A Trip With David Crosby

I recently went on a road trip to see David Crosby at the Shepherds Bush Empire or whatever O2 it is called now. And for the journey I made a mix of some of my favourite Crosby tracks featuring album tracks, demos and some of the The P.E.R.R.O. Sessions out takes.

The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra – P.E.R.R.O. –  is a nickname given to artists who recorded together in the early 1970s. They were predominantly members of Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Their first album together was Blows Against the Empire, when they were known as Jefferson Starship.

Starship founder Paul Kantner then came up the term “Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra”, a label of reference to the San Francisco musicians that played on David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name.

During the sessions for Crosby’s album at Wally Heider Studios, the musicians of each band (who were working in other rooms) dropped in to the sessions and improvised hours of music, and everything was recorded. Some of the basic tracks played during these recorded sessions in 1971 were used for Crosby’s album. Engineer Stephen Barncard and David Crosby made rough mixes of some of the session tapes, and in 1991 Graham Nash sent a DAT tape to Paul Kantner which later showed up in the tape trading markets as a ‘pristine’ digital copy. Barncard came up with the P.E.R.R.O. abbreviation when he needed to identify the 2 inch wide tapes on sides, standing vertically.

The “P.E.R.R.O. Chorus” is credited on Crosby’s song, “What Are Their Names”) and several other solo albums.

The name Jefferson Starship was later used for Paul Kantner and Grace Slick’s new band formed in 1974. Paul Kantner recorded a solo album in 1983 as a tribute to this time, Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.