St. Martin’s PressFounding Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen‘s just-released memoir, Been So Long: My Life and Music, offers a candid and emotional look at his life.
The book finds Kaukonen recounting such experiences as his army-brat childhood and teenage years, nurturing his passion for guitar and traditional music, his adventures as a member of San Francisco’s psychedelic music scene, his struggles with substance abuse, and developing a late-in-life family with his second wife, Vanessa.
Jorma tells ABC Radio that his memoir dwells more on the personal aspects of his life than “the dirt” that may have involved such famous friends as Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and his Airplane band mate Grace Slick.
“I really didn’t have the kind of stories that [the publishing company was] looking for in that context, but I did have the kind of stories that were important to all of us when we were young,” Kaukonen explains. “And in a way, to me, that was more important.”
He says if people take issue with the book’s focus, he’d tell them, “Look, this is my story, and I wrote about the stuff that touched me profoundly as best I could.”
One interesting feature of the book is Jorma’s use of old diary entries to help illuminate various incidents in his life.
“Thank God I saved that stuff because…I couldn’t recreate whatever emotional context was happening at the time,” he points out, “so I was thrilled that…I still had that [stuff].”
Been So Long comes packaged with a five-track CD featuring archival live performances recorded between 1979 and 2016.
“I wanted to pick…songs that sort of in a way went along with the story in the book,” Jorma explains of the disc.
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