THE WHITE KNIGHT IS TALKING BACKWARDS

PAUL KANTNER visits the Cavern and Spencer Leigh was there.

On 23 March 2004, I had gone to the Cavern to see Paul Kantner out of interest and with no intention of reviewing the concert, although I hoped for a radio interview. It was, for many reasons, an unusual evening and I made some notes the following day. These are the notes.

Sometimes the day goes badly and yet it is better than if things go right. Someone called Steve Rowland had been in touch and asked me if I wanted to interview Paul Kantner from Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship or whatever they are calling themselves today and naturally I said yes. This, after all, is the man who coined the phrase, “If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there”, although it does imply that his reminiscences wouldn’t be up to much.

The band was at the Cavern on Tuesday night which seemed a small venue for such a prestigious group. Tickets were £14 and so even with a full house, there could only be £4,000 on the door, but of course it is good to have the Cavern on your CV so I presumed that was the reason they were there. On Monday Steve told me that he was no longer in contact with the group (!) but a Bill Parry had my number and he would call on Tuesday morning to confirm a time for an interview. He didn’t, but I rang the Cavern and I was told me that the soundcheck was for 6pm. I thought I would go along and see what happened.

When I got to the Cavern at about half-past six, the barman, the band and the soundcrew appeared to be the only people in the place. “I wouldn’t go near them,” said the barman, “they’re a bunch of grumpy old men.” Neither Paul Kantner nor Marty Balin weren’t there – they were doing the soundcheck without them but the workout on Lady Madonna sounded pretty good and very loud. I thought I would leave them for a bit and see if anyone was in charge that I knew. I went into the Cavern office and fortunately, Bill Heckle was there. “We’ve had an almighty fuckup with the hotel rooms,” he said, “and then I’ve had an argument with them as Paul Kantner is the only original. Marty Balin didn’t get on the plane. He’s done this before so they can carry on without him but I’ve billed the concert as featuring two originals. Their tour manager said, ‘What does it matter? We’ve already done some gigs and nobody’s complained’, and I told him that he would have to put his people on the door to deal with the complaints.”

I established that Paul Kantner wasn’t at the soundcheck and that no one knew where he or the tour manager had gone, so I walked over to Radio Merseyside to do some editing. As it happens, I was editing another fractious band, the Blockheads. When they went into an instrumental passage at one rehearsal, Ian Dury said, “And what do you want me to do? Decorate the room.”

My friend Tim Adams came to the station at 8.30pm and we went to the Cavern as Jefferson Starship or whatever they are calling themselves this week was on stage at 9pm. There were only 200 there, mostly male, but I suspect that if it had been at the Royal Court, they would have packed it out. If the band was playing for the door money, they would be getting around £2,500 – still, it would be shared between five instead of six after the roadcrew have taken their wages.

Ray from the Cavern was selling the T-shirts or rather reselling the T-shirts: all people seemed to be doing was exchanging one size for another. There should be a worldwide conformity on what L, XL and XXL mean. As I got there, a little diddy man was being persuaded that a large one would fit him. “And his family,” I thought. He turned to me as Ray’s mate. “Do you think this is too big for me?” “You wear them large,” I said, but I was wearing a rather small Checkpoint Charlie T-shirt. The next person at the stall was about 24 stone so I realised what a challenging job this was. Ray said it had been a terrible day, “They are all horrible,” he said, “and the tour manager is worst of all. The only person who has been at all pleasant has been Paul Kantner and he’s been looking for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.” Was this San Francisco slang for something else, I wondered. Paul Kantner didn’t look like a man who demanded cheese on toast. If I went on a street corner and asked for a grilled cheese sandwich, what would I receive? I’ve no idea, but went I got home, I had a grilled cheese sandwich. That’s auto-sugggestion for you.

The band consisted of Diana, the lead vocalist who was married to the drummer with the magnificent name of Prairie Prince, a keyboard player who kept his head down and a lead guitarist called, rather appropriately, Slick. Paul Kantner, wearing a headband though he had little on top, sat down throughout the two hour performance and smoked non-stop – in-between songs, in instrumental breaks and while singing, this was a tour de force in itself and they appeared to be regular cigarettes too. He did most of the talking. He sat down and looked round the Cavern: “So this is where western civilisation got fucked up. It didn’t get fucked up in London, man: it didn’t get fucked up in San Francisco, man: it got fucked up in Liverpool. And hey, man, we’re by the sea. How far are we from the fucking North Sea?” This was a valid question and I am not sure I know the answer – probably 100 miles if he did mean the North Sea, three miles if he meant the Irish Sea – but the audience took it to be a reference to the Mersey and someone shouted, “500 fucking yards, mate.” Whatever, we then got Wooden Ships, so at least a little bit of programming was going on.

Paul Kantner had a way with words and would not be an ideal guest for Parkinson on a Sunday morning. “Hey man did you read about that casino that got fucked?” No, we didn’t. “Yeah, I like to see casinos getting fucked – they’re fucking everyone else. This is dedicated to the fuckers, Teach Your Computers To Love.”

The show was more Jefferson Airplane than either of the Starship incarnations and indeed We Built This City and Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now would have seemed out of place amongst all the psychedelic meanderings: it would have been like the Hollies doing Tiger Feet as a tribute to Les Gray a few weeks back. I’m not sure that I had seen a truly psychedelic band before, although they did play without any lighting effects and didn’t much care for the lighting they had. “Turn this light off,” said Diana at one point, “I am getting a suntan on my irises.” She was very good looking with long, brown hair that often covered her face and she captured Grace Slick’s vocal stylings very well and there were excellent versions of Somebody To Love, White Rabbit (surprisingly short for Jefferson Airplane) and Volunteers For America (which included some drunken person from the audience joining them on vocals, not too badly as it happens). I had heard these songs before but never so loud. I suspected that they were used to bigger venues and didn’t bother to turn the levels down.

The most applause came for a heavy metal workout of Eleanor Rigby from Slick, the keyboard player and the drummer. It was excellent and I had not thought of it being an instrumental before. Diana joined them for Lady Madonna but they were reading a lyric and had probably only just worked out the arrangement. Although it can be tacky, I usually like it when visiting bands play homage to the city like this.

Bill Heckle went on stage to thank them for appearing and to get them to do an encore and as Diana referred to him as a fucker when he left the stage, the various admin matters had obviously not been resolved. Paul Kantner, coming back for an encore, said, “All those women dressed as fucking beekeepers, man, what the fuck is that all about? The fucking bright ones are going to save the world. They are going to fucking rebel, man, and they will realise that their fucking men are fucking assholes.”

Paul Kantner continued with his unusual take on world politics: “We have to thank the fucking FBI, man, we should not be fucking criticising them. Without them there would be a fucking atom bomb on fucking New York or fucking London by now. If it weren’t for the fucking FBI, we’d all be fucking dead.” I realised that even if I was granted a radio interview after the show, it could not be broadcast and indeed, I have even modified his speech for the web. Could his short tour be called a Tourette? Both Jefferson Airplane and Ozzy Osbourne were associated with excessive drug use: was this an unrecognised side-effect?

The goodnight song was one I hadn’t heard in years – I wasn’t sure what it was at first but I knew I knew the line, “Fly Trans-Love Airways”. It was Donovan’s homage to Mama Cass, Fat Angel. A great night with a band which was on another planet, or possibly not on a planet at all. Amazing – in fact, fucking amazing.