When David Freiberg talks about Jefferson Starship’s 1975 hit Red Octopus, it’s less a trip down memory lane than a reminder of how chaotic genius used to work. “Having so many members was pretty good,” he says. “Papa John, Pete Sears, Grace, Craig… and then Marty Balin comes back full time. It really felt like a whole new thing.” Translation: a circus tent stuffed with egos, fiddles, and whatever substances kept the ’70s afloat.
The big hit, of course, was “Miracles”—a song the band initially resisted. “I remember remarks about how long it was,” Freiberg shrugs. Two verses before the chorus was apparently too much for a mid-70s attention span. Still, once they played it, “it just kept getting better and better until it all felt magical. I can’t remember a better recording session with a Jefferson band.” The magic was later mutilated into a radio single with, as he calls it, “one of the most amazing editing jobs I ever heard—down to three and a half [minutes] with razor blades.”
That was life before Pro Tools: literal splicing on the floor.
He also remembers Red Octopus’s weirder corners—his own song “Tumblin,” co-written with Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, later re-tooled by Marty Balin. “I’m thinking about singing it again now, bringing it back,” Freiberg says. “Anybody will remember it? I don’t know. But Marty did a really good job.”
And then there were the curveballs—Papa John Creech’s bluegrass jams, prog workouts that sounded like punishment to actually play. “That was religious, that was a real tough one,” Freiberg says, still wincing.
Was Jefferson Starship ever a “family”? “Several families,” he says. “By the time we got a couple albums down the road, it felt like the family was going in different directions. You have problems with families—especially big ones.”
But somehow, in 2020, Freiberg found himself again in a version of Starship that—by his account—actually functions like one. “This feels more like a family than any band I’ve ever played in,” he says. Which is good, since they’re releasing Mother of the Sun, their first new record since 2008. Grace Slick even contributed lyrics for the lead single “It’s About Time,” which Freiberg describes as “about women running the world—because look what’s happened.”
Another track, “What Are We Waiting For,” borrows its title from a Paul Kantner mantra. “We all jammed in my studio and came up with pretty much the whole album,” Freiberg says. “Paul would always say it. What are we waiting for? Amen.”
And they’re still playing “Miracles,” this time without Balin. Freiberg seems unfazed: “The greatest riffs are always the ones that just come, off the cuff. Somebody said, ‘Could you play that again?’ I said, ‘Hell yeah, I’ll play that a hundred times.’”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
