Red Octopus Jefferson

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started Jefferson Starship after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, the group's second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's Top 200 and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts.

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started the group after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, their second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's album chart and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts. Many Airplane fans decried the Starship's more mainstream musical direction, especially after Airplane singers Grace Slick and Marty Balin departed in 1978. But with shifting personnel still anchored by Kantner and bassist David Freiberg, the group managed to please its new fans, and some old ones, over a period of a decade before shifting gears into even more overtly pop territory and changing names again to simply Starship. Kantner revived Jefferson Starship in the '90s, bringing Freiberg back into the fold in the mid-2000s, and the bassist kept the band going into the 2020s after the 2016 death of Kantner. Jefferson Airplane, the seminal San Francisco psychedelic rock band of the '60s noted for its hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit," began to fragment in the early '70s.

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started Jefferson Starship after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, the group's second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's Top 200 and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts.

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started Jefferson Starship after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, the group's second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's Top 200 and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts.

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started Jefferson Starship after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, the group's second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's Top 200 and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts.

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started Jefferson Starship after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, the group's second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's Top 200 and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts.

This second edition of the Mickey Thomas-era Jefferson Starship/Starship polished '80s rock is actually a weird hybrid which you could call psychedelic metal. For fans of the fragments that were Sunfighter, Baron von Tollbooth & The Chrome Nun, Manhole, and other experimental Airplane offshoots, this material is much too mainstream for its own good. But it isn't the eminently dislikable Mickey Thomas who is the major culprit as much as it is producer/engineer Ron Nevison, whose homogenization of records from Ozzy Osborne to Heart displayed a glaring lack of creativity, inspiration, or sense of anything remotely resembling art.

Jefferson Starship were among the most successful arena rock bands of the 1970s and early '80s. Guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick started Jefferson Starship after the disbandment of Jefferson Airplane, adding former Airplane vocalist Marty Balin not much later. Red Octopus, the group's second album, established Jefferson Starship as a mainstream rock powerhouse. It topped Billboard's Top 200 and its smooth single "Miracles" gave the band a number three hit that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts.