Craig Chaquico
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born September 26, 1954
Origin Sacramento, CA,
Genres Contemporary Jazz, Classic Rock, Pop, Blues
Occupation(s) Musician
Instruments Guitar
Website
Craig Chaquico (/tʃəˈkiːsoʊ/ chə-kee-soh; born September 26, 1954) is an American guitarist, songwriter, composer and producer of Portuguese descent. He has had over forty years of success in a variety of genres: in the 1970s as an original founding member of the post-Summer of Love Jefferson Starship, in that band’s 1980s incarnation, Starship, and in the 1990s and 2000s as a Grammy-nominated contemporary jazz, blues and New-Age solo artist.
Chaquico was raised in Sacramento, California, and attended La Sierra High School in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael. His mother, Muriel, was a State government employee, and his father, Bill, was an upholstery craftsman who owned his own business. He also had an older brother named Howard. Craig’s household was a musical one as his mother played piano and organ while his father played the saxophone and accordion. As Chaquico recalls, “My mom and dad were musicians and played around the house all the time. I thought everybody played the piano and organ like mom and the sax and accordion like Dad together after dinner.” He began playing the guitar as a young boy, when his parents bought him his first guitar at the age of 10. By the time he was 14 he was playing professionally in nightclubs.
Tragedy struck for Chaquico and his family when he and his father were involved in a serious automobile accident, caused by a drunk driver. The head-on collision left Craig’s father seriously injured, and the 12-year-old Chaquico with two broken arms, a broken rib, broken wrist, broken thumb, broken ankle and broken foot. The driver of the other vehicle was killed.
During the extensive physical therapy that followed for Craig, his father made a deal with him. “He told me that Les Paul had once been in a terrible accident and played guitar the whole time to help him heal… My dad said that if I stayed with it and got to the light at the end of the tunnel, once I was back up to speed, he would buy me a Les Paul guitar.” Despite the fact that he could only play on the high E string of his acoustic guitar (due to his casts from the injury), the therapy helped Chaquico make a full recovery, saying, “it was a great place for my spirit to go.” And his father did keep his promise and bought Craig that Les Paul guitar.
Jefferson Starship and Starship
For much of his early career he lived in nearby San Francisco and has been closely associated with the music of that city. Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane saw him play as a 16-year-old, in the Sacramento-based band, Steelwind, which often performed in the Bay Area and invited Chaquico to join him for a series of recording sessions and concerts. Chaquico was also invited to join both Paul Kantner and Grace Slick’s post-Jefferson Airplane’s solo albums. During this period members of the Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Crosby, Stills and Nash often appeared together in concerts and recordings, and Chaquico played alongside a number of musicians including Jerry Garcia, David Crosby, David Freiberg and Carlos Santana. His first recording was with Kantner and Grace Slick in 1971 on their Sunfighter duo album.
After informally joining the newly formed Jefferson Starship touring band in 1974, he expected to go back to school after one tour. Instead, Slick and Kantner invited him to join the band permanently. He jumped at the chance.
Chaquico played a crucial role in launching Jefferson Starship into commercial success, as the band eventually earned 20 platinum and gold albums. Despite members joining and leaving, Chaquico was the only member to appear in every recording, album, tour, and music video over the course of the band’s tenure in the rock and roll scene. He wrote or co-wrote many of Jefferson Starship’s most memorable songs, such as “Fast Buck Freddy”, “Love Too Good”, “Jane”, “Rock Music”, “Find Your Way Back”, “Layin’ It On the Line”, and “Light the Sky on Fire “(which Jefferson Starship performed on the cult TV classic, the “Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978). His distinctive, signature tone, along with a combination of hard-driving, and yet melodic and soaring guitar solos became legendary.[4] On April 22, 1974, San Francisco Chronicle music critic, Joel Selvin, wrote “Guitars are the best thing about live rock bands and Chaquico is easily the best thing about Starship.”
Chaquico also became a household name and inspiration in the guitar world when his sponsor, Carvin Guitars, began placing regular advertisements in Guitar Player Magazine during the ’80’s featuring Craig and his various Carvin V220 electric guitars and amps. He and Jefferson Starship and Starship were regulars during this decade in MTV videos for such songs as “Winds of Change,” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” (also featured in the 1987 film, Mannequin).
Chaquico remained when Kantner left in 1985, when all band members legally agreed to retire the name “Jefferson Starship” and the band morphed into simply Starship. Many people remember his guitar riffs from “We Built This City”, “Sara”, and “Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now “as well as his flowing long brown hair in the accompanying MTV and live concert videos.
As the last original founding member of Jefferson Starship remaining in the band, Chaquico finally departed in 1991, and soon after Starship announced that it would go dark. Having become disappointed with the musical direction Starship had been going, Chaquico had already begun to form Big Bad Wolf, a hard rock, guitar-driven band, recording one eponymously titled album before disbanding.
He then forged a new career as a contemporary jazz/New Age guitarist. As a solo artist he quickly gained popularity, combining his rock and blues roots with that New Age style, sending him back to the top of the charts. He collaborated with keyboardist Ozzie Ahlers for eight of his solo albums since 1993, his first, Acoustic Planet, which hit #1 on the Billboard charts and was named by that publication as the “Independent New Age Album of the Year,” and the follow-up album, 1994’s Acoustic Planet, which also reached #1 on the Billboard charts and garnered Chaquico a Grammy nomination for Best New Age Album. His song Just One World off of the same album became a part of NASA’s Arc Project, which now permanently remains in orbit above the Earth. His most recent album, Fire Red Moon, was Chaquico’s first blues album and it reached #15 on Billboard’s National Blues Chart. Since then Chaquico has cemented his standing as one of the top-selling contemporary jazz/New Age artists, selling over a million copies of his solo material. In addition, Craig Chaquico was named Best Pop Instrumental Guitarist in Guitar Player magazine’s 1997 Readers Poll and he earned a spot on Jazziz magazine’s list of Top 100 Most Influential Jazz Guitarists of All Time.
In early 1995, he contributed guitar tracks for the animated children’s film Gumby: The Movie. most notably in the scenes where Gumby plays his guitar solos in his concerts.
In addition to Ozzie Ahlers, Craig has also collaborated with other musicians such as Sammy Hagar, Commander Cody, Tom Scott, Third Force, Cusco, Greg Rolie, and Russ Freeman.
Discography
With Paul Kantner and/or Grace Slick (as lead guitarist)
Sunfighter (Kantner & Slick) (1971)
Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun (Kantner, Slick, Freiberg) (1973)
Manhole (Grace Slick) (1974)
Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra (Paul Kantner) (1983)
With Jefferson Starship (as original founding member/ lead
guitarist/songwriter)
Dragon Fly (1974)
Red Octopus (1975)
Spitfire (1976)
Earth (1978)
Gold (1979)
Freedom at Point Zero (1979)
Modern Times (1981)
Winds of Change (1982)
Nuclear Furniture (1984)
With Starship (as original founding member/ lead guitarist/songwriter)
Knee Deep in the Hoopla (1985)
No Protection (1987)
Love Among the Cannibals (1989)
Greatest Hits (Ten Years and Change 1979-1991)
The Best of Starship (1993)
As Solo Artist/Composer
Acoustic Highway (1993)
Acoustic Planet (1994)
A Thousand Pictures (1996)
Once in a Blue Universe (1997)
From the Redwoods to the Rockies – with Russ Freeman (1998)
Four Corners (1999)
Panorama: The Best of Craig Chaquico (2000)
Shadow and Light (2002)
Midnight Noon (2004)
Holiday (2005) – Christmas music
Follow the Sun (2009)
Fire Red Moon (2012)
Big Bad Wolf