NEW MODEL OF STARSHIP A HIT-MAKING MACHINE

“I t was 20 years ago today, that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play....”

It was also 20 years ago, during the heady days of the psychedelic revolution, that the Jefferson Airplane had its first hit song, “Somebody to Love.”

Two decades after the summer of love, things--just about everything--have changed. Marty Balin and Paul Kantner are gone. The group’s majestic political manifestoes are part of the distant past. Even the band’s name has changed, first to the Jefferson Starship, now to just the Starship.

With Grace Slick as the only holdover from the original group (she now splits the vocals with Mickey Thomas), the Starship still flies high on the pop airwaves. In fact, the new, streamlined pop group is bigger than ever, riding on top of the singles charts with its third No. 1 hit in 16 months, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” the theme song from the hit film “Mannequin.”

It hardly matters that today’s Starship fans are a new pop generation with only the vaguest memories of the Airplane’s San Francisco glory days. In fact, according to Paul Atkinson, a top A&R; exec at the group’s RCA Records label, one of the keys to the label’s marketing success with the band is that its new audience is unfamiliar with the group’s pop pedigree.

“It’s wonderful that we don’t have any of that baggage to carry along,” explained Atkinson, who 20 years ago was a member of the British pop group the Zombies. “We look at the Starship as a new band. The members are different--it’s been a revolving series of musicians over the years.

“In fact, a lot of the new fans probably never even heard of the Starship before (its 1985 hit) ‘We Built This City.’ That’s especially true in England and Europe. When they played ‘We Built This City’ on ‘Top of the Pops’ in England, they displayed it as a video from a new band.”

Oddly enough, the Starship is a collective again. But where the ‘60s version of the band had the incense-filled air of a urban commune, the current ensemble is the 80’s equivalent of a songwriters’ collective. All of the band’s recent hit songs have come from an intriguing array of outside contributors. They include Peter Wolf, who co-wrote and produced “We Built This City” and wrote “Sara” (with his wife, Ina); Bernie Taupin (who co-wrote “We Built This City”); Diane Warren and Albert Hammond, who co-wrote “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and Narada Michael Walden, best known as a jazz producer and performer, who produced the current hit.

“The band itself doesn’t really write much, maybe a couple of songs, so we’re always on the lookout for outside material,” Atkinson explained. “We’ve really concentrated on winning over a new audience out there. It’s clear that Paul (Kantner) objected to that approach, and he showed his objections by quitting the band.”

Atkinson said the group is trying to speed up its new album “so we can reap some benefits from the current hit.” The new album could be out as early as June, with Peter Wolf and Keith Olsen (a veteran Fleetwood Mac producer) scheduled to split the production duties.

“For me, as an A&R; man, it’s a real pleasure,” Atkinson said. “It’s kind of a dying art to go out and find hits for a band. But they’re very involved in the process, too. When I bring them a song, sometimes they they agree with me, and sometimes. . . .” He chuckled. “Let’s just say they’re quite strong-willed about what material they want to do.”