| After Bathing at Baxter's | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Jefferson Airplane |
| Cover: | After bathing at baxters.jpg |
| Released: | November 27, 1967 |
| Recorded: | 26 June – 31 October 1967 |
| Studio: | RCA Victor (Hollywood, California) |
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 43:38 (original) 67:53 (2003 reissue) |
| Label: | RCA Victor |
| Producer: | Al Schmitt |
| Prev Title: | Surrealistic Pillow |
| Prev Year: | 1967 |
| Next Title: | Crown of Creation |
| Next Year: | 1968 |
After Bathing at Baxter's is the third studio album by the San Francisco psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane, released in 1967 as RCA Victor LSO-1511 (stereo) and LOP-1511 (mono). The cover art is by artist Ron Cobb.
Writing for the Airplane's third album began in the spring of 1967, just as the group's star began to soar with the top 5 success of "Somebody to Love" and its parent album, Surrealistic Pillow. The group appeared regularly on TV to promote the record and demand for its live appearances soared; by summer the group had become the highest-paid American live act, playing a hectic schedule of shows around North America including a lauded appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival that June.
Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen had worked up a cover of a traditional blues on stage, provisionally titled "Jorma's Blues", which was subsequently recorded at RCA on March 7 as "Come Back Baby". Despite being a regular in the group's set list, it would not see release on record until its appearance on Hot Tuna's sophomore effort First Pull Up, Then Pull Down in 1971. Three more new songs made their live debut in May: Kantner's "Won't You Try" (his glowing tribute to the Human Be-In that January) and "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" (an ode to LSD with several lines taken from the A.A. Milne poem "Spring Morning") plus "Young Girl Sunday Blues", co-written with Marty Balin. "Pooneil", "Young Girl Sunday Blues", and another new Kantner composition, "Martha", were first recorded at RCA in late May; "Martha" was a folk-inspired song with Slick on recorder about Martha Wax, the daughter of the mayor of Sausalito who had run away from home and befriended the band.
These early sessions were scrapped, however, after the group heard the new Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which encouraged them to go in an even further experimental direction. After the success of Surrealistic Pillow RCA was willing to let them do whatever they wanted in the studio, with new producer Al Schmitt lending a more sympathetic ear to their experimentation.[3] Kaukonen and Casady were also inspired to take the group's music in a heavier direction after hearing Hendrix and Cream, with Kaukonen applying more fuzz, feedback, and distortion to his guitar sound.
The band held an unannounced live show in mid-June to record songs meant for the album; an expansive 11-minute version of "Pooneil" was taped and further overdubbed in the studio but ultimately rejected for release, later appearing on the Jefferson Airplane Loves You box set. However, a version of "Young Girl Sunday Blues" from the show did make the new album after further overdubs. "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" was attempted for a third time on June 26 and 27, where a succinct four-and-a-half-minute version was finally captured along with a new Slick composition, the stream-of-consciousness psychedelia of "Two Heads", recorded directly after. These two tracks were released as the group's next single in August, although their dense, uncommercial sound proved a commercial disappointment, reaching #42 on the Billboard chart (although "Pooneil" performed considerably better on Cash Box, where it peaked at #24).
Recording for the album continued throughout the summer, stretching over five months into the fall. The group rented a mansion with a pool and underwater shooting range in Beverly Hills while recording at RCA, where wild, drug-fueled partying ensued. Members of The Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, The Monkees and The Byrds would often drop by, and Kaukonen even brought a motorcycle into the recording studio one night. Marty Balin began to withdraw from the group, reporting disgust at the self-indulgent behavior and "star trips" he thought his band mates now exhibited, where "everybody was in their little shell." He wrote and recorded two more songs for the album, the soft ballad "Things Are Better in the East" (a bonus track on the CD reissue) and the funky "Don't Let Me Down" (later included on the box set), but neither made the final cut, leaving "Young Girl Sunday Blues" his sole credit on the album after having contributed five songs to Surrealistic Pillow.
Kantner filled the songwriting void in Balin's increasing absence; new versions of "Martha" and "Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon" were recorded along with his "Wild Tyme" and "Watch Her Ride", both intense acid-rock numbers celebrating the freewheeling hippie lifestyle. Spencer Dryden contributed the Zappa-inspired lysergic sound collage "A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly" (featuring nonsensical vocal improvs from manager Bill Thompson and band friend Gary Blackman) while Kaukonen wrote "The Last Wall of the Castle", a showcase for his brittle fuzz guitar work put to tape on August 30. On September 22 Grace Slick contributed a second composition, the jazz-inflected "Rejoyce", with free-form lyrics that referenced James Joyce's Ulysses and the Vietnam War over a complex arrangement that included piano, harpsichord, horns, and recorder.[4] Finally, Kaukonen, Casady, and Dryden came up with "Spare Chaynge", meant to represent the Airplane's jam-oriented live improvisations, its 9 minutes pruned from a massive 24-minute take taped on Halloween. The album ultimately cost over $80,000 to record, ten times that of Surrealistic Pillow.
The album's title was derived from a poem written by the band's friend Gary Blackman. Kantner explained that the title translates to "After Taking LSD", "Baxter" being the group's code word for the drug.
The cover art was designed by Ron Cobb, then a political cartoonist for the Los Angeles Free Press. The front cover depicts the band as a World War I-era triplane with the body of a San Francisco townhouse.[5] Cannabis plants are shown growing out of the house's flower boxes.[6] The artwork is framed with a red bar on the bottom and a blue bar with white stars on the top, signifying the United States flag. The plane, painted in full color, dispenses confetti while flying over a black and white landscape – embodying the white of the flag – with billboards reading messages such as "CONSUME!" and "DRINK IT" as parodies of American consumerism.[7] The illustration continues onto the back cover, revealing a scrapheap followed by a pile of empty beverage cans. A banner attached to the plane displays the album's title. In 2008, Cobb's original painting sold at auction for $24,000.[8]
John Hartford referenced the cover art from After Bathing at Baxter's as the inspiration for his song "Steam Powered Aereo Plane" from his album Aereo-Plain.
The gatefold artwork consists of a handwritten track listing and photographs taken by Alan Pappé of each band member.[9] Author Ken Bielen writes the lack of a group portrait highlights the members' individuality. The inner sleeve features Blackman's poem and drawings by the band and their friends, one of which was almost rejected by RCA on fear it would be misinterpreted as a vulva.[10]
The album was released on November 27, 1967. RCA was reportedly not happy when the experimental work only peaked at #17 on Billboard, failing to attain an RIAA gold certification, although it was able to reach #9 on the Cash Box chart. A second single, "Watch Her Ride" backed with "Martha", could only climb to #61 (#37 Cash Box). The band's singles never again crossed the halfway mark in the Hot 100.[11]
Despite its commercial shortcomings, After Bathing at Baxter's received high praise from a number of critics. One of its most positive reviews came from Jann Wenner in the newly founded Rolling Stone magazine, proclaiming that Jefferson Airplane "could be the best rock and roll band in America today" and that the album was "probably the best, considering all the criteria and the exceptions, rock and roll album so far produced by an American group." A review in Hit Parader called the album "excellent" and "a good follow-up to Surrealistic Pillow." In a later interview with the same magazine, the Moody Blues' keyboardist Mike Pinder named it one of his favorite albums, along with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, Younger Than Yesterday by the Byrds, and Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel. Cash Box said that the single "Watch Her Ride" had a "hard rock beat with a backup centering on electrified workouts from lead guitar," "grand imagery" and "fine vocals."[12] Record World called it "one of [Jefferson Airplane's] sinuous, contemporary melodies."[13] Billboard said it has "weird, groovy sounds throughout."[14]
Conversely, Paul Nelson gave a negative review in Hullabaloo magazine, writing: "The Jefferson Airplane never even get off the ground with After Bathing at Baxter's. How a great group like this can go down in flames after two fine albums is a real puzzle." The review prompted a reader to send a letter to the magazine saying that the album was "more important than Mr. Nelson thinks it is" and that it "must be graded on a curve, just as Sgt. Pepper was."
After Bathing at Baxter's did not chart in the United Kingdom, but it nevertheless received attention from several British music journals. Chris Welch of Melody Maker praised the instrumental and vocal work and deemed it the "most consistent album yet" from one of the "most mature of America's West Coast groups". Writing for Beat Instrumental, John Ford felt it was a "slight disappointment" compared to the band's earlier material, although he praised the production and "feel" of the album and concluded, "Airplane have good ideas which will flourish, eventually." Norman Jopling and Peter Jones wrote in Record Mirror that the album was "pretentious" and failed to match "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" or contemporary albums by the Byrds and Country Joe and the Fish.
The album was voted number 352 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 2nd Edition (1999).
Production