ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603040073
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: JOHN ROGERS ASSOCIATED PRESS
The way Jorma Kaukonen sees it, if his ex-wife had not been arrested 30 years ago, he might never have gotten into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
``By today's standards, I realize I was very conservative,'' the founding member of the Jefferson Airplane said during a recent interview from his Ohio farm.
``But by 1962 standards, I was a freak. And another strange guy who dropped out - and who was a freak, too - was Paul Kantner.''
The two hooked up amid the burgeoning San Francisco Bay area music scene of the early 1960s, hanging out with Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin. By the mid-'60s, Garcia was in the Grateful Dead, Joplin was with Big Brother and the Holding Company - and Kantner had decided it was time they had a band of their own.
``He called up out of the blue one day and asked if I wanted to join. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to. I think I said something silly like, `Rock music? I'm not sure if that's artistically pure enough for me,''' Kaukonen recalls with a laugh.
But he went to a rehearsal in a ``flea trap'' building in San Francisco's North Beach, where he was living at the time. It was there that fate intervened in the form of a police officer Kaukonen says made advances to his wife, then arrested her on prostitution charges when he was rejected.
After it was learned her guitar-playing hippie husband was actually the son of Jorma Kaukonen Sr., career U.S. diplomat and friend of the mayor, matters were resolved.
``But while I was stuck in San Francisco straightening it out, the band took off,'' Kaukonen recalled. ``And then I was stuck there for six more years.''
At this point, it would be tempting to reach for the stock aviation metaphor to describe how dramatic the takeoff was for Kaukonen, Grace Slick and the handful of other white, middle-class rock 'n' roll kids who, as Kaukonen recalls, really wished they could have been blues musicians.
It is sufficient to say that there was no bigger psychedelic rock band to emerge in the mid-1960s than the Jefferson Airplane. It produced landmark albums like ``Surrealistic Pillow'' and ``Crown of Creation'' and hit singles like ``White Rabbit'' and ``Somebody to Love.'' Thirty years later, only the Grateful Dead's name evokes more instant recognition of the era.
Now, with the band recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Kaukonen appears to be entering another creative peak period.
His first solo album in 11 years, ``Land of Heroes,'' was released recently, and he has been on tour promoting it. A largely acoustic work, it features the softer, folk-influenced side of Kaukonen (pronounced Cow-Ca-Nin) and is partly a tribute to his Finnish ancestors.
There's also his other band, Hot Tuna, formed with fellow Airplane member Jack Casady not long before their first group evolved into the Jefferson Starship. Although its output has been sporadic in recent years, Hot Tuna never ceased to exist, and Kaukonen and Casady hope to have another album out within a year.
``Hot Tuna really developed in an organic sort of way,'' says Kaukonen. ``I knew nothing about rock 'n' roll in those years, but I was starting to know something about folk and blues. Jack and I were sharing rooms, and that was back in the days when there was no free cable at the motel - and sometimes not even free regular TV. So we'd sit around with nothing to do. And I started teaching him a little blues repertoire. ''
The next thing they knew, they were opening shows for the Jefferson Airplane. After the Airplane became the Starship, Kaukonen hung around for a few more albums, then it was all Hot Tuna.
``The truth is, after a while it just got to be more fun,'' he says.
What is providing a lot of the fun these days is the guitar camp he's building on his ranch of nearly 200 acres.
``We've all but finished the recording studio and office structure, and when winter goes away we're going to do the bunkhouse, kitchen and teaching rooms,'' he says enthusiastically. ``If we're lucky, we'll be up and running in a small way this summer.''
He hopes to accommodate 10 to 20 students at a time, working with everyone from children to adults. Kaukonen, who has put out a series of instructional videos over the years, will be one of the teachers. And he hopes to bring in others as well.
``Bob Weir, John Hammond, Roy Bookbinder, all my friends who said to do this and we'll be there, well I'm going to remind them of that when the time comes,'' he says.
Until then, there's plenty to do on the farm, where Kaukonen has found a home after a lifetime of travel. As a diplomat's son, he grew up in the Philippines, Pakistan and Washington, D.C., years he recalls fondly as ``the Disneyland aspect of my life.''
After his Airplane days, he left California for Woodstock, N.Y., before settling in the woods and meadows near Athens, Ohio, five years ago.
A friend had told him there was farmland there as beautiful as Woodstock's, but without the steep gentleman-farmer's price tag one found in Upstate New York.
``I took one look at it,'' he recalls, ``and just said, `Wee doggies, I'm here.''
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen flew out of San Franciscoby CNBwith the Jefferson Airplane and landed in the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame. color.