Another "cheat" post for this theme, in honor of the great Marty Balin, one of the founders of Jefferson Airplane, whose blue-eyed soul voice featured in many of the Airplane's greatest songs, as well as probably Jefferson Starship's best. And he got knocked out on stage by Hell's Angels at Altamont. Back in 2016, over at
Cover Me, I wrote a long birthday piece about Balin, featuring covers of some of his Airplane, Starship, and solo songs. You can read that
here. I was a big Airplane/Starship fan back in high school, as you probably can guess from that
Cover Me piece, and
these two, not to mention a few
things on
this site.
Balin died in September, at the age of 76.
Here's his obit from
Rolling Stone. Grace Slick, with all of her substance abuse and health issues, lives on--she'll be 80 in October, by the way.