A couple of weeks ago, I posted about how Jefferson Starship’s then-young guitarist Craig Chaquico had traded me a tour jacket for an interview cassette I had just done with him during which he bragged about his success with groupies. As you can see from the photo, he’s holding the cassette and I’m wearing the jacket.
Turns out that wasn’t the only interview I ever did with Starship members, including young Craig. Looking for the elusive Otto photos again, I stumbled across a notebook of handwritten transcripts of over 40 interviews I had done in late 1976 and early 1977. Some were with artists who became very famous— like AC/DC, Tom Petty, The Clash, Lionel Ritchie (from when he was in The Commodores), The Ramones, Sammy Hagar and the Bee Gees. Others were with artists never to be heard of again— like Hero, Peter Ivers, Linda Tillery and the Street Punks. And one was an interview with Craig Chaquico. How could that be the interview from that cassette, since we traded it right after I recorded it where they were making an album. I would have had no time to transcribe it. So I went on a cassette hunt and found… dozens and dozens of cassettes, some labeled, some un-labelled. But I did find 3 with Craig Chaquico interviews, one of which was labeled “Craig Chaquico Special.”
I then went hunting for a cassette player. I even found one— an old boom-box. It didn’t work. But I’m going to assume that one of those 3 cassettes is of this transcript from August, 1977 which I found between transcripts of an interview with John “Moon” Martin and an interview with Graham Lewis of Wire. So the interview was recorded when Craig was 23, long before the Starship’s biggest hit peaked at #1 (for 2 weeks).
It was an interview I did with him and the other band members for Creem Magazine and I’m going to mostly edit out the comments from the other band members, primarily drummer John Barbata, although the transcript starts with Barbata telling me what he felt about leaving Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1972, turning down a job offer from David Geffen to join the Eagles and joining the Jefferson Airplane. “I never could stand the Airplane’s music,” he said… "I never liked anything about the Airplane musically. The Starship is more successful. All that political shit’s in the past— we’re making records now; good music. I hadn’t even bought Airplane records. I couldn’t stand The Airplane. It wasn’t my bag. I was an L.A. studio musician. I was into The Turtles and The Association and The Rascals."
That was when Craig jumped into the conversation: “I liked the Airplane. I liked ‘em at that time more than I like ‘em now. I was listenin’ to them for a different reason. Now I listen to music to hear good music. I like the way music is recorded, the technical aspects. But when I was a fan of the airplane, I was a fan of the counter-culture. That’s what the Airplane meant to me then. And it was rock’n’roll and it was loud. But we all grow and we change. Their strength didn’t lie entirely in their musical ability.
Pete Sears jumped in then and Barbata started ragging on punk rock. Being younger, Craig understood alt-rock in a way Barbata was never going to be able to. “The only thing I like about punk rock,” said Craig, "is their anger and their attitude. I don’t like the music.” Barbata really hated it and Craig was a little defensive. Kanter wasn’t in the room but he was a punk rock fan who frequented the Mabuhay and got to know many of the young acts. I used to hang out with him there a lot. I don’t recall him ever bringing any of the Starship guys with him. Anyway, Barbata said something about a big show the Starship did in Central Park where there were hundreds of thousands of people. He said, “Christ brought hordes— we’re not Christ…"
Looking to change the subject, Chaquico interrupted “Christ brought whores?” Then he and I got into a discussion about… the previous interview and that tape!! I jokingly said, “Once I did an interview with you and all you talked about was whores.” And that led to this:
Craig: You gotta understand where I was coming from, man. I was just a young kid, very impressionable. All of a sudden I was in New York City. I was 19. Well, if you were in a rock’n’roll group and a beautiful chick waited for you to be done with the show, would you go for it? As it turned out, she was a professional.
Howie: Did she ask you to pay?
Craig: No. Can this be used as evidence?
Howie: Was that your first time?
Craig: It was my first time with a whore. There’s an interesting story that never got told behind that but if you don’t wanna hear it, I better not tell it.
Howie: Spit it out.
Craig: OK, here’s goes— another immoral story from Craig: California kid goes to New York and gets corrupted. It wasn’t my fault, mom; I was 19. It was David Freiberg’s birthday; we had a fantastic party, a very decadent party with limousines and everything and our manager got this whole Italian restaurant. After dinner everybody went back to the hotel and me and couple of the roadies wanted to go skateboarding. They had to go up and get their skateboards before we split and we told the limo driver to wait, so me and Mike Keller— one of our lighting crew— were doing tricks out in front of the hotel. You know, skateboard tricks. But “tricks” in New York means something else. As we’re standing there in front of this very plush hotel, all these hookers are running in and out. And it’s obvious that’s what they are. That kind of blew my mind. I don’t see that everyday.
We’re riding up and down on our skateboards watching all these chicks come on. None of ‘em looked that great. Then this one girl walks out and she’s gorgeous; she’s beautiful. And I think, “She’s not a hooker. I know that; she’s too good lookin’, right?” She comes out— this beautiful blond girl. I’m falling in love and we’re doing our 360s and stuff up and down the sidewalk and this girl walks right up toys and says “Can you guys do anything tricks on those things?” And the way she said “tricks,” I thought “What is this!” I didn’t know anybody in New York. I’m a thousand miles away from my girlfriend’s house. So I go “What are you doing here?” And she says “I’m just tryin’ to make a living.” I’m still waiting for my friends to come down with their boards and I figure I’ve got about 5 minutes, ya know? I always thought it would be thrilling to do it once with a prostitute, that kinda thing. I was afraid of getting a disease and all that so I asked if she could give me a blowjob. Is it OK to talk about this shit? Jorma would talk about it?
Howie: Yeah, it’s OK.
Craig: I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I asked her how much for a blowjob. I figured I’d try it once in my life. New York— it’s a town of sin— a disgusting city. I hate to say it, but even though it’s a center of a lot of art, it’s really disgusting to me. I hate to see that much concrete and all that pollution and that whole trip. So I was in New York— this sinful place— and I asked her how much. And she said 25 bucks and I figured, “That’s worth it.” So we jumped in the limo and I told the guy to drive around the block a few times and she starts to give me head. I couldn’t believe it. At first I was embarrassed; I couldn’t get it up. ‘What’ll I do now? I never done this before.’ And she said, “Oh, I’ll take care of that.” And she did. And it was great. I was sitting back and watching the skyline of New York go by me. I couldn’t believe I was there. I was thinking, if my mother could see me now. My mother’s very straight. So she gets done.
Howie: You mean you got done.
Craig: Yeah, I got done. It was great. So I told the limousine driver to go back to the hotel. I was a little embarrassed. I felt it was weird that such a beautiful girl had to resort to this kind of activity in our society. I had all these questions in my min d that I wanted to ask her. I didn’t even know her and I knew I was gonna say goodbye in 30 seconds. She told me she knew who I was and she said “I could charge you a lot more money and I know I could get it but I just really like your music and my sister really loves your music. And if you could just give me your autograph… I’m sure she’d be thrilled.” And I didn’t know what to say. I said “Sure; have you got anything to write on?” And she says, “Yeah, you could write on my arm.”
It wasn’t the first time I had written on somebody’s arm. She pulled her jacket up and I noticed not was a fake arm, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it was a shock for some reason. And she knew it would be a shock and she did that to blow my mind. It was like a rubber arm. I didn’t wanna act appalled because I thought it would hurt her feelings. It would make her feel like less of a human than maybe she thought she was, having to be a prostitute in New York. She wanted me to freak out. I thought I’d be cool. Maybe at the time it seemed ugly but now that I’ve thought about it, it was beautiful. She was a human being. So she pulls out a pen and I didn’t know what to write except “Thanks for the blowjob, John Barbata.” It’s the stone cold truth. You forced it out of me and I better see it in print.
Howie: That’s a great story.
Craig: I figured Circus is a New York magazine and…
Howie: I’m from Creem.
Craig: Oh well… big city.
Howie: did you’ve her the 25 bucks?
Craig: I gave her more than that. It was worth it.
Howie: How much?
Craig: I forget.
Howie: Come on, you know. You just don’t want us to think you’re a sucker. You gave her a hundred bucks… and the skateboard?
Craig: She was worth hundred bucks.
Howie: You gave her over a hundred?
Craig: I’m not tellin’. Don’t make me look like a slob when you print the story. I told it in good faith. I don’t do that every weekend. I was drunk.You asked for it. That’s the only whore story I know. I’ll never give anymore interviews like this. You forced it out of me and I better see it in print that way or I’m gonna come looking for you, motherfucker.
Then he and Barbata started droning on about instruments and band stuff. OMG! And twist in this story. Below is one of the cover stories I did for Creem (December, 1977). I just found it on Google Images when I was looking for a photo of Craig skateboarding. Oh yeah, I know where that is and I went to the closet upstairs where all the Creem Magazines are. I wrote the two biggest features in that one-- the Starship story and a 5-6 page feature on West Coast punk rock, under one of my pen names, Jack Basher. So I found the hard copy and started reading it and guess what... I had used most of this Craig interview in that story, although in the Creem story I mentioned that when he was showing me around the famous Airplane mansion on Fulton Street, he showed me a room and told me that Enrico Caruso slept there the night after the 1906 earthquake, which he may have believed but doesn't jibe with Caruso's own story of immediately taking the ferry to Oakland after the quake and getting on a train to New York.
