Spencer Dryden played drums with Jefferson Airplane during its peak years, 1966-70. Spencer's varied background in jazz and rock contributed greatly to the Airplane's sound, as evidenced by his bolero-style beat on White Rabbit. But Spencer was regarded as something of a troublemaker who used his relationship with Grace Slick to get his way within the band. When that relationship ended, so did Spencer's pull within the group.



Spencer was born April 7, 1938, in New York City, to Wheeler and Alice Dryden. Wheeler was a British stage actor on Broadway, while Alice danced with the Ballet Company at Radio City. A little-known fact is that Spencer's father was also half brother to Charlie Chaplin. Spencer kept that fact secret for many years -- even from the rest of the Airplane -- because he wanted to be known for his own accomplishments, not as Charlie Chaplin's nephew.



When Spencer was one year old, the family settled in Los Angeles. His parents divorced when he was six, and Spencer spent weekends with his father on the lot of Chaplin Studios. "I had a playground that was just immense," Spencer recalls of living in Hollywood. "I was constantly being around artists and Bohemian types."



At age 13 or 14, Spencer began accompanying his father to jazz clubs -- which was legal in those days -- and, sitting very close to the stage, he would pay attention to the drummers and how they played. He found an early mentor in Ray Bauduc, who had played with Jimmy Dorsey and Bob Crosby. "Ray was working with Jack Teagarden and playing Dixieland at the time," Spencer says. "He took me under his arm. He was a real character -- pencil-thin moustache, slicked back hair. He was a hipster."



Through his girlfriend's father, Spencer was introduced to more modern jazz, and, by age 16, he was able to go to clubs on his own and sit in with the bands. He later studied drums under Leo Hamilton, Kenny Farrar, and others, while working half time as a drum teacher. He earned a music degree from a non-accredited institution. "I kept going to different colleges, but dropped out." he says. "I was already working [as a drummer] seven nights a week, which wasn't legal, but, anyway, I did it. I knew what I wanted to be."



He would go on to accompany jazz greats such as Charles Lloyd, Bobby Hutcherson and Paul Bley. But his first rock gig came at age 16 or 18, when he played with Roy Buchanan & the Heartbeats. "Roy was the first guitar player I ever worked with," he recalls. "He always played both jazz and blues." Spencer also had a feeling for both styles, though he took some ribbing for it from his jazz colleagues. "I was kind of riding a horse in the middle."



Such early experience no doubt came in handy when Spencer made the switch to rock 'n' roll in the mid '60s. "Obviously, there was more money in rock 'n' roll," Spencer says. "Jazz was on the wane at the time, which was unfortunate." Spencer joined the Ashes, a five-piece rock band with 12-string, "jangly" guitars and a female lead singer -- a lot like the Airplane, he would later recall.



He also played "a bunch of strip clubs," backing strippers and giving rim shots to comedians (including Redd Foxx) at Los Angeles clubs such as the Interlude and the Pink Pussycat. It was at the latter club that Spencer met his first wife, Texas dancer Jeannie Davis, known as Athena the Grecian Goddess. By 1966, their first son was born.



Meanwhile, the Ashes were struggling. The lead singer, Barbara, became pregnant and left, according to Spencer, and the band found it hard to continue without her. Working odd jobs to make ends meet, Spencer received a call in May 1966, from one Matthew Katz, who was looking for a drummer for a band he managed in San Francisco. "Matthew couldn't find a drummer in San Francisco," Spencer recalls. "All the drummers were getting snapped up," due to the burgeoning Bay Area music scene.



Katz refused to tell Spencer the name of the band, but played for him part of their record -- It's No Secret -- over the phone. It was only after driving up to Katz's house to meet him that Spencer learned the name of the band -- Jefferson Airplane. Ironically, Spencer had already heard of them though a magazine article about the strange names favored by San Francisco bands. Unbeknownst to him, the Airplane had also recently been in L.A., recording their debut album in the same studio where the Ashes were recording.



When Spencer flew north to meet the Airplane, he was startled to discover that their lead singer was also pregnant! "The first time I met Signe [Anderson] was in the hospital," he says. "It was kind of weird after what happened with the Ashes." He was also blown away by the community in which the Airplane lived. "I didn't even know Haight-Ashbury existed," he says. "Everybody had long hair, everybody was an artist. And there was a vibe going on, a lot of energy."



Spencer was hired that night. "I was the right choice for the band," he says. "It was a good match-up. I liked the band, liked their music. I always had a folk-blues current active in my head. It just worked." Even Jerry Garcia, guitarist of the Grateful Dead and "spiritual advisor" of the Airplane was brought over to check out the new arrival. "He gave me thumbs up," Spencer says.



It took about a month for Spencer to settle his affairs in Los Angeles, which included leaving the Ashes (who went on to enjoy some success as the Peanut Butter Conspiracy). During this time, he watched the Airplane perform, listened to their record, and was coached into his new position by his own predecessor, the recently canned Skip Spence. "There was none of that ego bullshit that there is today," Spencer says of Skip's willingness to help. "There was no one to get mad at. Skip was [leaving the band] to do what he wanted to do." A few months later, Skip would re-emerge as guitarist and front man of Moby Grape.



Nevertheless, Spencer told Modern Drum that he at first had trouble playing as heavy as the band wanted and had to learn a whole new style of playing. Spencer reportedly also never fit in with the band on a personal level. In Bill Graham Presents, Jerry Garcia is quoted describing Spencer as a model of the "ultra paranoid" L.A. club scene, worried that the "sharpies" were out to get him. Such sensibilities were foreign to the laid back musicians of San Francisco. (Though, in hindsight, the band could have used more of Spencer's caution in business affairs.) In Bill Graham's book, Bill Graham Presents, Jerry Garcia, leader of the Grateful Dead and a friend of the Airplane, describes Spencer as a model of the "ultra paranoid" L.A. club scene, who was worried that the "sharpies" were out to get him. Such sensibilities were foreign to the laid back musicians of San Francisco. (Though, in hindsight, the band could have used more of Spencer's caution in business affairs.)



Early in 1967, Spencer began having an affair with Grace Slick, herself a newcomer to the band. They formed one of several factions within the group, and exerted tremendous influence once the group became famous. According to most accounts, Spencer bullied the others into getting his way by routinely threatening to quit. Grace, at least tacitly, went along with him; as neither was yet signed to the band or RCA, the possibility of Grace going solo was very real.



Spencer is often cited as the culprit behind the sacking of Bill Graham as acting manager in early 1968. Graham wanted the Airplane to work harder and make more money, but the band members were fed up with the schedule he demanded of them. Spencer, with Grace's approval, gave the band an ultimatum: either Graham went or they did.



Not content to merely be the drummer, Spencer had creative ambitions, as well. He contributed two electronic and percussive experiments, A Small Package of Value Will Be Coming to You Shortly (Baxter's, 1967), and the eerie Chushingura (Crown of Creation, 1968). His only song to make it onto an Airplane album was a country & western parody and clever poke at the music industry, A Song For All Seasons (Volunteers, 1969).



Spencer's heavy drinking and questionable judgment were often the source off strife within the band. Spencer would openly pick up other women in front of Grace and later took to carrying a gun. He was also constantly complaining about matters; in one interview, he estimated that he had threatened to quit 28 times.



The final straw apparently came at Altamont. The Airplane performed at the Rolling Stones' free concert on December 6, 1969, the day after playing a concert in Florida. Mentally and physically exhausted, Spencer initially refused to play -- he said that the "vibes" at Altamont were wrong. (Ironically, he turned out the be right, as the free concert degenerated into violence and murder.) The others finally convinced him to play -- no one wanted to let down the people who had put the concert together -- but Spencer's constant complaining almost provoked the band to violence.



By this point, Spencer's relationship with Grace was all but over. On January 26, 1970, he married Sally Mann, a groupie, at the Airplane House with Grace as matron of honor and Paul Kantner as best man. (Spencer and Sally had a son named Jesse, but divorced by 1973.) Without Grace, Spencer no longer carried much weight within the band and, a few weeks later, he was fired. Though he was asked to stay around long enough to help his successor, Joey Covington, learn the ropes, Spencer declined, not wanting to linger. He played his last gig with the Airplane on March 23, 1970.



Spencer then played with the country rock band New Riders of the Purple Sage until 1977, when he became their manager. His subsequent career was largely out of the public light. From 1982-95, he played with the Dinosaurs and its off-shoot band, Fish & Chips, along with other San Francisco alumni (e.g., Barry Melton, ex-Country Joe & the Fish, and John Cipollina, ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service). In 1995, he retired from drumming after a 40-plus year career.



Spencer was not asked to participate in the Airplane's 1989 reunion, although he did show up for the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. By then, he was living in California with his 18-year-old son, Jackson.



Press release after Dryden's death:

Jefferson Airplane drummer and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Spencer Dryden, passed away at his home in Penngrove, California on Monday, January 10th after a brief battle with colon cancer. He was 66.



Nephew of the great Charlie Chaplin, Spencer was born in Manhattan, New York in 1938 to English actor, Wheeler Dryden, and Radio City Music Hall prima ballerina, Alice Chapple. The family moved to Los Angeles a year later, where Wheeler Dryden went to work as an assistant director for Chaplin. Spencer grew up honing his drumming skills on the Los Angeles jazz circuit, playing with such notables as Charles Lloyd, Bobby Hutcherson and Paul Bley. In 1956, Spencer joined his first rock band, The Heartbeats, which featured guitar legend Roy Buchanan. Ten years later, he would join Jefferson Airplane.



Jefferson Airplane was the sound of a generation. More than just the most successful and influential rock band to emerge from San Francisco during the 1960s, they personified the cutting edge of the decade’s counterculture. Jefferson Airplane was on the front lines during one of the most exciting, tumultuous times in American history, and their confrontational lyrics and alternative lifestyle often cast them as "outlaws in the eyes of America." The Airplane didn't just dominate American popular music and culture at the peak of the ’60s, they transformed it. Their 1967 smash hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" provided the soundtrack to the Summer of Love, virtually inventing the era’s signature pulsating psychedelic music, and came to personify the decade’s radical counterculture. They were the only band to play all three of the landmark rock festivals of the sixties: Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and Altamont.



After leaving the group in 1970, Spencer continued his musical career with The New Riders of the Purple Sage in the seventies, and throughout the eighties with San Francisco super group, Dinosaurs, which also featured Barry Melton of Country Joe & The Fish, John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Peter Albin of Big Brother & The Holding Company, Robert Hunter of The Grateful Dead, and Merl Saunders of the Saunders-Garcia band.



Spencer had been besieged by bad luck in recent years. A hip replacement that didn't take well left him permanently disabled. In September 2003, fire destroyed his home and all of his possessions and memorabilia. Three weeks after the fire, he suffered a heart attack and was told that he needed cardiac surgery. Friends and family worked tirelessly throughout 2004, including hosting a benefit concert in Dryden's honor, to raise the funds needed for the procedure. A week before he was set to have it performed, he was diagnosed with cancer. His battle with the disease lasted only three months.



Even throughout this difficult period, Spencer managed to maintain the humor and wit that so many people will remember him for. In a December interview, he jokingly remarked, "Well, at least I know how much I'm worth," when speaking in regards to the seven-figure medical debt he had managed to accumulate in two-months' time.



"Spencer Dryden was born cool," said New Riders bandmate David Nelson. "He had an air of calm mastery about him. I feel fortunate to have him as a friend, and proud to have played on the big stage with him. Always fun and creative, we had a running commentary on life as we traveled the road together. He was a love. He will live in my heart forever."



Along with the other members of Jefferson Airplane, Spencer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Remarking that he wanted go out on a high note and be remembered in a positive light, the evening would mark his second-to-last musical performance ever.



Dryden also played in New Riders of the Purple Sage, featuring Buddy Cage on pedal steel guitar. After Dryden's death he was followed up by Johnny Markowski.



Spencer Dryden is survived by his son Jes (San Francisco, California) from his marriage to Sally Mann, Jackson (Novato, California) from his relationship with Kathy Miller, and Jeffrey (Houston, Texas) from his marriage to Jeannie Davis, along with his mother Alice Judd (Glendale, California), sisters Ginny Ramsdell (Sun City, Arizona) and Marillyn Morris (Queensland, Australia), and 5 grandchildren, Aaron, Lauren, Christen, Meagan, and Jessica (Houston, Texas).