Singer found ways to blend R&B roots, band’s heritage

By Jerry Fink

Monday, April 7, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Mickey Thomas sometimes ponders the “what if,” wondering what direction would his life would have taken if he had not joined Jefferson Starship in 1979.

“I’ve thought about it,” Thomas, 58, said during a recent telephone call from his home in Palm Desert, Calif. “Initially when I joined the band, I thought I would still pursue a solo career, exploring my R&B and gospel roots, the kind of music that was closer to my heart. I said, ‘Give me two albums and three years with the band and then I’ll move on.’ But one thing leads to another, and 30 years later I guess I’m still more associated with Starship than anything else I’ve done in my career.

“I sometimes wonder how different my body of work would have been if I had taken the path maybe closer to my heart at that point in time. But these days, with the current incarnation of Starship, I’ve been able to blend a lot of the styles I had always been involved in.”

Before he joined Jefferson Starship, Thomas was known for “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” when he was lead singer with the Elvin Bishop Band.

Thomas joined Bishop in 1974, the same year the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane (“Somebody to Love,” “White Rabbit”) changed its name to Jefferson Starship (“Ride the Tiger,” “Miracles”).

Jefferson Airplane was formed by Marty Balin and Paul Kantner, who early on brought vocalist Grace Slick aboard. Through the years Balin, Slick and Kantner came and went. When Kantner, the last founding member, left the group in 1984, he sued and took the Jefferson part of the band’s moniker with him.

That launched Starship, which went on to have the group’s greatest commercial success with No. 1 hits “We Built This City,” “Sara” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

The group disbanded in 1990, but Thomas resurrected it two years later and is still touring. He and Starship will perform Saturday at the Tropicana.

How did your Starship career begin?

When I got the call, it was a bolt from the blue. They asked if I was interested in meeting the band. So we met and hung out and jammed a little bit. We rehearsed some of the newer songs they were working on. It took awhile. I was just coming out of the Elvin Bishop Band, where we were very much roots music — blues and R&B, gospel, country. My roots were in R&B. When Starship called I thought, “Wow. How is this going to work? How am I going to fit into the context of the band’s music?”

Had you been a fan?

I was never really a big fan of the Jefferson Starship. I knew about Jefferson Airplane and their classic hits in the ’60s, and I heard some of the Starship stuff on the radio. I thought it was kind of neat, but I didn’t know how I was going to fit.

Did they know you?

Not really. The way it happened was I had just left Elvin Bishop and was kind of hanging around the Bay Area with friends, jamming in clubs — I already had a deal in place to do a solo album in Miami. I was singing some soul music and stuff at a club and a roadie for Starship heard me sing and ended up kind of making a compilation tape of some stuff I’d done with the Bishop and some stuff from my first solo album, and he took the tape to Starship. So they gave me a call. I was taken aback at first. I thought, “Wow, this will be odd.”

What was the first meeting like?

I went in and met with the guys and got to know them, and we talked about music — Grace Slick and Marty Balin had both left the band and the drummer had been in a bad auto crash, so they had to get a new drummer. So I was coming into the band at the same time as a new drummer, who was Aynsley Dunbar — who now lives in Vegas, by the way. The band was interested in making a change in its musical direction. They wanted to take it away from the midtempo, Marty Balin-type of ballads the band was associated with at that time. They wanted to go with a little harder edge, rocking a little heavier. And Aynsley on the drums was great for that — he was just coming out of Journey and Whitesnake at that time. Then I thought, “Hum. My background, based on where the band wants to go musically, it might kind of work in an odd way.” I just kind of tried to apply my gospel-roots vocals to the sort of harder-rock music that was being written, and somehow the combination seemed to work out all right. “Jane” was the first single we did, and I think it exemplified the whole mixture, the marriage of the musical styles that we were bringing in there, and it set the tone for the next few years for the band, musically.

Was it rough in the beginning?

Once we got in and got to know the guys and we sort of formulated the musical idea, it felt like a new band almost. That’s where we got the title for the first album, “Freedom at Point Zero.” OK — forget the Airplane. Forget Grace and Marty. We’re looking at it like we’re starting over at point zero. It was a brand-new band. We wiped the slate clean, started fresh. It worked for us, musically.

But once that first album was done we went out on the road, and we had to deal with fans’ expectations. They were going to see a new version of the Jefferson Starship without Grace Slick, without Marty Balin, and they might not be as accepting of the new band. That was kind of tough. The first couple of tours were really tough. We knew it would be like that in the beginning, so we played mostly all new stuff. We decided we weren’t going to try to do any of the songs that were associated with Grace, the songs she was known for, and the songs of Marty Balin. It helped that “Jane” came right out of the box and was such a big hit for us. By the time we finished our second album, Grace expressed an interest in getting back into the band. By time the third album rolled around she was back in the group as a full-fledged member. We were together seven years, ’81 to ’88. We did four albums with each other and lots of tours.

Why did she leave again?

I think she convinced herself she was too old to be doing it, too tired. She wanted to bow out gracefully. It was sort of an ongoing discussion with Grace. From the moment I met her she always wanted to paint herself as being older than what she was, too old for rock ’n’ roll. She thought maybe you shouldn’t be doing rock past 30. Guys 40 shouldn’t be onstage. But I never thought that way. Why put restraints on it? Rock ’n’ roll is still evolving. We don’t know where it’s going to go. We don’t need to set perimeters for ourselves. A lot of groups are still doing it, proving that age doesn’t matter. Look at Tony Bennett. He did 200 shows last year and he’s 82 years old.