at the same time. We looked at each other because we knew what acid was, that little metallic taste in the mouth, and we looked at each other like, Here we go, you know. We all took off at the same time on stage and began to play and the music was phenomenal. At the end of that concert, we stopped. There was silence for about a whole minute and then the audience just roared into applause and screams of elation. I never forget that. It was a beautiful concert it was an amazing concert. THRUST: You came back to Starship in 1974, and for the next four years you created some of the most beautiful lyrics and songs not just for you and your satisfaction, but songs and words that could not have come from a human being: Miracles, With Your Love, and Count on Me. What made these years so special? What brought these songs, which are absolutely timeless, to you. BALIN: When I rejoined Starship I said, I want to do something that I want to do, and I did Miracles. When I recorded it, most of [the band members ] thought, Geez, I don t know, man. It sounds strange to me. I had been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye, so I wanted to do this long thing and use my voice a lot, swirl around. But when I cut it, they were like, We don t know about that, Marty. You better work on that. For about a week I was walking around thinking, I wonder what went wrong. I liked it. Then I thought, Maybe they re wrong. Then the thing came out [on the charts] and boom, bam, atmospheric. I said, Don t count on your bandmates to tell you what s good and bad. THRUST: Did you write every word of Miracles lyrics? BALIN: Yeah. THRUST: You have a line in there, We can exist on a star. What s your thought behind that? BALIN: That s love, right. When you re in love, and you re making love, it s like the energies of the stars. Don t you feel that when you re in love? We re all made of the stardust. We re all the same energy. We come from the stars. We go back to the stars. When we make love, we disappear and become stars. THRUST: Eventually you came back to the Summer of Love. In fact, when we first met, at a private little gig, you played a song named for it. BALIN: It s called Summer of Love. It s my interview with myself about that time. People were calling me during [an] anniversary of it [and asking], Do you want to make a little sound bite on the Summer of Love? No, I don t want to make a sound bite on the Summer of Love, and I kept hanging up the phone. Reporters kept [calling again,] Now the Summer of Love and then [finally] I [hung] up the phone and went Summer of Love hmm. Summer of Love and I sat down and interviewed myself. THRUST: What album does that appear on? BALIN: I think that was on the Starship reunion album [Jefferson Airplane (1989)], which was a big bust. They were going to get behind that song cuz it was a perfect timing and promote it and everything, but bad Marty, he went in and told the producer of it, Ron Nevison, I d like to remix it, if you re going to put it out. So I did a remix. I took out all the strings and let it breathe. I also had heard Grace sing her part. (I was there when she was doing it with Marty, in the studio, lays down tracks for his 2010 solo release Blue Highway (Photograph by Joe Vertino.) Thrust Magazine February 2011 Page 10

5 Nevison.) So I went back and took other vocals of hers and I remixed them into my version. I blew the guy out of the water with my mix. I wailed on his version. Of course, I turned it into the company and they were so insulted, or he was, that it disappeared. So they went with other songs, like Paul s [Kantner] Planes. Meanwhile, we re doing videos and things and all the guys in the band are going, Why come we don t do Summer of Love? It s on the charts, it s going up the charts. [Summer of Love hit #15 on the Adult Contemporary charts.] These other songs aren t doing anything. But bad Marty, he beat the guy down. So I got stomped. And I was calling everybody in the band because they were all signed on the contract, but I wasn t. I was just a hired gun. Hey, you guys are going to mess up this album. You re going to ruin it, but nobody cared. It s the same old thing. THRUST: Where can we hear your mix? BALIN: I don t know. I don t have a copy of that mix. I never had a copy, but I would love to [locate it]. They probably burned it for all I know. THRUST: Tell me some more about your new solo release, Blue Highway. The title would make people think that it s not an album of love songs. BALIN: There are a couple of love songs on the album. Don t Be Sad Anymore, that s a beautiful song [and] I thought that was great. We Sure Can Make Love, that s a pretty little thing. Feeling the Love Again, I wrote that so I can go out and feel the love again. THRUST: Why Blue Highway and why now? BALIN: I just went in and did some songs I wanted to do. Everybody kept telling me, You re wasting your time; the album is dead. So I said, Well, I m going to make an album for the funeral then. It was a bunch of things that I had in mind; that I had in my head and wanted to put down. These are songs that I ve been wanting to do and I thought I d put it all down while I had the chance. I was in the studio last year [2010] and Starship had gone in [another studio] to do some folk album. I asked Paul, Let me write it or let s write this album [together,] because I had some folky songs, like Papa John, Viva La Vida, things that could have applied to a folky thing. [Paul s manager] said, Nah, nah, we re going to redo Pete Seeger and the Weavers and all this crap. I said, You know, even Springsteen didn t have a good go with his Seeger album. They said, No, we want to rehash this old stuff. I said, You go do that. I m going to go in and put down songs, because I ve been waiting too long for you guys to get around to doing some new stuff. So I went in last year and spent my time in the studio recording 35 tracks [approximately]. THRUST: What road do you want to take people down on your followup album to Blue Highway, which will come out in 2011 and be called The Witcher? BALIN: It s more nice songs and a little harder edge because it s recorded at one time together and no overdubbing, except for the background vocals because the guys who played it did the singing, too. THRUST: Tell me about the love songs on The Witcher. BALIN: I wasn t concentrating on love songs so much as live, kinetic club songs that I had, but I think The Witcher is a good love song. It s about the guy who can a turn a woman on because he s a witcher. THRUST: It s a heavy song. BALIN: Yeah it s a cool song. I love that old theme. THRUST: Your most beautiful songs, like Coming Back to Me, bring tears to people s eyes, and they do it time and time again. BALIN: Yeah, I know that one does. THRUST: Which of your songs have that affect on you? BALIN: As a writer and a performer, when these things happen to me, I just get out of my own way. I learned long ago not to try to write anything. You try, you re playing it, and then suddenly from up there something comes whishing down through you. It starts writing itself. You have to get out of [the] way not try to analyze it, [don t] be intellectual about it, and let the inspiration [come,] because that s the real thing that comes through you. You re just taking dictation. And those are the great songs. The ones that you try to write are still good, and hard, and rough, but I just let whoever it is write it. I channel whatever s coming through me. It s like singing. Sometimes I m listening to myself and [thinking], Wow, this is far out. This is great. The thing is, I can never consciously be aware of that. I can only be aware of it outside of myself and not get in the way of it. The music plays you. The writing writes you. It s like anybody says, If you re writing a book, eventually the characters take over and start writing. If you re painting, the painting takes over and starts to paint itself. That s the moment of magic and that s what I look for, even in performing. THRUST: When songs come to you do you consider them gifts and that you receive them on purpose? BALIN: I do. I consider it all gifts. I think music is a gift. It s the soul of people. If I can write a song I m happy as can be. When it s done, I think, Well, that s great maybe my name s on it, but I don t know how it came about. I just channeled it. THRUST: How do you feel your songs change people s lives? BALIN: People come up to me all the time and tell me, My kid was born to this song, or I got wed to this song, or My father was dying and he asked us to play this song for him over and over. The other day they sent me [a letter], this football player who died on the field, a young guy, and his favorite song was Miracles. They wanted to use it in some motion picture they were doing for him. Ads [or] sometimes a motion picture will use it and it will convey a time period to people all kinds of things like that. It s amazing. That s why I say it s beyond me. THRUST: A very long 48 years ago, you said you specialize in love. Do you still specialize in love today? BALIN: I still think that love is what s happening. I mean, I could write about trains or cars and things, but I don t get off as much. For more information on Marty Balin, visit his official website at Marty Balin and his band, circa 2011 (l-r): keyboardist Dennis Orris, lead guitarist Charles Morrongiello, backup singer Rae Stillwell, Marty Balin, back up singer Yolanda Mercado, drummer Donny Vosburgh, and bassist Eddie St Clair, bassist. (Photograph by S.J.Geier.) Thrust Magazine February 2011 Page 11

6 I met Marty Balin on a photo assignment in December 2010 and learned that he was an artist. I could not contain the desire to want to see his collection, and before I could even request it I found myself surrounded by sixty of Marty s paintings. They were packed in boxes for years and I was compelled to get them out and on display. I ve Got A Brush on You Marty Balin s Paintings of His Friends Come Out of Hiding By Thrust Contributing Writer S.J. Geier Photography by Christopher R. Phillip If ever a song could tell a story or emote your innermost feelings, it would have to be one, if not all, of Marty Balin s ballads. Composed with the elements of true-life experiences, it seems impossible for any human soul on this earth to not find comfort or selfexpression in a song from Marty s vast collection. This I have seen first hand in the intimate setting of Studio 212 and in the company of Marty Balin, his paintings, his music, and his audience. It is for this reason when asked by Thrust Magazine, What does Marty means to you? I am drawn to answer, as corny as it may be, with one of Marty s own song titles Miracles. Marty Balin has spent the greater part of his life giving to his audience a timeless stream of messages of love and healing. The evenings of December 18, 2010, and January 8, 2011, I witnessed lines of people form outside our studio to get in to see Marty. As his richly smooth voice filled the room, I watched his audience s tears flow in a full range of emotion, his songs gently eliciting the memories of some of life s most powerful moments. I watched bodies sway, arms flail, and feet tap to both familiar and unfamiliar Balin tunes, powerful enough for me to say that Marty Balin s audience would move heaven and earth as he says in Miracles to give the same gift back to him. A more authentic and true display of appreciation could only I met Marty Balin on a photo assignment in December 2010 and learned that Marty was an artist. I could not contain the desire to want to see his collection, and before I could even request it I found myself surrounded by sixty of Marty s paintings. They were packed in boxes for years and I was compelled to get them out and on display. As the owner of two art galleries with my exist in the form of a miracle! Thrust Magazine December 2010 Thrust Magazine Page 12 February 2011 Page 12

7 sister and husband St. Augustine, Florida, and Tarpon Springs, Florida, we were the perfect fit for him. Marty was equally enthusiastic. In a most natural and truly inspirational manner the team, my sister Donna Wendler, my husband Larry Geier, and Marty Balin, got together and made it happen. The combination of Marty Balin s music and art is truly who he is. His producer Joe Vertino and his amazingly gifted band members and sound technician have all added to the essence of Music of My Life, what Marty poetically titled his exhibit. The shows were and continue to be beautiful music, paintings of Marty s friends, who just happen to all be music icons in the rock-n-roll industry, and the best gift of all, the trust Marty gave us in being the ones to represent his art collection. I believe that things happen for a reason and this is just suppose to happen! Marty s art work is being archived and reproduced to the highest quality standards. As he continues to paint and write beautiful music, we will work at bringing his artwork to galleries, museums, and into your lives. For further information on Studio 212 and its exclusive showing of Marty Balin s paintings, and information how you can hang an original or signed limited edition reproduction in your home, visit Studio 212 at or call the gallery at (727) Thrust Magazine February 2011 Page 13