Jefferson Starship includes members of the incredibly successful psychedelic outfit Jefferson Airplane. The incarnation centres around guitarist Paul Kantner and a concept album entitled 'Blows Against The Empire'. After this things snowballed and Jefferson Starship became a full commitment for founding members Kantner and Jack Casady.
Their first album as a unit was released in 1974 and was titled 'Dragon Fly', it was met with chart success peaking at #11 on the US Billboard and #18 in Canada. The following album 'Red Octopus' is currently the band's most successful release to date, charting at #1 on the US charts and is now certified double platinum selling. It featured a hit single, 'Miracles' which was contributed by Marty Balin, who also wrote the ballad 'Caroline' which appeared on the band's first record.
The next album 'Spitfire' was another success, charting at #3 and breaking into the UK charts at #30 however the band were disheartened at the time that it did not mirror the success of its predecessor. The band continued to tour and release material despite the ever changing line ups, most notably the loss of Grace Slick who was forced to resign at the end of the 70's due to a heavy alcohol problem. Despite all this, the next four albums went on to hold gold selling certificates and Jefferson Starship are still considered a successful psychedelic pop/rock band.
There’s something quite pleasing, especially if you’re a stickler to neatness, about the way that some of the remaining members of sixties psychedelic icons Jefferson Airplane kept a kind of uniformity to the naming process by calling their new group, formed in 1974, Jefferson Starship, but in actual fact, the name’s kind of misleading. It suggests that they were aiming for a sound and a style of music that was in thrall to the cosmos more than ever before, but they actually, if anything, toned down the eccentricities that had come to define them in the sixties; there were still elements of psych and progressive, sure, but they were often lost to the straightforward rock sound that they largely sought to pursue. They enjoyed commercial success throughout the seventies with a couple of platinum-selling records, but things quickly began to unravel for the group when singer Grace Slick’s alcoholism spiralled out of control. The poppier group Starship was formed out of the band’s ashes in the early eighties, but a new group, Jefferson Starship - The Next Generation formed in 1992 with a revolving lineup of former members, and they continue to tour those seventies classics to this day, playing an intimate show at London’s 100 Club back in 2010.