[Deathwatch] Spencer Dryden, musician, 66

[Deathwatch Central]

Many thanks to a loyal reader for this one - Ed.

Spencer Dryden -- Jefferson Airplane drummer
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Spencer Dryden, the drummer for the Jefferson Airplane who once
appeared with his group on the cover of Life magazine but had fallen on
hard times, died Tuesday from cancer. He was 66 years old.

Mr. Dryden, who had health problems in recent years, retired from
performing music 10 years ago, although he hadn't been working much
long before that. "I'm gone," he told The Chronicle in May 2004. "I'm
out of it. I've left the building."

A benefit last year at Slim's starring Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead
and Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule raised some $36,000 for Mr. Dryden, who
was in the middle of two hip replacement surgeries and was facing heart
surgery at the time. His Petaluma home and all his possessions had been
destroyed in a fire in September 2003. He was diagnosed with stomach
cancer later last year.

Mr. Dryden 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 historic
rock festivals such as Woodstock and Altamont. He sat out the band's
performance at the Waldorf Astoria that night, watching from the table.
"He was always fragile," said Airplane vocalist Marty Balin.

Born in New York City, Mr. Dryden moved with his parents when he was an
infant to Los Angeles, where his father went to work as an assistant
director for Mr. Dryden's uncle, movie star Charlie Chaplin. One
Chaplin biographer described a scene of idyllic domesticity at a family
Christmas party in 1943 when 5-year-old Spencer Dryden read "The Night
Before Christmas."

After attending Glendale High School, he graduated from the Army and
Navy Academy in Carlsbad (San Diego County) in 1955. He played in some
early rock 'n' roll bands but soon drifted toward jazz and was working
as a drummer at the Hollywood strip club the Pink Pussycat when session
drummer Earl Palmer recommended him to the Airplane's manager.

He replaced Skip Spence, who went on to start another Fillmore-era San
Francisco rock group, Moby Grape. Mr. Dryden conducted an affair with
the band's female vocalist, Grace Slick, and his marriage to the former
Sally Mann was covered extensively in Rolling Stone magazine. He
recorded on a number of the Airplane's most famous albums,
"Surrealistic Pillow," "After Bathing At Baxter's," "Bless Its Pointed
Little Head," "Crown Of Creation" and "Volunteers," before leaving the
band in 1970.

He replaced Mickey Hart in the Grateful Dead sideline country-rock
band, New Riders of the Purple Sage, in February 1971 and stayed with
that group until 1978, recording a number of albums including the 1973
gold album "The Adventures of Panama Red."

In the '80s, he joined a group of psychedelic rock veterans called the
Dinosaurs that played informally around Bay Area clubs along with
former members of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver
Messenger Service and Country Joe and the Fish. When the other band
members reunited for a 1989 Jefferson Airplane reunion album and tour,
Mr. Dryden was not invited to participate.

"Spencer had a flow," said Mickey Hart of the Dead, "a way of going, an
impulse power that was irresistible and unique. He was capable of
creating a churning, loving rhythm machine for ecstatic dancing."

"He was just the greatest guy," said ex-wife Sally Mann Romano of
Houston. "He was so quirky, and he never intentionally hurt anyone."

He last appeared in public in November, after he was already being
treated for cancer, signing autographs and shaking hands at a release
party for the recent DVD of Jefferson Airplane video clips at the Great
American Music Hall.

He died at his Petaluma home, little more than a shack really, that he
rented on the back end of somebody else's property outside of
Penngrove.

He was married three times and is survived by three sons; Jeffrey, Jes
and Jackson Dryden. Plans for a memorial concert are pending.