{"id":481830,"date":"2019-02-05T10:18:07","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T17:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=790150"},"modified":"2019-02-05T10:18:07","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T17:18:07","slug":"flashback-starship-declare-nothings-gonna-stop-us-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/flashback-starship-declare-nothings-gonna-stop-us-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Starship Declare \u2018Nothing\u2019s Gonna Stop Us Now\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/7344568aW.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"\/><\/div>\n<p>When a group of young, idealistic hippies came together in mid-Sixties San Francisco to form <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/jefferson-airplane\/\" id=\"auto-tag_jefferson-airplane\" data-tag=\"jefferson-airplane\">Jefferson Airplane<\/a>, they couldn\u2019t have possibly imagined they were kickstarting a saga that would continue for more than a half-century and mutate into more bizarre permutations than basically any other rock band in history. The full story would require a dense PowerPoint presentation and about eight hours to explain, but the shorthand is that the psychedelic Sixties band that created \u201cWhite Rabbit\u201d and \u201cSomebody to Love\u201d splintered into two factions at the end of the decade: the blues rock combo Hot Tuna and the mainstream rock band <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/jefferson-starship\/\" id=\"auto-tag_jefferson-starship\" data-tag=\"jefferson-starship\">Jefferson Starship<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unsurprisingly, things got really, really weird once the Eighties hit. Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner quit Jefferson Starship in 1984, and after a bruising legal battle, a deal was made that the remaining members had to take the \u201cJefferson\u201d out of their name. By this point only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/grace-slick\/\" id=\"auto-tag_grace-slick\" data-tag=\"grace-slick\">Grace Slick<\/a> remained from the Airplane days, and she was eager to score hits and didn\u2019t object to the use of outside songwriters, synthesizers and drum machines to make it happen.<\/p>\n<p>The gambit worked immediately. Their 1985 debut LP <em>Knee Deep in the Hoopla<\/em> spawned the hits \u201cWe Built This City\u201d and \u201cSara.\u201d This nearly caused old-school rock critics to have a collective stroke and \u201cWe Built This City\u201d has often been called one of the worst songs of all time, but this was the most success the group had seen since the glory days of the Airplane two decades prior. They followed it up with \u201cNothing\u2019s Gonna Stop Us Now\u201d from the soundtrack to 1987\u2019s <em>Mannequin<\/em>. (For those not around back then, this was a movie where Andrew McCarthy fell in love with a living mannequin played by Kim Cattrall.) The song shot to Number One all over the world. Check out the video right here where Grace Slick tries her best to play a mannequin.<\/p>\n<p>The hits dried up just a fews years later and in 1989 Jefferson Airplane (minus drummer Spencer Dryden) reunited for a new album and tour. It was very short-lived and once it ended Grace Slick didn\u2019t return to Starship and opted simply to retire. \u201cAll rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire,\u201d she told VH1 in 1998, and during the past two decades she\u2019s held firm to that idea.<\/p>\n<p>Her bandmates had a very different attitude towards rocking in old age and Hot Tuna, Jefferson Starship and an entity called \u201cStarship Featuring Mickey Thomas\u201d continue touring to this day even though only Hot Tuna have any actual members of Jefferson Airplane in the lineup. They\u2019ve never once played \u201cNothings Gonna Stop Us Now,\u201d but Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas proudly bust it out every night and even Jefferson Starship have recently worked it into their show. Do you know what\u2019s going to stop them from playing that song that even though nobody in the band had any involvement with its creation? Nothing.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/starship-nothings-gonna-stop-us-now-video-mannequin-790150\/\" target=\"_blank\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a group of young, idealistic hippies came together in mid-Sixties San Francisco to form Jefferson Airplane, they couldn\u2019t have possibly imagined they were kickstarting a saga that would continue for more than a half-century and mutate into more bizarre permutations than basically any other rock band in history. The full story would require a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-481830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 15:19:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}