Craig Chaquico Guitarist 1974 - 1990

Name:	Craig Chaquico
Born:	Sept 26, 1954, Sacramento, CA
Spouse:	Long-term relationship with Monica Clemens.
	Kimberly Wittenmeier, (24/5/1986 - present)
Children:	Kyle, 1991

Biography:
Craig Chaquico began playing guitar at the age of 10. By the time he was 15, he had formed his first band, Steelwind, with Jack Traylor, his high school English teacher. In 1971, Steelwind signed with Jefferson Airplane's own label, Grunt Records, and Craig was invited by Paul Kantner and Grace Slick to play on both "Sunfighter" and "Baron Von Tollbooth And The Chrome Nun". A year after the second of these was released, the 19 year old Craig was invited to become one of the founding members of Jefferson Starship and would eventually become its longest-serving member, with a continuous 16 years in the band. Here, he would become one of the main songwriters, often collaborating with Grace, as well as one of the main forces pushing the band towards a more rock-orientated sound. This caused some friction within the band, particularly with Paul Kantner, and eventually caused Kantners departure from the line-up in 1984.

When the band re-invented themselves as jefferson-less pop-rockers Starship, Craig, along with the other main songwriter, Pete Sears, began to fade into the background as the band relied increasingly on outside composers. The ultimate humiliation came when he, along with Sears and drummer Donny Baldwin, were replaced by session musicians for the recording of Starship's biggest ever hit "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". Grace Slick's departure from the band in 1988 robbed him of his main songwriting partner within the band, and although he briefly participated in the attempt to re-launch Starship in an all-male harder-rocking format, he too quit in 1990.

Having quit Starship, he dedicated the next two years to family life, before recording several acoustic solo albums, including "Acoustic Planet" (1994), which hit #1 on the Billboard new age chart. By 1998, he had returned to his rock roots and formed Big Bad Wolf with ex-Starship bassist Brett Bloomfield, and they released their eponymous debut CD in the spring of that year.

Select Discography:
"Sunfighter" - Paul Kantner & Grace Slick. (1971)
"Baron Von Tollbooth And The Chrome Nun" - Kantner, Slick & Freiberg. (1973)
"Child Of Nature" - Steelwind. (1973)
All Jefferson Starship Releases 1974 - 1984.
All Starship Releases, 1985 - 1989
"Acoustic Highway." (1993)
"Acoustic Planet." (1994)
"A Thousand Pictures." (1996)
"Once in a Blue Universe." (1997)
"Big Bad Wolf" - Big Bad Wolf. (1998)
"From the Redwoods to the Rockies" [with Russ Freeman]. (1998)

Trivia:
When he was 12, he was almost killed in a hit-and-run incident, which left him in a coma for three weeks and broke both his arms.

In the early days of Steelwind, he used to wear a false moustache when the band played in bars, in order to disguise the fact that he was underage. Unfortunately, it regularly fell off.