“Volunteers” by Jefferson Airplane

Jefferson Airplane put out "Volunteers" as a single in 1969, a couple of months ahead of the album that shares its name, and it began with a rude awakening: Marty Balin was roused one morning by a truck with Volunteers of America painted on its side, started scribbling lyrics, and called in Paul Kantner for the music. The riff grew from a bluegrass lick David Crosby had shown Kantner, and it shares its chords and rhythm with the B-side, "We Can Be Together".

It sounds like a call to the barricades, and the Toronto Daily Star's Jack Batten held up its words as proof that a pop song could be as incendiary as any anarchist's plan. Kantner shrugged that off: outlaws, he said, aren't political. The band played it at Woodstock, and that performance landed on the festival's soundtrack album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.