1000shipz-blog

[1000shipz-blog]

martha wax in sausalito ? - san rafael daily independent journal, october 23, 1965

so, here’s the thing.

my original plan for kicking off this blog was with a writeup about martha wax - a friend of paul kantner’s & the subject of the song martha from jefferson airplane’s 1967 ode to the summer of love, after bathing at baxter’s. she is a figure that has mystified me for years & is interesting in that, unlike a lot of “groupies” and “muses” of the day, there is very little written about her, outside of kantner’s dreamy, psychedelic love song.

what is written about her comes few and far between, usually in the form of throwaway sentences from books or articles about quicksilver messenger service and the grateful dead (& the airplane too, of course): “martha was with david crosby then,” “martha introduced skip spence to the jefferson airplane,” “martha ran away with girl freiberg,” et cetera, et cetera. 

a picture of her life as a young runaway does start to appear provided you can cobble enough of the pieces together, but they’re difficult to find. what i’m saying is: i have my work cut out for me.

i’ll have some smaller (& perhaps more easily accessible) pieces coming soon while i chip away at the mystery of this rock & roll white whale, but in the mean time have this excerpt from a san rafael newspaper about the first time martha (and julia “girl” dreyer) ran away from home. 

i apologize for the crappy quality of the screenshots, but this was the first time i’d ever seen this and i am blown away.