An Interview With Paul Kantner, 1995.
(This interview was broadcast on Greater London Radio, prior to the 1995 London show.)
{transcribed by Graham Holder}
The following interview took place this evening on Greater London Radio, by telephone, between Bob Harris and PK immediately after the Starship's gig in Milan.
B: Hi Paul. P: Greetings Earth people B: How're you doing: P: Good. Just off the stage. B: How did it go? P: Killer! B: What venue were you playing? P: Oh god. Just don't ask me things like that. I'm just off stage. I'm dazed. I can hardly see the room I'm in! B: What time is it there? P: Same as yours. B: It's the same as ours? P: Cos they just went off daylight saving time. B: Oh, right. P: You didn't. Who's the more backward? I don't know. B: Nor do I. So how's things with the band. P: Really good. Just killing. The killing fields. Another dream is going on. B: Yeah. I've got the new album through that I've been playing at home over the last couple of days, DSVS. P: Well, we'll bring a bit of that to England shortly (they play here in two days time) B: It's a live album. P: Yes. B: What made you decide to do a live album? P: Well, a lot of our dear friends in the States wanted an album out and we hadn't gotten round to making one yet, and we were doing a tribute to Papa John, who died last year, down in Hollywood. And Grace dropped by, and China dropped by, and Diana dropped by, who's our current singer, and it just came out really well, near professional I dare say (B: laughs). It'll ruin our reputation here or something (laughs). And the circumstance came along that we were just able to put it out and just keep it going for fans and stuff like that while we're working on the real thing. B: Right. Well I've got the Papa John track cued up to play in a second or two. P: Cool. --details of a competition not transcribed-- B: There's an interesting question we've had called in....RCA's losing the rights to the Grunt catalogue .. P: Yeah, we're gonna start establishing ourselves on our internet; we have an internet site.. B: Right P: ..Jefferson Airplane internet site, and as those rights come to us, we're gonna get that into a proper mode and distribute it through the internet for a start. And then get it together on a more professional basis as the year goes on next year. B: So, in other words, you're going to get control over these tapes yourself. P: Yes. We Have Controoolll. B: Yes. P: We control the audio (B laughs), we control the video. (laughs) B: And how much is there now, I mean, how many albums have there been over the years? P: Oh we don't count. We barely know our ages. Now this is life at the edge of chaos, is rarely categorisable. And there's a good body of work there. There's a whole body of work that actually hasn't even seen the light of day that we'll get control of as well. We don't know what we're gonna do with it. But there's a voluptuous architecture to it that I seek to embrace in this the Dark Ages that we're now in. B: Do you think they are? P: Oh, don't you read the news? Yes. you're in the middle of the effing dark ages and it's gonna be a while, so get used to a little chaos and, er, future history will take care of you. It's a savage universe we live in right now. B: So what's the master plan then Paul? What's gonna happen? P: The master plan! Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship! Are you kidding? (B laughs) A master plan! (laughs) We have had master plans in the past but they failed so miserably that we've just taken to going with circumstance which leads us much better and in a much better direction. B: Yeah. -- stuff about the current tour dates not transcribed, but Paul did mention plans to come back next summer for some outdoor gigs-- B: (preparing to play Papa John). Tell us about the song itself. P: Papa John. Marty wrote Papa John. It's sort of just a very heartfelt, almost cute little song, to deal with what Papa John sort of meant to us, and where he goes into the future, no one knows. But he did well while he was here and we're still learning from him.
Last Updated: 15 October 2000