My Best Friend

This song is amazing! It's meaning is obvious. Friends for life, peace love, and happiness. Everytime I hear it, I am instantly in the Haigh Ashbury district of San Francisco, smoking herb, and surrounded by my best friends. :)

Song written by Skip Spence, who was JA's original drummer ('65-'66) but was fired for excessive drug use (!) and replaced by Spencer Dryden, previously drummer for L.A.-based Peanut Butter Conspiracy. Spence was already out of the band when this was recorded, though would soon emerge as leader/main songwriter for Moby Grape (thus becoming a drummer who split with one rock band and became the front man for another decades before Dave Grohl did that with Nirvana-followed-by-The-Foo-Fighters). Spence was the drummer on JA's debut album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off," 1966. He was fired and Signe Anderson, the band's original female singer, quit. They were replaced, respectively, by Dryden and Grace Slick, late of the band The Great Society. Slick brought with her two songs she had originally performed with TGS: "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love." Both were included, as was this Spence song, on JA's second album, "Surrealistic Pillow." The sextet, including Dryden and Slick, as well as charter members guitarists Jorma Kaukonen, Marty Balin, and Paul Kantner and bassist Jack Casady, would hold together for another three years and four more albums, "After Bathing At Baxter's" (1967), "Crown of Creation" (1968), "Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969), and "Volunteers" (1969). Then it would fragment and transform into Jefferson Starship, and eventually Starship. In '66-'68, Dryden and Slick would be in a relationship, then split up and Slick would start a relationship with Kantner. The Kantner/Slick axis in the band would become dominant. Dryden would quit in the months following JA's problem-plagued gig at the disastrous Altamont free concert meant to be a triumphant end to the Rolling Stones fall 1969 tour. Balin would eventually become alienated from Kantner/Slick, and Kaukonen and Casady would divert themselves, starting around 1969, with their blues/roots band Hot Tuna, and would leave JA permanently in 1972. Numerous personnel changes followed, including departures and rejoinings by original band members, especially Balin. By the end of the '70s, Starship was turning out schlock like "We Built This City."

Slick is 74 and now retired. Kantner (72) and Balin (71) are still active musicians. Casady (69) and Kaukonen (72; 73 in December 2013) continue to perform solo and together in Hot Tuna. Spencer Dryden died of cancer in 2005, age 66. Poor Skip Spence spent decades struggling with substance abuse, severe mental illness, and physical health problems before passing away in 1999 two days before his 53rd birthday, of cancer. He also formed the band Oar after the Moby Grape days. Signe Toly Anderson is 72 and occasionally still performs; she is a long-time cancer survivor.