He is best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, and a secondary vocalist of Jefferson Airplane, a leading psychedelic rock band of the counterculture era.

[2][4][5] As a teenager he went into total revolt against all forms of authority, and he decided to become a protest folk singer in the manner of his musical hero, Pete Seeger.

During the summer of 1965, singer Marty Balin saw Kantner perform at the Drinking Gourd,[7] a San Francisco folk club, and invited him to co-found a new band, Jefferson Airplane.

Kantner's songwriting often featured whimsical or political lyrics with science fiction or fantasy themes, usually set to music that had an almost martial rock sound.

Although the band retained a relatively egalitarian songwriting structure, Kantner became Jefferson Airplane's dominant creative force from 1967's After Bathing at Baxter's onward, writing the chart hits "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil", "Watch Her Ride" and "Crown of Creation"; the controversial "We Can Be Together"; and, with Balin, "Today" (an earlier effort from Surrealistic Pillow) and "Volunteers".

[9] He also co-wrote the song "Wooden Ships" with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, but was not credited initially due to pending litigation with Jefferson Airplane's first manager.

[12] In 1969, the group played at Altamont, where Balin was knocked unconscious during their set by a Hells Angels member hired as security for the concert.

Kantner appears in the documentary film about the Altamont concert, Gimme Shelter, in an on-stage confrontation with a Hell's Angel regarding the altercation.

[15][16] During the transitional period of the early 1970s, as the Airplane started to come apart, Kantner recorded Blows Against The Empire, a concept album featuring an ad hoc group of musicians whom he dubbed Jefferson Starship.

[5][14][17][18] This earliest edition of Jefferson Starship included members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (David Crosby and Graham Nash) and the Grateful Dead (Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart) alongside some of the other members of Jefferson Airplane (Grace Slick, Joey Covington and Jack Casady).

[19] A sequel (Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra) including several Blows Against the Empire participants was released as a Kantner solo album in 1983.

After Kaukonen and Casady left the Airplane in 1973 to devote their full attention to Hot Tuna, the core band on Baron von Tollbooth was formally reborn as Jefferson Starship in early 1974.

Kantner, Slick and the three remaining late-Airplane holdovers (vocalist/bassist/keyboardist David Freiberg; drummer John Barbata; and electric fiddler Papa John Creach) were joined by Chaquico and Peter Kaukonen (Jorma's brother), who was shortly replaced by Pete Sears, a contributor to previous solo efforts by Creach and Slick who alternated with Freiberg on bass and keyboards.

12 "With Your Love") saw Kantner amalgamate his usual songwriting approach with the soft rock ethos favored by the group in such songs as "I Want To See Another World," "St. Charles" (a minor hit that peaked at No.

Although Earth (1978) – to which Kantner contributed just one song – duplicated the success of Red Octopus and Spitfire with two major Balin-sung soft rock hits (Jesse Barish's "Count on Me" [No.

[4] Despite the dissolution of their romantic relationship, she remained with the band through June 1978, when she left the group to seek rehabilitation for her alcoholism after Kantner asked for her resignation following two disastrous concerts in Germany.

[5] Kantner had been working in Los Angeles on an album when he became ill.[30] He was 39 years old at the time and beat considerable odds with a full recovery without surgery.

It was his second brush with serious illness or injury, having suffered a serious motorcycle accident in the early 1960s: "I hit a tree at 40 miles an hour head first and nearly shattered my skull.

26, featured "Stairway to Cleveland (We Do What We Want)," a Kantner-penned declamatory punk rock pastiche inspired by a phrase uttered by Nite City guitarist Paul Warren.

28) all attained RIAA gold certifications and yielded several minor hits, they failed to eclipse the Balin-era group from a critical or commercial standpoint.

Despite Kantner's efforts to retain a dialogue with the punk/new wave vanguard and a more idiosyncratic approach (exemplified by a lyrical collaboration with Ronnie Gilbert of The Weavers on the latter album), Jefferson Starship became increasingly beholden to the limitations of the album-oriented rock format.

[41] According to Grace Slick, the reunion began as a joke: "We hadn't even talked for a year, and we were battling legally – in fact, there are still some standing lawsuits between me and Paul, something to do with the Airplane.

[43] The induction ceremony marked the first performance by most of the "classic" lineup of Marty Balin, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Spencer Dryden and Kantner since 1970.

Although Balin was forced to scale back his involvement with the group due to family exigencies in the mid-2000s, Kantner continued to tour and record with the band through 2015.

Kantner died in San Francisco at the age of 74 on January 28, 2016, from multiple organ failure and septic shock after he suffered a heart attack days earlier.

Kantner had three children: sons Gareth (a restaurateur) and Alexander (a musician who sometimes played with Jefferson Starship and now an English teacher at Arcata High School), and daughter China (a former MTV VJ and actress).

[52] After joining the late 1960s San Francisco rock scene's exodus to suburban Marin County by briefly relocating to Bolinas, California in the early 1970s, he decided to return to San Francisco as the Jefferson Starship era dawned, residing for many years in "a beautiful house perched over the blue Pacific in the ritzy Sea Cliff neighborhood.

[54] A lifelong cigarette smoker (with a penchant for unfiltered Camels) throughout his adult life, Kantner prophetically stated in a late-in-life interview, "I'm not going to give up the few things I enjoy.

"[57] When Kantner suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1980, his attending physician at Cedars-Sinai, Stephen Levy, was quick to point out it was not a drug-related issue, saying: "There is zero relationship between Paul's illness and drugs.

Reflecting on the era, he frequently recounted a belief that, for a brief period in 1966, the stars were so aligned that nearly any dream could be fulfilled – a sentiment he would emphasize by adding, “Which, needless to say, it was.”[60] In 2004, a documentary containing 13 Jefferson Airplane performances and bandmember interviews was released on DVD.