Rating: 
Summary: Psychedelic music fans, rejoice!
Review: I'd been looking forward to reading this book for almost three years and bought it the first day it was offered here on Amazon. It was a true pleasure to read this narrative of the life and times of the Jefferson Airplane and the fascinating musicians that banded together to make something magical happen to the music landscape.Jeff Tamarkin tells this story with true affection for the music, the band and the cultural revolution that frames this tale. The book could have taken many forms. Thankfully it wasn't told in the muckraking style of Bob Woodward's "Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi". Sure, Jeff deals with the tough issues of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, but his handling of these topics doesn't obfuscate the deeper story of how this San Francisco band informed and shaped the minds of my generation. I was fortunate to be living in Mountain View, CA (on the San Francisco peninsula) from 1965 through 1967 and was able to experience the excitement of the creation of the Jefferson Airplane's music as it started pouring out of the radio before sweeping around the globe. It was fascinating to read Jeff's book and to realize that the musicians were playing coffee shops and bars all around where I'd lived. Jeff really does a great job detailing how the band members met, and how they interacted with other San Francisco musicians, and describing the nascent music scene that lead up to the formation of the Airplane. I wish I'd been old enough to go have a beer and join in the fun, but alas, I was but a young teenager. Jeff's writing style is a pleasure. If I may make another comparison, Jeff does not descend to the mind-numbing detail that can make a book like this a chore to read. For example, Timothy White's book "Catch A Fire: The Life of Bob Marley" details every recording session with painstaking detail, and while this is good information, it makes for a dry read at times. Jeff keeps the tale moving in "Got A Revolution" so people that are just curious about the band, the culture, or just want a good book for the beach can buy and enjoy this tome. Of course, as an unabashed Jefferson Airplane fan, I'd also buy the unabridged version, but of interest, ... Many of us are enjoying this added benefit. I suppose no review would be complete without a comment on what might have been done better. In this book, Jeff takes a good amount of time to talk about the scene in Haight Ashbury, but I would have enjoyed more of a peak into the giddy hilarity and psychedelic and philosophical insights that obviously informed the music. Having just complimented Jeff on brevity, I suppose I must acknowledge other authors have covered this aspect of the tale. I'm thinking of books like Jay Stevens' "LSD And The American Dream", which appropriately starts with a prologue titled "An Afternoon In The Sixties" and of course, Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Jeff does create the magic of these times, but stays more focused on the band and the music, which considering what this book is about, probably isn't such a bad thing. Let me conclude by saying that I enjoyed the way Jeff includes the formation of the Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna from the ashes of the Airplane, the Jefferson Airplane reunion of 1989, and the final chapter, which brings the us into the 21st century. For those that don't know, both the Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna are still writing and putting out new music here in 2003 so after you read Jeff's excellent book, you can still go out and see these fine musicians.
Rating:
Summary: Great history lesson
Review: I've always loved the music of the early Airplane, but I didn't know much about the people in the group, their history and what they were about. I really appreciate their music much more now, and understand the stories I've heard over the years about the personality clashes of the band members and their escapades. Also this book had the added benefit of giving great insights into the other bands and music of the time.
Rating: 
Summary: the real "behind the music"
Review: I've long been a huge fan of the music and I'd heard stories over the years of how crazy (with substances and by themselves) the members of the Airplane had been. Tamarkin's book lays it all out -- the dirt (and some of the stories are really hilarious) as well as the genius of this seminal '60s band. Unlike a lot of tell-all "Behind the Music"-style exposes, this author clearly loves -- and understands -- the music. It's just that he also gets the people who made it, and often made a mess in the process.
Rating:
Summary: STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND READ THIS BOOK.
Review: It's about time! This book- a labor of love by journalist, editor and librettist Jeff Tamarkin- goes a long way to rectify the cultural revision that has marginalized the Jefferson Airplane! Which band is the basis for almost everything cool! And it, and its progeny, continue to be extremely vital and relevant today. ...
Rating:
Summary: Life & Times of Dysfunctional Rock n Roll Gods
Review: It's not the typical scenario addressing the known issues, attributes and impact of Rock Royalty from music's Golden Era, i.e., circa 1967-1977 but more an affinity to the internal maladies of the first great band of The Psychedelic years. Jeff Tamarkin captures the myriad of personalities, power struggles, the bi-product bands such as Hot Tuna, SVT, Jefferson Starship, Kantner, Balin & Casady. Perhaps a mirrored report such as the Dennis McNally book on The Grateful Dead and the various escapades outside the parameters of the music genre. The road less traveled leads from Washington, DC, Chicago, and other demographic licals to the ever popular and notorious 2400 Fulton Street mansion and Grunt Records. This is a more chronicled report on the various personalities, liasons, recreational drug use of the day and the insight of someone who has spent years in researching the facts of a living legendary band.
As they continue to expand the parameters of their chosen genre, the book is an enlightening text that unravels the complications of five gifted musicians, the addition of the first diva in Rock n Roll, and how all ahve evolved into the 21st century. Kudos and plaudits to Jeff for avoiding the tedious, useles rhetoric of most parables of those most emulated and admired as the youth of America in the sixties and seventies and his uncanny knack in showing that even our selected Gods of choice are not as atypical as we might like to invision.
As they live and breath, we also do the same and the demise of one is as pain staking and demoralizing as any death within our own family sturcture.
The affinity to counter culture and those who helped construct it, the music that lealed a generation and the survivors of the day are all the culmination of one of the great books of the genre in the last twenty years......as the syntax of the day would imply..."This book rocks"...
Rating:
Summary: Definitive, meticulously researched, does anyone care?
Review: Jeff Tamarkin has written the definitive biography of JA and all its various incarnations and has detailed all the relationships, lawsuits, recording contracts, marriages, divorces and anything else you can think of. He had unprecedented access to band members who contributed their own thoughts in their own words. But I kept wondering as I read the book, do I need to know all this? Do I care who was sleeping with whom? After all, why do we care about JA at all? It's the music, not Grace Slick giving us the finger or hearing about how temperamental Marty was. It's a wonderful book if you need to know all this, but by the time I got about two-thirds through, I put the book aside and took out some of my old, vinyl JA albums and listened. That's what it's all about! P.S. The discography in the back is very fine indeed and extremely valuable for complete-niks. P.P.S. I felt the same way about the Hunter Davies biography of the Beatles and then, later, even my own book: The Beatles Book.
Rating:
Summary: Finally - A Great Airplane Biography!
Review: Jeff Tamarkin,(who is a member of the Airplane list on the internet, 2400 Fulton Street, Editor for GOLDMINE MAGAZINE, and composer of linear notes for some twenty-one plus Jefferson Airplane related remasters/reissues), manages to excellently convey a story that is the equal of any television soap opera. The personalities that comprised the Classic Jefferson Airplane lineup: Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Grace Slick, and Spenser Dryden were a battling, creative engine,
producing some of the most compellingly enjoyable rock music
in the last 40 years. Never pulling punches, creating multiple alliances within the band itself, the chronicle Jeff Tamarkin portrays of these individual's careers is a fascinating read. This, the first book to tell the story of the struggles of Jefferson Airplane is well worth the time to read. Thoroughly engrossing. I could not put it down!
Rating:
Summary: revisit a time
Review: Jefferson Airplane's music will survive as part of the soundtrack to an amazing era of personal innovation & public transformation. Who the members of the band were & how they lived their lives has now been captured in telling & serious details. Rebeccasreads recommends GOT A REVOLUTION! as a thorough, if humorless, biography of one of the founding forces in the pantheon of rock'n'roll bands & its influence those changing times.
Rating:
Summary: revisit a time
Review: Jefferson Airplane's music will survive as part of the soundtrack to an amazing era of personal innovation & public transformation. Who the members of the band were & how they lived their lives has now been captured in telling & serious details. Rebeccasreads recommends GOT A REVOLUTION! as a thorough, if humorless, biography of one of the founding forces in the pantheon of rock'n'roll bands & its influence those changing times.
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Journey
Review: Mr. Tamarkin's exploration of the whole being of this creative force in music was a joy. If you lived this experience or wish to savor the mood and tone of the conception, this is the book for you.
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