come apart, Kantner recorded Blows Against The Empire, a concept album featuring an ad hoc group of musicians whom he dubbed Jefferson Starship. This earliest edition of Jefferson Starship included members of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (David Crosby and Graham Nash) and the Grateful Dead (Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart) alongside some of the other members of Jefferson Airplane (Grace Slick, Joey Covington and Jack Casady). In Blows Against the Empire, Kantner and Slick sang about a group of people escaping Earth in a hijacked starship. The album was nominated in 1971 for the Hugo Award, the premiere prize awarded by science fiction fandom. Although it received a plurality of the vote in the Best Dramatic Presentation category, this was superseded by a majority that elected not to award the prize that year. A sequel (Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra) including several Blows Against the Empire participants was released as a Kantner solo album in 1983. Kantner had been in love with Grace Slick for some time, but she was involved in a relationship with the band's drummer, Spencer Dryden. After their two-year affair ended, he finally had a chance with Grace. In 1969, they began living together publicly as a couple. Rolling Stone called them "the psychedelic John and Yoko." Slick became pregnant, and a song about their child's impending birth, "A Child Is Coming," appeared on Blows Against the Empire. Kantner and Slick's daughter China Wing Kantner was born in 1971. Kantner and Slick released two follow-up albums. Sunfighter was an environmentalism-tinged album released in 1971 to celebrate China's birth. China appears on the album cover, and the track list includes "China", a song written and sung by Slick about her new baby. Kantner and Slick made news again in 1972, when they were accused of assaulting a policeman after their Akron, Ohio concert. 1973's Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun was named after the nicknames David Crosby had given to the couple. Through longtime friend Jack Traylor, Kantner discovered teenaged guitarist Craig Chaquico in 1971. Chaquico contributed to Sunfighter and Baron von Tollbooth before going on to play with all of the incarnations of the Starship name until 1990. 1974–1984: Jefferson Starship and Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra After Kaukonen and Casady left the Airplane in 1973 to devote their full attention to Hot Tuna, the core band on Baron von