Jefferson Airplane

1967 was one of the most “endless” years in the history of rock. It was, of course, the year of “Sgt. Pepper”, which elevated 20th-century pop music to the status of Art, marking a genuine point of no return. The explosion of Sgt. Pepper had a devastating impact on all late-60s rock music and radically transformed the entire record industry, pushing it toward new and complex instrumental experimentation that had previously been the preserve of a few cult bands and more “evolved” musical forms such as jazz and classical.

But before the Beatles, these earth-shattering innovations had already been explored by the Californian Jefferson Airplane. Fresh from the artistic triumph of “Surrealistic Pillow”, released the previous year, which had established them as “the godfathers of acid-rock” (a title they legitimately shared with the other undisputed “propagators” of the “lysergic concept”, Jerry Garcia's Grateful Dead), Grace Slick, Paul Kantner and co., rather than sticking to that same vein, intelligently opted for a brand-new, unheard-of (and for the time, remarkably bold) sonic quest: a powerful, magnetic urge to explore and dismantle the psychedelic pop of the era without limits. The result was one of the key albums of the decade, a bizarre, dazed melting pot of surreal ballads and hypnotic melodies laced with “Arabic” digressions and full-bodied rock numbers, all propped up by acid guitars, gleefully distorted and gorgeously dissonant. Over this eclectic, vaguely ancestral psychedelic chaos loomed Grace Slick's lyrics, evoking unknown and exotic times and places, artless poems of lysergic love and unspoken desires, underpinned by a ruthless, unruly inner free spirit that would become the conceptual epicenter and the glue holding “After Bathing At Baxter's” together.

The album opens with the overwhelming “The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil”: Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen's guitars come across as sharp and jagged, while the melody suffuses the track with a soft, gentle tension; Balin and Slick round out the picture, offering two very different yet strongly complementary interpretive styles: Balin more linear and measured, Grace Slick, on the other hand, overflowing and omnipresent, a presence that's occasionally overbearing but always striking and full of appeal, one that sets the terms for the listener as to who will dominate—and not only in strictly vocal terms—Jefferson Airplane's new work.

The second track, “A Small Package Of Value Will Come To You, Shortly”, instantly recalls certain Zappa-esque echoes found on “Freak Out”, released just a few months earlier: a sort of collage in which multiple voices (apparently amid the contagious fun of a party) overlap and let loose disconnected phrases, creating in the listener's mind a vague sense of hypnosis and a sweet loss within our subconscious, “distracted” and “lifted” by who knows what drugs. Kantner excels on “Wild Tyme” and the gorgeous “Watch Her Ride”, which also turn out to be the most accessible and least demanding, least cerebral tracks: two melodies that momentarily transcend the band's spirit of anarchy, a direct offshoot of the utopia of that brief but intense season.

But the most appealing composition is “reJoyce”, likely the product of Grace Slick's distorted “hallucinogenic fantasies”. “reJoyce” is perhaps the happiest gamble on the whole record, a bizarre reworking of a James Joyce text that Slick “soaks” in heavy doses of lyricism, imbuing it with a pathos and vocal sensitivity of rare intensity and emotion, the perfect vehicle to escort the song through paths of bleak grayness. Adding further intensity to the track is a seductive, sensual, overflowing sweep of flutes that joyfully chase Slick's vocal textures, wrapping them in a timeless spiritual purity. The tones are anguished and evocative, Grace Slick's solemn, commanding voice sealing these inaccessible, forbidden feelings; the faint Arabic touches offset the subtle, implicit yet tasteful eroticism emanating from the Jefferson singer's vocal cords, and it all blends beautifully into a silent, swirling sonic orgasm that stands as one of the all-time psychedelic peaks. One almost feels “imprisoned” in a jungle of sounds and noises with a menacing allure, a musical rattlesnake ready to bite and then lull the listener's senses to sleep with its own venom, in this unprecedented “digression” into a dream world “spoiled” by psychedelic trips. Grace Slick closes the doors with “Two Heads”, a symbol of the mental split brought on by the inexhaustible charge of lysergic acid, in a triumph of peace and unity, of highs and utopia ad libitum: a manifesto of transgression and anarchic freedom.

“After Bathing At Baxter's” is an unsurpassed union of melodic dissonance, sped-up distorted guitars, Middle Eastern melodies and avant-garde flourishes, over which soars, lyrical and solemn, an unprecedented concept of anarchy (both musical and sociological), buoyed by an incomparable, thrilling, energetic “musical groove” with few equals for the era. Fittingly closing this album, so pivotal to the development and establishment of the concept of psychedelia, is “Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon”. It's a hypnotic, dazed melody that amounts more or less to the band's farewell: an invitation for everyone to come together “lysergically-passionately” on a Saturday afternoon. Implicit within it is a subtly orgiastic, “absolutely free” spirit, with no inhibitions whatsoever.

“After Bathing At Baxter's” remains a pivotal episode in Jefferson Airplane's career, a concise and remarkable marriage between the superb songwriting of the masterpiece “Surrealistic Pillow” and the wild, daring psychedelic experimentation already well underway in that year of 1967—one that would forever seal the birth of color and officially crown pop music as an exciting new art form.

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31/10/2006