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03/14/01

Jack Casady: From 'Airplane to 'Tuna' and his Epi bass
Interview by Epiphone's Jason Sanders©

Bassist Jack Casady has seen the turbulent rise of rock 'n' roll from the main stage. He played
bass for Jefferson Airplane at its inception in San Francisco's psychedelic days. Later he and
Airplane veteran Jorma Kaukonen formed the ragtime blues band Hot Tuna. His driving, lyrical style was a significant part of the Airplane's signature sound.

Q:How did you get started playing bass?
A: I got started through listening to music at a very early age, I guess from 3 years-old on
listening to music on the radio. Later on, both my parents enjoyed music. My father was a
dentist but his hobby was an audiophile. He built Heathkit amplifiers and musical systems when I was growing up as a kid so there was always a number of kinds of music around. A lot of jazz records and big band music and all kinds of music in general, classical and of course I listened to the Burl Ives records and Gene Autry and all that as a kid. Moving up to around 10-12 years-old I was listening to a lot of the early rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll
that was available in the D.C. area. I started collecting records and I found a Washburn
nylon string up in the attic with 4 strings left on it; just having fun with it. At this point there
friends of ours that played instruments. There was a large bluegrass contingent in the
Washington D.C. area. A friend of my older brother played banjo so I was listening to a lot
of people play live music, so that all sort of filtered through. The guitar disappeared a few months
before Christmas and reappeared at Christmas with a full set of steel strings and a set of lessons.

My parents had been observing me even though I thought I was up in the attic not being observed, so I was pretty much off to the races then. I had a paper route serving 400 papers a day in order to buy the first guitar, a Gibson 125, I think a student model with a single pickup on it with an f-hole. Then I moved to what every kid wanted at the time and, don’t take offense to this, but it was a Fender Telecaster. I started playing that around age 13 and quit my paper route as soon as I bought the guitar. I think that was the last real job I had (laughs). Lucky me, I’ve managed to peck away at this and make a living at it.

At that point Jorma Kaukonen came into my life. He was classmates of my older brother in high school, I was in junior high. The elementary, junior high, and high school were all within 1 1/2 blocks from my house. My older brother collected alot of records, blues records, and so did I and we would have record listening sessions and I met Jorma. He had started playing acoustic guitar and I played lead guitar, so we formed a little band called the Triumphs with Ronnie McDonald and Warren Smith. We used to kid him and call him “Warren. 'You Bang and Stomp' Smith", cause Warren Smith had a hit record out at the time. We formed a high school band and played Buddy Holly covers and Gene Vincent and things like that. Our total PA system consisted of a Wallanzak recorder put in the monitor mode and we played for parties and any place we could.

Jorma being 3 years older went off to Antioch College where he later on met some guitar playing influences and started in earnest his fingerstyle picking. I moved on through various R&B bands consisting of piano and 3 saxes and those kind of R&B formats of the late 1950’s playing guitar. One night I got a call from a friend of mine, the late Danny Gatton, an amazing guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Generally if there was an open gig for the guitar Danny got it, he was just unbelievable. He asked me to sit in and play bass. One thing lead to another and I got a jazz bass with concentric pickups when I was about 16. Oh boy I wish I had that today….I wish I had the ’57 Tele today too (laughs). I started playing bass and my job quota and bank account went way up. There weren’t many people playing electric bass. I started to play the bass on some gigs and the guitar on others and was playing them both in the D.C. area. I really started to like the bass guitar and the things I do on it. I played professionally for about 8 years before coming out to California and was told later on by a fellow musician,“Casady, you’ve always played melody on the bass. I remember back in D.C. when you would change bass lines around.” So I guess I’ve always had that bent with the bass.

Q:When you moved to California is that when your Jefferson Airplane days started?
A:Yes, exactly. I was in college in ’65. That same mutual friend who played banjo, Bob Lindner and I were hanging out and the phone rang. Jorma had transferred out from Antioch to San Jose State. I asked him what he was up to and he said "I just joined a rock & roll band." I said, "You, the purist, you’ve got to be kidding me. What’s the name?" He said, "Jefferson Airplane." I laughed.

Q: Why did you laugh?
A:'Cause the name sounded funny. People didn’t call their bands funny names back then, you know. Bands were called "the Medallions" or the "Ink Spots" or whatever. So he said, "We need a bass player." I said, "well I play bass." He said, "I thought you played guitar." I said, "no, I’ve been playing bass for a few years." One thing led to another and I dropped out of school in October of ’65. Jefferson Airplane formed in July and I joined in October replacing their first bass player. That began my musical career in earnest because we got signed a few
months later. I got my chance to start working with a band that created original material, which meant I got to create my own bass work. Everybody came from such diverse backgrounds that the combination of all the influences from Paul Kantner with his weavers influences to Marty Balin with his pop music influences, to Jorma with his finger picking blues and me with my R&B influences, all that came together to form the Jefferson Airplane. That gave me a chance within a few months to go in the studio at RCA here in L.A. and record in the early part of 1966.

Those events were really healthy for me because coming out of the D.C. area there was no way the clubs would hire you if you played all original music, you would have to play a lot of cover work. Of course if you spend your whole life doing cover work you never get around to anything else. I’ve seen it kill many a musician. I believe there is a certain period of time as a youngster in your growth where you have to make that break away and if you don’t make it soon enough because of circumstances, most often monetary circumstances where you can get work playing in bars and cover bands that sustain you, but if you start writing your own material and band than it is tough to get off the ground and get work. At least that’s how it was then. I’m sure a certain amount of that will always exist so you have to make a choice somewhere along the line and luckily for me all the pieces fell into place so that I would be spending my time rehearsing and trying to create new music.

Q:As a member of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna you have been fortunate to play and collaborate for a number of years with the same guitarist, Jorma. How has that affected your playing style and do you think it is a significant factor in the development of your unique melodic approach to bass?
A:Absolutely. With Jorma it is really interesting because we share alot of similar appreciation of the craft work of making music. In a lot of pop bands and with the other musicians in Jefferson Airplane that was never foremost in their mind. That’s not a put down or anything, it’s just a matter of being a musician’s musician, you know. The political factors of whether you were a star or not or the shear power factors that came along with the desire for control and power were not as much an issue as trying to play the guitar better. That’s why I think Jorma and I always have the appreciation and leanings towards the world of music no matter what style it’s in where the musician tries to improve his craft as he advances in years.

Q: You have been an Epiphone endorsee with a signature model for a couple years now.
What was it that attracted you to Epiphone and the style of bass you developed?
A:The tone factor. Even though I started out playing Fender instruments, and I love them and they have very unique sound, about 1969 I found a Guild Starfire bass. It was a double pickup hollowbody. That was the positive aspect. The detractive aspect to it was the fact it was a short scale, but I worked with that for a while. I found it really interesting to work with the tonal characteristics of a semi-hollowbody bass, just like the semi-hollow body guitars would have a certain tone that the solid bodies didn’t have and I noticed those are back in style now. That was true as well for the bass guitar but there weren’t many people making them. I started finding I could get really nice acoustic qualities that come from that f-hole, I liked those aspects, those sonic aspects to it. I played it for a number of years and did a bunch of work on them with people that later on became Alembic--Rick Turner and Owsly Stanley,who helped me work on electronics, active circuitry, with the idea of enhancing the tone. Basically an instrument that was the second cousin to the guitar. There wasn’t a lot of R&D going into basses in those days. I moved on through the years with that and enjoyed it then. In the early 70’s i had Alembic build their first Alembic for me, a hollowed out heavy bass. I experimented with that. From then I went back into solid body basses, back into passive electronics and then started playing a Guild B-30 around 1985-86.

Jorma and I took a hiatus in 1979. When I hooked up with Jorma again I thought I wanted to pull myself back into a more basic approach to the bass guitar so I went for a Guild hollow body round hole. While living in New York about 1986 I walked into a little music store next to the Chelsea Hotel and I saw the Gibson Les Paul Signature bass in there and I had never seen it before. I bought the bass and what I liked about it was it had a full scale neck plus one really nice pickup in the center the speaking length of the strings and it was low impedance. One of the things we used to do back in the '60s, I took all the Guild basses and turned them into low impedance for that very reason, the tone opens up and it is a very clear melodic tone. I believe the only reason the low impedance didn’t catch on with a lot of people is just because it is a low output. People I think like the illusion of a higher output guitar yet that is what an amplifier is for. That’s where you can get your volume.

Q:I understand you had some hands on development in the design of the Epiphone.
A:After playing the Gibson version for a number of years I did some investigation and really liked it but thought the pick up was muddy. My sound engineers were always coming up and saying, "In live performances, I can’t distinguish the tone. It’s OK in a room but as soon as other people start playing around the tone sort of dissipates." So I wrote to Gibson and approached them about getting a Jack Casady signature bass based on the general premise of the ’72 Gibson. I talked with Jim Rosenberg at Epiphone who was so helpful and enthusiastic for me. We kept our dialogue going and I explained what I wanted was a supreme instrument and no limit in
addressing the quality construction and the quality that goes into the pickup, pots, and transformer. At that time he said lets go into development. They found the old presses that the original ’72 model Gibson was made from and sent those to be duplicated in Korea and we started working with the prototypes and I have a lot of them upstairs. I worked for a couple years with the prototypes honing in what I wanted and what I wanted to do was start the pickup over from scratch. So I went down to Nashville and spent a couple weeks with J.T. Riboloff, who is an
excellent pickup man there, and we basically started with an empty table, spools of wire, and a box of old alnico magnets. We figured out first how to get the sound that was in that pickup. Once we had that starting spot then it was a matter of improving the sound so that it would be more in focus. We tried different combinations of gauge thickness’s of wiring and what we came up with was adding more magnet power like I used to do with the Guild’s in the '60s. I used to flip the pickups open and put another strip of alnico magnet. Also worked with thick gauge wire like they used to use a long time ago. In the industry through the good old bottom line, less diverse
development means you save a few dollars down the line so a lot of the pickups, whether it's a bass guitar or not tended to have the same gauge wire which is a thinner gauge wire so we went back to the heavy gauge wire, 28 gauge, and that made all the difference in the sound. My emphasis was on getting a great sounding pickup and putting the money into that not into an electronics package or active circuitry. Once I got the prototypes from Korea, I realized they made an instrument that was better than the Gibson version. I have the 3 Gibson’s upstairs
and the early '70s was not a great period of time for instruments or automobiles for that matter. The workmanship on these Epiphones is superb. I have absolutely no complaints; I’m happy. For you folks out there, I have no ringers. They can come right from the factory and all I have to do is set it up and play it. I’ve sent off about 50 basses to people and haven’t had one reject. It’s just a matter of setting it up. The issue for me was to use the best quality product and that includes a high end pot because in the past the pots had been the inexpensive variety as opposed to the ones that cost a dollar more. Any part of the system that your electronics goes through, if it goes through a weaker link, than you’ve lost your sound. So there is that and a passive impedance selector. That was difficult to find but finally we found one that kept the tone in tact and the tone integrity and would switch you from your low impedance setting to your mid and high impedance setting. Once we had all these pieces together and the bass came back and the two prototypes I had up here that I thought sounded fabulous, when the manufactured version came to me and I plugged it in I was just hoping and praying it would work and it turned
out to be far beyond my expectations. It was much better than the hand wound versions and was crystal clear as a bell. We worked with the positioning of the pickup very carefully so that it would pick up the most pure harmonic sweet spot in the speaking length of the string and I found that to be extremely critical on the bass. When we were off just a matter of a 16th or 8th of an inch the tone would go drastically. When we finally zeroed in on exactly how to measure it so that it’s exactly the same each time, no more had to be done. I gave the OK. But that was not until after almost 1 1/2 yrs of development. I knew they were getting antsy and wanted to put the bass out but it just wasn’t right. That very last period of time, when we figured out the placement of the pickup, everything just went into focus. I couldn’t believe it, it was the best. Since then I get basses periodically and I haven’t been disappointed once.

Q:From a creative standpoint, after playing bass for so many years, are their things you consciously do or work on to keep your playing fresh?
A:I think the most important thing is listening, for any musician. Getting back to Jorma and I playing together, that is something we’re always working on. As the years roll on we’re deleting more notes in order to make the spaces mean more and conversely make the notes mean more. It’s a matter of listening at all times. You can develop the ability to play a lot of notes. You can keep developing your vocabulary but you still have to make good poetry. You still have to choose the right words. It’s always an adventure to me every time I pick the bass up and every time we perform. I probably do about 160 shows-a-year between Hot Tuna and Paul, Marty and myself in yet another version of the Jefferson’s and other projects I’m doing. It’s always a matter of listening at the time and allowing yourself to listen to the whole unit and what’s going on. It’s always an adventure, absolutely.

Q: What’s your take on the 5-string bass?
A:I’ve got acouple up here. I’ve got a 6-string too.You know, I think for anybody who uses these
things, like anything, you have to find a place to apply it. Of course, if you are a young kid and
you have grown up with a 6-string bass and that’s all you have had in your hands you are going to see music from that point of view. It’s like having the extended range on a piano or something, it’s there.

Q: Just not your preference?
A:Well no, I have them and I'll use them in recording if the song calls for it, if there is a musical need for me to go down below E. Otherwise I'm more comfortable with a 4-string. There is something about having that E free on the bottom. I don't know what it is. It’s very interesting to get the lower notes and there are so many wonderful players out there who use them all the time and it’s always an inspiration to hear how somebody’s going to approach the instrument and it’s fabulous. Then I come back to Edgar Meyer who does pretty well with a 4 string standup bass.

Q:What other bass players blow your doors off?
A: You listen to people like Victor Wooten and the kinds of things he does on the instrument and it’s really musical and inspiring. He is a very musical fellow. It’s always great to hear great to listen to those fellows play.

Q: Are there any bands or artists out there today that you particularly enjoy or are inspired by?
A: I finally installed a decent system in my automobile. What I’m enjoying now more than the specifics is listening how things are produced and how music is put together. I’m doing a lot of recording in my studio upstairs. I’ve converted an attic into real space. What I’m having fun now with is developing material and songs and listening in a larger format. I’ve always enjoyed orchestral sounds and the full scope of the picture, I just happen to play bass.
I hear the music and my instrument just happens to be bass, that’s kind of how I look at it.

Q:What advice would you give to young bass players developing their skills at home or possibly just starting to jam with bands?
A: Listen. The most important thing is to listen and to work on specifically to work on your right hand technique and the technique of getting the biggest sound you can out of the strings. I think your left hand technique will come along. How many notes you can play or how fast you can play is really secondary to developing your own sound. You'll develop your own tone and soundand that character of your sound will lead you to your own music and lead you to your own notes. That’s what I think is very important.

03/11/01

From the Miami Herald, 03/07/01 edition

Photo by Donna E. Natale Planas ©

Grace Slick sits in front of one of her paintings,
'White Rabbit in Wonderland.'

SOMETHING NEW TO LOVE:
Grace Slick, that pill-popping, booze-downing, hard-singing diva of the 1960s, is sitting at an outdoor cafe at chi-chi Bal Harbour Shops, eating a veggie focaccia and getting a major kick out of the Prada set. ``Hey, nice implants! Man, she has the f------ lips, the cheeks, all of it. I'd get the whole thing, too, if synthetic painkillers
worked on me. The only thing that does is straight morphine, but you can't get that, so I have to look like this.''

She is a rock-and-roll legend, the star of Jefferson Airplane, a major voice of the Peace, Love and Happiness generation. But not a soul at Bal Harbour Shops stops the Gucci parade to gawk.
Then again, she's 61 now, her snow-white hair in an old-lady bun. She doesn't have a trace of makeup. Her threads are hardly flashy. Truth be known, she's downright beautiful. Her eyes are stunningly blue, with a sparkle that belies all her hard living. But unless you tell people she's the famous Grace Slick, nobody is going to recognize her. And she's cool with that. She's not one of those aging rock stars trying to hang on.

``I've done it. I had a great time. But by the time I was 45, getting up on stage was boring. I was leaping around imitating somebody who was 30 . . .If you're in your 50s screaming `I wanna bang you, baby,' you look like a fool.''

These days, Grace leads a quiet life in Malibu, Calif., hanging out with friends and painting. She was in town at the end of February for a show of her work at the Bal Harbour Gallery which just ended. Most of her drawings and paintings are of herself and her rock-and-roll contemporaries. Among the portraits are Jimi Hendrix,
Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia -- icons of the '60s who are now dead from drug overdoses and bad living. Grace is like a gritty old soldier who saw it all, did it all --and somehow survived.

SAID YES TO DRUGS
``Taking drugs is like spinning one of those wheels in a casino. You can land on `Had a great time, got up in the morning and went to work.' Or you can get `Killed somebody drunk driving.' Reason people die is that sometimes it says, `You're going to kill yourself.' ''

She's totally on the wagon now, she says, a model 12-Stepper except for the cigarette smoking. But she's never going to be the spokeswoman for ``Just Say No.'' `I would love to say I'm happy now that I'm sober. And I like being sober. But the fact is, I also liked being drunk. And I have no interest in drinking like normal people, so I don't drink at all. I never did heroin because it was too much trouble. But I don't think there's anything morally wrong with it. What I liked was cocaine, but that was mostly to keep a Quaalude high going.'' One day, she went cold turkey and that was that.

``One day when I was 56, I got up and sat there and shook by the side of the bed all day and thought, `Man, this is out of line. I'm too old for this.' '' So did she have a death wish?

``Maybe a psychiatrist would say that subconsciously I did. But I did drugs because I happen to like different forms of consciousness. You know, feed your head.'' She's quoting her famous song, White Rabbit, an anthem for her feel-good generation. ``Feed your head meant just that. It meant feed your consciousness. It didn't mean do it every day and kill yourself. Everybody's always talking about the bad angle of drugs. But the fact is, cheese gives you heart disease, clogged arteries, cancer. It can literally kill you, but people keep eating it. I'm more afraid of cheese than of Quaaludes.''

And in some twisted way, it's good to know that she may be 61, she may be off drugs, but Grace is still a 1960s rock star at heart. She's one of the pioneers that paved the way for everybody else. And it does seem like everybody in the world wants to be a rock star.

PICTURE-PERFECT ERA
``Sure they do. For the same reason I did. You get to have a lot of fun, it's cool music, you get to do whatever you want, you get paid really well, you get to travel and you get to screw a lot of neat people. What's wrong with that picture?''

Is she into any of today's rock stars?
Grace Slick says she's totally on the wagon now-- except for tobacco.
``Well, I don't hang out with any of them, I'm too old for that. But I love Shakira. The first time I saw her was on the Latin Grammys. I thought, man, there's Madonna. She makes Aguilera and Spears look like second string.''

Grace is also into Eminem. You'd think maybe being from the Live-and-Let-Live era, she'd have a problem with his biased, gay-bashing stuff. But she defends his right to be as obnoxious as he wants to be. Though she does have one piece of advice for the rappers who are into violence.

``When you're in your 20s, you're angry, man. But you don't need a gun, you just need music. If you really don't like somebody, you don't kill them. You keep them alive and you torture them for the rest of their life.''

But about Eminem:
``I like him because he has the ability to connect with a lot of people in his generation. He's doing what you're supposed to do in rock-and-roll, which is to shock.''

So now that her own crazy rock days are over -- any regrets?
``My only regrets are that I didn't nail Jimi Hendrix or Peter O'Toole, and that I stopped doing drugs before I tried Ecstasy.''

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