Jefferson Airplane's Guitarist Remembers Janis Joplin's Switchblade and Woodstock

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

What was it like to hear about the JFK assassination? Or America's triumph over Hitler? We're seeing Queen at Live Aid. Our past is a collection of stories that bring us to now.

Welcome to the Eyewitness History Podcast, where we view history through the eyes of the people that watch the events that shaped our world. Here's your host, Josh Cohen, and these are their stories.

Josh Cohen (0:33)

Hello, listener, and thank you for tuning in. I am your host, Josh Cohen. Few people can say that they were there when Rock & Roll history was being made. Jorma Kaukonen, Hen. As a founding member of Jefferson Airplane and a longtime member of Hot Tuna, Kaukonen helped define the sound of the San Francisco music scene and the psychedelic era. He performed at Woodstock, crossed paths with Janis Joplin, watched Jefferson Airplane become one of the biggest bands in America and eventually earned induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But behind the legendary performances and the famous photographs is a lifelong passion for something simpler, the guitar. In this episode of Eyewitness History, Jorma Kaukonen looks back on Jefferson Airplane, Woodstock, Janis Joplin, fame, friendship, the guitar, and so much more.

And now I give you Jorma Kaukonen.

Okay, I'm here with Jorma Kaukonen. Jorma, thanks for coming on the podcast, sir.

Jorma Kaukonen (1:35)

Hey, thanks for having me.

Josh Cohen (1:37)

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. I'm really excited to speak with you. I'm just going to jump right into it. Yeah, you spent decades, a number of decades obviously playing guitar.

Winding the clock back, Jorma, what was it about the guitar that grabbed you in the first place and what keeps you fascinated with it today?

Jorma Kaukonen (1:55)

Well, that's a good question and it's a multi-leveled answer. I guess a lot of the kids of my social demography growing up, if you had a piano at home, he took piano lessons, I took some piano lessons. It never set me up. I love the music, but I love the music in general, but the music that I was learning wasn't stuff that I was interested in. But at some point, one of my buddies started playing guitar and he started, back in that era, I guess we'd call it rock ability today, but growing up in DC, which is even though it's the capital, it's still a southern kind of town and most of the music that was around live music was, as my grandmother would call, hilly-billy music.

That's just how it was and it's sort of resonated with me, and the guitar was fun to play. The guitar, when I first started playing in the mid-50s, it wasn't the cool instrument that we've all come to know it as today. It was kind of like a weird thing, not that many people in the neighborhood where I grew up played. In fact, to be honest with you, I think I was probably the only one.

But in any case, I just loved it, and my buddy Michael Oliveri made Rest In Peace, showed me a couple of pieces on his guitar, and I showed that to my dad, and he allowed this as I had actually learned how to play something on an instrument, he'd buy me one, and he did. I started out taking lessons in DC from a classical player named Sophocles Pappas. He was a contemporary of Segovia's. Sophocles and some jazz guys who Jack would know if he was on this call, but I can't remember who they are, had a store, a guitar store. I think the only guitar store, Sears sold guitars too, but it wasn't a guitar store called The Guitar Store. I think it's a guitar shop. It was on Connecticut Avenue. They had some jazz guys and this and that. None of the finger-picking stuff that I've come to learn over the years. But I love learning how to play the most inane tunes. I was thinking the other day that I think one of the first ones what I learned was this old man, he played one, he played nick-nack. As stupid as the song was, I recognized that there were things I was going to have to learn if I was going to go where I wanted to go. So I stuck with it. Anyway, like I said, it was a cool instrument, a lot easier to carry around than a piano.

You could put a strap on and play it in front of the mirror and check out how really bad you look.

Josh Cohen (4:39)

That's awesome. I love it. I was rather spoiled when I was trying to learn guitar. My father had a pre-1970s guild, one of the Brazilian Rosewoods.