New book - Jorma Kaukonen - Been So Long: My Life and Music

Saw it at Barnes and Noble today.

Discuss...

 

I haven't read it yet but I have tix to see electric Hot Tuna at Jorma's Fur Peace Ranch in nearby (for me) Pomeroy, OH in November and I would imagine that Jorma will have copies for sale there and hopefully he'll sign a few....

 

Some Jorma tunes.

 

Checked Amazon and it's listed as a next Tuesday release and no mention of a cd. Maybe a B&N exclusive?

 

just went to BN to pick it up.

The CD is a 5-track

1 Been So Long 11-2-98 Barrel House Cincinnati
2 Song for the high mountain 11-23-79 Palladium NY
3 Broken Highway 6-26-86 Brownies, Ardmore PA
4 River of Time 3-9-08 Suffolk theater, Riverhead NY
5 In my dreams 3-5-16 Infinity Music Hall Hartford

short and sweet clocking in at 18:18

 

B+N listing also says option of signed copy or cd .

 

Just began the book an enjoyable read so far. The chapter titles are names of his songs, and there is a great ‘lyric appendix’ featuring the words of Jorma songs from JA to present. Nice to read some of the Hot Tuna lyrics, especially ones where the music is more familiar to me than the words. Nice CD too!

 

This will be my next Audible listen after I finish Wayne Kramer's.

 

Q&A: Jorma Kaukonen's New Book 'Been So Long' Recalls His Journey from Jefferson Airplane to Hot Tuna and Beyond | Rock Cellar Magazine

 

Fantastic interview , thanks for posting.

 

Bull Moose has it for $18.97 before shipping.

 

Wow, not only the guitar - the vocal style certainly influenced Jorma too !

;

 

Fantastic interview. Thanks.

 

Cool. I think the name of the club in Ardmore '86 is listed wrong though. That club was one of the "Cabarets", of which I have seen Jorma at - the Chestnut Cabaret (downtown Philly), The Ambler Cabaret (Ambler, PA), and 23 East Cabaret (Ardmore). I think the term "Brownies" didn't exist back then but came into being in the last 10 years or something when it became a restaurant (? I'm not sure). I don't remember anyone ever calling that place Brownie's back then but I could be misremembering.

I was at that show btw. Saw Jorma solo dozens of times back in the 80's, great memories. Wow, just looking at my concert log the week of that show I saw Blue Oyster Cult at the Trocadero on 6/24 (which was simulcast live on the radio), Jorma two days later, then GTR at the Tower two days after that on the 28th! Ah, to be young again, living for concerts basically every night, staying out till like 2-3AM then going to work the next day with no worries....

I wonder what Jorma is covering in his book? His whole life? Some Airplane stories? Tuna? The new wave/punk phase White Gland stuff? Solo anecdotes? Could be fascinating stuff.

 

He covers his whole life, but I was disappointed at how quickly he glosses over the Airplane years. The departures of Spencer Dryden and Marty Balin from the band each get only a sentence. I could have done without all his lyrics printed in the back of the book and having them replaced with a chapter talking about each of the members of the Airplane and Jorma's feelings about/interactions with them.

 

Good to hear about a possible new Hot Tuna album next year. Last one was pretty good.

 

Ok, so I just got this, and I was surprised to receive the bonus CD - even though I just ordered the standard version. Nice surprise. Looking forward to reading it, but flipping those the photo pages, I was struck by the complete absence of Airplane-era photos - not a single one! Very strange: it goes straight from early '60s photos with Janis to '70s Hot Tuna. I certainly hope it's not indicative of the focus of the book itself.

 

I'm a little over a third of the way through the book now, and he has not yet joined the Jefferson Airplane, though he seems as if he might within a page or two! Yes it leapt out at me that none of his bandmates appear in any of the photos, tho i think ONE of them is of him on stage with ja, but book is in another room.......his early life WAS pretty peculiar, in ways that hadn't stuck with me in earlier ja articles or books, the type to feed weirdo conspiracies about how rock n roll was created by the establishment to destroy the youth (that is, his dad seems quite likely to be essentially intelligence agent under diplomatic cover; family visit to soviet union in 63) but i do like my rock memoirs to have the principal joining their main band quite a bit before page 100 and/or 1/3 thru. Biggest relevation so far: says he's done acid less than a couple of handfuls of time. Messed with his guitar playing, took too much time....

 

moving along--i'm pretty sure the three years of his life BEFORE he joined airplane get more pages than his first three years IN the airplane....it's funny. about 30 pages from joining to done with CROWN OF CREATION...... he is NOT interested in giving us a strong sense of the characters and personalities in the band....i'm sure he'll get more to him later but even partner Jack, all we learn is that he's a little hard to be a roommate with and vomited the first time he did acid, nothing yet about how they related or even his opinion or sense of him as musician, except a generic sort of 'paul jack and spencer were a great rhythms section to play with' sort of thing. One wouldn't even know, yet, if he even ever had a CONVERSATION with grace based on how much he's explained about her, and he just warns us that marty was a tough nut to crack and kept to himself. he seems, again so far, to have liked paul well enough---not a discouraging word said about him---but zero sense about what kind of a pal, bandmate, or musician paul was to him....kinda strange! fun to read for sure tho.

 

it is quite funny that he spends more sentences on DETAILS about driving away from the ja reunion recording sessions than he does on any DETAILS about the tour, though his general sense there were too many ancillary characters and they didn't have any real artistic motive for doing it comes thru---but anything like, why all the other people? setlist discussions? who talked to who backstage about what? how did they travel? any clue at all as to what relating to the band was like then?? nothing about any of that....the presence of peter k a real mystery as jorma goes out of his way OFTEN to let you know he never did get along with his bro, yet invited him along to this supposed-to-be lucrative tour (which jorma admits the whole lp-tour project actually left the band in debt....)

 

Looks like I've missed it, but Jorma has been given three (!) free concerts so far this month! All different set-lists, and it looks like he's pulling out some he hasn't played in a while. He's does "Ice Age" here, for example: