Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner dies at age 74

Kantner faced a number of health challenges recently, including a previous heart attack last March.

Kantner, a guitarist, had emerged from the folk scene but became instrumental in transforming the genre into the more urgent-feeling San Francisco Sound. Balin would rejoin his former bandmates a few years later, and the band enjoyed a No. 1 smash in 1975 with Miracles, and top 20 hits over the next few years with With Your Love, Count on Me and Runaway.

Its members supported various political and social causes, tossed out LSD at concerts and played at both the Monterey and Woodstock festivals – where the band’s set was scheduled for Saturday evening but wound up taking place at 08:00 the next morning.

Kantner initially became a folksinger in the Bay area where he became friends with Marty Balin, forming the band Jefferson Airplane.

Jefferson Airplane continued until 1972, but during a hiatus, Kantner and Slick recorded the 1970 album, Blows Against The Empire, credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship. Kantner, the co-founder of Jefferson Airplane whose psychedelic sound and free-spirited mindset helped define 1960s counterculture, died Thursday aged 74, media in his native San Francisco said.

According to Billboard magazine, Slick and Kantner founded a spinoff group called Jefferson Starship in 1974. The band – as Jefferson Airplane – was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Kantner exited the band in the mid-80s over the artistic direction of the group, and then formed the short-lived KBC Band with Balin and Casady. A reunion of the Airplane, minus the drummer, Spencer Dryden, followed in 1989, with a tour and an album of new material, simply titled “Jefferson Airplane”.

Kantner is survived by sons Gareth and Alexander and daughter China.

We send our condolences to his family members, friends and loved ones.

In the 1970s, along with original Airplane singer Grace Slick, Jefferson Starship went on to greater commercial success, Rolling Stone said. “They often shared the same bill”, the post read.