Earworms: Miracles by Jefferson Starship
Certain songs take hold in my head, sometimes old, sometimes new, for reasons which may or may not be obvious. So, I’ll write stuff about them.
I get it, haters. Six years before this, the three principal songwriter/singers of the Starship were in the Airplane, shouting “Up against the wall motherfuckers” and “Start the Revolution” on the Volunteers album. They’d been feeding their heads for a few years and seemed the epitome of the counter culture. So, what were they doing on this slick as nails love ballad?
Well, times change, and people do, too. Marty Balin had left the Airplane, leaving Grace Slick and Paul Kantner to fly in different directions. Eventually, the band was gone, and Kantner did a solo project that he called Jefferson Starship as a nod to his past. Slick was aboard, of course, and he roped Balin in to sing one song. Suddenly, they were a band again, playing in a harder rock style.
But Balin was always a crooner at heart, and he came up with this song that has always reminded me a bit of Smokey Robinson,, who had his own Miracles. oSmehow the song it most recalls for me is “Being With You,” which didn’t even come out until six years after “Miracles.” The one thing that Balin, Kantner, and Slick always had was a willingness to try anything. So, they went into the studio and just loaded up the tracks for this song until they had created a powerful, swirling, passionate, intense recording that might as well be the dictionary definition of the intoxicating fever of love.
Or is it? I mean, there are those two words, “if only,” that keep appearing over and over in this song. “If only you believed in miracles, so would I.” “If only you believe like I believe, we’d get by.” And don’t forget these lines – “I picked up your vibes you know (I’m having a fine time)/ It opened my mind but I’m still dreaming / And you’re right where I found you / With my arms around you.” As Queen would ask that same year of 1975, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” Comments on the youTube video would indicate that most people who loved this song took it as a declaration of commitment. It was quite ubiquitous at weddings for a while there, and stories of people dying with this as their last song wish are touching in the extreme.
The song itself sounds like there’s no question about believing. David Frieberg on bass and John Barbata on drums drop a tight but gentle r&b groove below softly swirling strings, organ and piano (presumably also played by Frieberg), Kantner’s snappling rhythm guitar, Craig Chaquico’s most tasteful guitar part ever, and then the vocals. (I don’t hear any fiddle by Papa John Creach on this cut, which surprises me a little.) Balin is in complete control of his voice here, and Slick and Kantner egg him on by either responding to or finishing his sentences, or sometimes offering their own view before he’s done. These three used to fly all over the place around each other in the glory days of the Airplane, but here, they are in lock step. Balin jumps off the others plenty of times, but it’s always knowing they are there to allow him to land safely.
I love the way Balin slides out of the chorus right into the next verse, setting up our expectations until subverting them with the uber-seventies saxophone solo (played by Irv Cox, whose other Discogs credits include multiple Louis Jordan cuts from decades earlier) coming out of Balin’s soaring climbing notes on the word “I.” It gets me every time I hear this, from the first time back when I was 16 until this last time just shy of being 64. It’s a master class in conveying powerful, conflicting emotions – real love mixed with the wish for love, or dreams mixed with memory mixed with right now. If only you believed in miracles, so would I.
ncG1vNJzZmirpJrDprzInKJnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wscCrrqiqnah6rrXRmpqlnaNir7p5yZ6dn52iqLyvedKtmKurmJ69