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Marty Balin's Crusade of Love

It might as well be 1967 all over again. From Stanyan Street at the east end of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park to the legendary corner of Haight & Ashbury, the district is packed. Tens of thousands of people stream onto Haight Street from all directions on a glorious, shimmering Sunday. They wear tie-dyed shirts, beads, ponytails, velvet and leather, bell bottoms, jeans, T-shirts with the logos of dozens of bands and spiritual symbols, berets, boots and sandals. The smells of incense, barbecue chicken and corn permeate the crisp air. As the sun reaches its mid-day arc, the volume and size of the crowd rises. Haight Street's favorite son is about to spread his wings and take 40,000 people into flight.

"Marty! Hey Marty! How are you, man?" A man with a gray ponytail and a face leathered by the sun approaches his quarry.

"Good. Good, thanks," Marty Balin replies, smiling slightly from behind his sunglasses. He looks to one side; the Red Victorian bed & breakfast stands in place, just as it did when the youth of a new generation took its cues on love, peace, harmony, compassion and freedom from this man and the music he created.

"Great to see you back in the Haight, man," the ponytailed man says. "Just like old times. Your music's still great."

"Thank you, thank you." The two shake hands.

As the man walks away, an extra jig in his step, Marty Balin grins and continues to walk along the street that, along with he and his Jefferson Airplane bandmates, became the symbol of a generation seeking peace, love and spiritual freedom in the mid-1960s. One can only imagine how many thousand memories jostle for position in Marty's mind as he walks down the street where he dreamed, visualized and then formed Jefferson Airplane. If it were 1967, Marty would never be able to walk on Haight Street in such relative anonymity; he'd be mobbed by those who lived the musical revolution he helped to ignite.

"When we were really big, and we were music gods, I couldn't leave the house and walk down to the store without people coming at me," Marty says. "That's the part of stardom that is no fun for anyone. Now, it's cool to still be recognized – and to hear the music, dip into a good record store or bookstore. You get that on Haight Street, even now."

When Marty performs on stage, he still exudes the energy, presence and the sublime tenor voice that, to millions of music fans, is as recognizable as Lennon, McCartney, Dylan and Jagger. In fact, he's a better live performer than he ever was during Jefferson Airplane's heyday as the second most popular band in the world (only The Beatles had higher billing in the late 1960s). With auburn hair, boyish features, an attendant mischievous look in his eyes and a body toned by nearly 35 years of yoga and vegetarian eating, he looks like the kid brother to all of the 1960s rock legends.

"I'm the same guy I've ever been, from when I was a little kid to right now," he says. "I paint, draw, write songs, sing, read, shop at bookstores and record stores, meditate, do my yoga. I don't hang out on a street corner like I did when I was a teenager, but I really haven't changed. I like to be with my family, be there for friends. I relate to songs of true love, true feeling, and I can write those songs and give them to someone who will carry them on, convey that feeling. Or, I can sing them myself."

Forty years have passed since Marty cut his first single, "I Specialize in Love." The love song has been his vehicle ever since. Songs like "Today," "Comin' Back To Me," "It's No Secret" and the 1975 epic, "Miracles," forever stamped Marty Balin's voice and lyrics into the hearts of millions. The plaintive pleas for love and tenderness barely mask the inner struggles of a born artist, dancer and singer who overcame partial autism as a young child. He became a reluctant superstar at age 23, fought to maintain his identity in the carniverous world of hit singles, managers, tours and self-serving bandmates, and left the high-flying band he created to save himself.

Marty's contribution to rock music is legendary. While many have taken credit for the San Francisco psychedelic scene that introduced spiritual and experimental concepts to popular music, among other things, the quietest of them all occupied the epicenter. In 1964, Marty and roommate Bill Thompson began openly discussing and dreaming up a scene that combined art, fashion and expression, driven by music. In 1965, he formed Jefferson Airplane, the first band of that era to get a major record deal. He opened a nightclub, The Matrix, in which virtually all of San Francisco's great bands put their acts and songs together. He introduced legendary promoter Bill Graham to the fledgling scene. In the midst of the civil rights era, Marty told Graham to book a great young soul singer from Georgia who, he felt, could reach a white audience – Otis Redding. He wrote two-thirds of one of the greatest albums of all time, Surrealistic Pillow

Though regarded as introspective, difficult to know, Marty was among the first songwriters to tie together spiritual seeking and the dominion of inner and outer love. The only other big names making the connection at the time were John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

"I felt the Airplane's music connected with the people in a way that I was hoping would change the world, make us wake up to a world of love and peace," Marty recalls with a sheepish grin. "It might sound idealistic, but you take away all the stuff we wrap around ourselves in this world, and you are left with a need for love and for peace. And that's what we were singing to; that's what we were telling the world about.

"There's a very healthy movement that's been going on for 30 years, a greater variety of spiritual paths available to our souls than ever before. I like to think our music helped to spread that spirit to people with the Airplane and, later, with Jefferson Starship. It's the realization that you have to look at both sides of the world and also inside yourselves. And what is in there, beneath all the layers that you wear to deal with the world and all that goes on in it? Love. The Kingdom of Heaven –just as Jesus said. Just as every major spiritual path says. So I'll sing about peace, love and togetherness forever."

Marty's personal quest accelerated in 1967, the year Jefferson Airplane soared into the stratosphere and the world awoke to the Summer of Love. Marty felt himself withdrawing from the band and scene he'd co-created. By now, the hints of a spiritual awakening extended beyond the love songs he continued to write. Before the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, he had dinner with Zen master Suzuki Roshi. At Monterey, Pete Townshend of TheWho gave him a book by Vedanta master Meher Baba. Also at Monterey, Marty immersed in the sitar music of Ravi Shankar. Less than a year later, exhausted by hard touring and hard partying, the former professional dancer and current superstar walked into a yoga studio in San Francisco.

"Vedanta and yoga saved my life," he says. "I was out of shape and wiped out. I fell down one night playing guitar, threw out my back and couldn't get up, and I thought, 'Man, I'm out of shape, because of the way I live. I've been through the drugs–I'm just going to give it up.' Everybody was laughing at me. The next day, I walked into a yoga class. I was shaking; I couldn't even bend over and touch my knees, that's how bad I was. But my body remembered something from the dancing days, the stretching, that feeling."

Seven years later, in 1975, the extent of Marty's spiritual immersion reached the public eye in a big way. After being wooed into Jefferson Starship by former Airplane bandmate Paul Kantner, with whom he'd broken ranks while languishing over close friend Janis Joplin's death in 1970, Marty hit his creative stride all over again. He'd spent the past several years studying Vedanta, yoga, original Christianity, Native American religions and culture, and Ancient Egypt. He overflowed with songs; the first, "Caroline," pushed Jefferson Starship onto the national map. He then took a trip to Puttaparti, in south India, with his girlfriend, Barbara, to meet and sit with revered miracle worker Sathya Sai Baba. The experience changed his life.

"I wrote 'Miracles" about Barbara, and also about the miraculous powers of Sai Baba. I went to Puttaparti with Barbara and saw Sai Baba. We journeyed through the South Indian desert to the village; the song emerged from that darshan, that experience. When I wrote 'Miracles,' I had my love for Barbara and my love for Sai Baba -- two very different forms of love -- running through me. So the song is about both of them. I picked up my guitar and I started singing: 'If only you believe, if only you believe like I believe, we'll get by…' The words flowed one after another, along with the music; I got the song written down in one draft, on a sheet of yellow paper."

"Miracles" and the closing number on the Red Octopus album, "There Will Be Love," put the seal on Marty's reputation as one of the greatest love song performers in pop music history. He later added to that stature with "Runaway," "Count On Me" and "Hearts". Jefferson Starship reached No. 1 – something that Jefferson Airplane, oddly enough, never accomplished with Surrealistic Pillow. Paul Kantner, Grace Slick and Marty again connected with the masses, but dissension and discord within the band caused Marty to leave in 1978.

During the past 20 years, Marty's career has moved between Jefferson Starship concerts, artwork, his spiritual quest and his intent to bring precepts of human and divine love onto the stage. After a 30-year hiatus, he picked up the paint brushes at the behest of his wife, Karen, and now exhibits his work throughout the country. He tours with the latest incarnation of Jefferson Starship and his own band in Central Florida. Marty journals regularly and continues to compose; by his count, he's written more than 2,000 tunes in his life. File folders lie on a table in his home, filled with lyrics. "Some of these songs are as good as anything he's ever recorded," Karen Balin says. He devotes his life to his wife and seven-year-old daughter, Delaney, but also to the creative process that continues to flow through him as swiftly as a river carrying snowmelt.

"I'm interested in the relationship between a song and how it connects with you spiritually," he says. "All great love songs do that. I'm an admirer of the Persian poets, especially Rumi and Omar Khayyam. In their works, they're not really making love to a woman, although it sometimes reads like that. They're making love with God; it's divine intoxication. Every word they use is the right word, the right sound, the right tone, the right note. That's the way I always wanted to write, putting different levels to it. What I write is one thing, the sound it makes takes you to another place, and the spirit of the sound can mean something else altogether.

"When you are a songwriter connected to Spirit, you tap into an atmosphere above our world. You try several things, and then something waps you on the side of the head. The same thing happens with novelists. A character shifts direction or focus, the writer gets his ego out of the way and follows along, and there you have it: This random shift has become the true center of the story. It's better than you can do by yourself! Even if you're painting, you sometimes go through different colors and layers, moving things around; it generally looks terrible. Then suddenly, bam! An inspiration comes and the painting becomes magnificent. Who did that? It's that moment that makes you happy, fulfilled."

Marty figured out ways of conveying this spirit onstage. Those fortunate enough to have seen Jefferson Starship in the past five years know the effect of the dazzling three-hour sets laced with love songs that leave crowd and entertainer alike intoxicated with something far different than the substances prevalent in the 1960s.

"On the stage, words are a thousand times bigger than they are on the page," Marty explains. "If I say the right thing, it opens doors of energy that are so great. People feed back and their doors open. Eternity happens. When you're on stage and singing about something positive, it's so much more interesting. It has so many more possibilities – the positive notes, positive scales, positive words. They're all sounds that connect with our higher beings, connect with our hearts, free our minds and deal with our connection with the universe. You're forming a connection with God. That's what it's all about – overcoming maya, overcoming duality.

"In order to sing something that's meaningful, I've got to hit that center; it's got to be right, it's got to be positive. It opens up like a lotus, spreads and gathers in light, then sends it out again. I can pass it on to the audience, like passing on a candle that's been lit from another candle. If a song connects with the heart, people want to hear it again and again so they can take in that energy. You can feel something happening; there's a real magnetism, a real projection of energy and spirit. ThatÕs what I love about it."

As he moves into the later stages of his life, Marty feels the need to accelerate. On many occasions, he's told family and friends about the need to "empty myself," to translate his ever-racing mind onto paper and canvas. Currently, this involves the simultaneous process of painting, writing a play, toying with a second rock opera (he wrote "Rock Justice" in 1979), strumming his guitar for hours each day, writing songs, and becoming a yoga instructor. He celebrates his 40th anniversary as a recording artist in much the opposite manner of peers who burned out or died from the intensity and drugs of the 1960s. He wakes up every morning, does a round of yoga, plays with Delaney and asks to be of loving service. His world is that humble and that simple; perhaps that is why his music has resonated so deeply with millions of people.

"As I get older and think about my life, I don't know what kind of scene I could generate," he says. "However, I love the healing aspect of sound. I love the fact of walking out there and making people feel good; that's a healing quality, especially when you know some of those people in the audience have major problems or illnesses. I live for the moment when someone in the audience hears a song and goes, 'Oh man,' and feels it deep inside. To me, that's so much more gratifying than any other aspect of music. I feel like it is a service I can provide.

"Music is so wonderful. I can't imagine a world without it; I don't even want to know."