Formed in 1965, Jefferson Airplane was the most commercially successful band to come out of San Francisco in the mid-to late 1960s. Along with contemporaries like the Grateful Dead, they pioneered a blend of folk, blues, and psychedelia to play what became known as West Coast Rock. Their presence at some of the 1960s' defining cultural moments attests to their status as one of the key bands of this era.

While Jefferson Airplane's eclectic sound could be traced to folk music and the blues, it also signaled significant departures from such generic origins, with its distorted, extended guitar improvisations and lyrics which referred to altered states of consciousness and counter-cultural concerns. As Time pointed out in June 1967, what became known as the San Francisco sound "encompasses everything from blue-grass to Indian ragas, from Bach to jug-band music—often within the framework of a single song...