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Paul Kantner, one of the giants of the San Francisco music scene, died Thursday. Mr. Kantner, a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane, was 74 and had suffered a heart attack this week.
His death was confirmed by longtime publicist and friend, Cynthia Bowman, who said he died of multiple organ failure and septic shock.
Mr. Kantner had a string of health problems in recent years, including a heart attack in March.

Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner dies at 74
By Aidin Vaziri Updated 5:39 pm, Thursday, January 28, 2016

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Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship. File photo dated 10/08/1980 Photo: Clem Albers, The Chronicle
Photo: Clem Albers, The Chronicle
IMAGE 1 OF 22 Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship. File photo dated 10/08/1980

Paul Kantner, one of the giants of the San Francisco music scene, died Thursday. Mr. Kantner, a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane, was 74 and had suffered a heart attack this week.
His death was confirmed by longtime publicist and friend, Cynthia Bowman, who said he died of multiple organ failure and septic shock.
Mr. Kantner had a string of health problems in recent years, including a heart attack in March.
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With Jefferson Airplane, Mr. Kantner pioneered what became known as the San Francisco sound in the mid-1960s, with such hits as "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit."
The Airplane was renowned for thrilling vocal gymnastics by singers Marty Balin, Grace Slick and Mr. Kantner, the psychedelic blues-rock sound developed by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bass player Jack Casady and the LSD-spiked, '60s-era revolutionary fervor of its lyrics.

The band was formed in 1965 in a Union Street bar called the Drinking Gourd, when Balin met Mr. Kantner and expressed his interest in creating a "folk-rock" band. It didn't take long for the Airplane to attract a sizable local following, enough so that when fledgling promoter Bill Graham opened his legendary Fillmore
Auditorium, the Jefferson Airplane served as the first headliner.

The Airplane was the first of the so-called "San Francisco sound" bands to sign a recording contract with a major label, and in August of 1966, its debut album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off," was released. Slick joined the band a year later and songs like "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" became national hits as the love children came streaming into San Francisco.
Headliner at festivals

The group quickly became an integral part of the '60s rock scene, from the Matrix club to Golden Gate Park's "Human Be-In" to Monterey Pop.

After the band was grounded by feuds and a lawsuit, Mr. Kantner and Slick transformed the group into Jefferson Starship in 1974, taking the name from a Kantner solo album.

When Mr. Kantner left the Starship in 1985, he accepted an $80,000 settlement in exchange for a promise not to use the names "Jefferson" or "Airplane" without Slick's consent.
Slick stayed with the Starship and had a hit with "We Built This City" before the band folded in the late 1980s.

A sometimes prickly, often sarcastic musician who kept his own counsel and routinely enraged his old bandmates — they sued him for trademark infringement (and settled) after he started his own version of Jefferson Starship in 1991 — Mr. Kantner became something of a landmark on the San Francisco music scene, the only member of the band still living in town.
"Somebody once said, if you want to go crazy go to San Francisco," he said. "Nobody will notice."
Mr. Kantner was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 for his work with the Jefferson Airplane during the band's glory years — from the breakthrough 1967 "Surrealistic Pillow" album through Woodstock and Altamont.
"We never made plans," said Mr. Kantner. "Well, we made plans, but they went awry. It was good to have a plan in case they didn't go awry."

He maintained a strenuous touring schedule, performing regularly with some version of the Jefferson Starship name. His group sometimes included Balin, as well as David Freiberg of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, another leading Bay Area band from the '60s.

"When I look back on it, that's probably longer than any of the other bands I've been in," Mr. Kantner said.

Paul Lorin Kantner was born in San Francisco on March 17, 1941.