Grace Slick: When I first went with him, we were getting into something sexual and he had bangs, so I never saw his forehead. But I was gently going across it and I felt something sticking out. So I pulled the bangs away and I said, "Paul, you have a hole in your head with a wire sticking out of it." He said, "Yeah, I know, I have to get that fixed. I had a motorcycle accident and they put mesh in my head but it's kind of coming apart." He literally had a hole in his head with a piece of wire mesh sticking out.

The accident had occurred in the early '60s. Paul was on his way back from a folk club when he speeded up to avoid hitting a car. He hit it anyway, flew about 40 feet and crashed into a tree. His skull, on the left side of his head, was fractured. Doctors inserted the mesh to literally keep his head together. "I'm totally right-brained," Paul later told Ben Fong-Torres of Rolling Stone. "Right-brained is the more poetic, dealing with abstract things–beauty, truth, justice, air, earth, light, enjoyment, that nonspecific area, judgment rather than order."

Now it was 20 years later, October 26th, 1980. Paul had been in Los Angeles with the band for about a month, working on the next Jefferson Starship album.

Cynthia Bowman: Paul and I were staying at the Chateau Marmont. We'd been to a party and came home and went to bed.

Paul Kantner: We were fucking, and it reached apogee. Afterwards, I felt this little ping in the back of my head, down around my neck level. And then a headache started coming on slowly and then I started throwing up a little.

Cynthia Bowman: He started telling me that he had a headache. I said, "Yeah, so do I.. Go to sleep."

"No, no, I've got a real headache."

"Yeah, Paul, I know. We all have a headache. You were drinking Dom Perignon all night. Go to bed."

Paul Kantner: I was telling her, "I think I've had a cerebral hemorrhage." She goes, "Yeah, right. Stop lying and take an aspirin or something." And then it kept getting worse and worse.

Cynthia Bowman: He told me he was having a cerebral hemorrhage. I said, "A what? You are fucked up!" Paul is the worst patient in America, no matter what he has. If he's got a hangnail it's time to call an ambulance. But he got up and he went to the bathroom and he didn't come out of the bathroom, so finally I went and said, "What's up with you?" And there was no answer. Then I took one look and this was not a pretty picture. He was obviously really sick. He could not move, he was white as a ghost, sweaty, very, very ill.

Paul Kantner: I said, "I think you'd better call the ambulance." And she demurred a little bit longer and then I started probably going into a coma. And she figured that it was time to call the ambulance.

Cynthia Bowman: I didn't want to argue with him anymore so I said, "I'll call an ambulance and it'll be on the front page of the L.A. Times tomorrow. You'll look like an asshole, it's not gonna be my problem." So I called the front desk and said, "Would you please get an ambulance for this asshole?" I was completely irritated that he was bugging me like this in the middle of the night over what I thought was nothing.

Paul Kantner: And then she was quite take-charge of the whole situation, and was directing them how and which hospital to take me to, which room to put me in. She actually got me in Johnny Carson's room; he had just vacated it or something.

Cynthia Bowman: As it turned out, it was a cerebral hemorrhage. We couldn't find Thompson, and Paul didn't have any idea what kind of insurance he had or what his insurance number was. The ambulance came and they thought it was another rock star drug overdose. By this time I knew Paul was sick. They wanted to take him to L.A. County or something but somehow I'd heard of Cedars-Sinai [Medical Center] and I knew that that's where he should be. I didn't really know what I was talking about or why I wanted him to go there, I just knew I wanted him to go there. Anyway, they argued and fought and I'm saying, "Look, he can't go to L.A. County, he's got to go to Cedars-Sinai." We were driving right by it so I said, "Just stop the car and let me out. I'll take him." So they did actually take us to the emergency room door and kind of threw us out. Then we spent the whole night in the emergency room because they couldn't find his insurance and I couldn't find Thompson. I was calling all the band members. Finally, Jeannette or Pete [Sears] came over and I basically paced the halls of the hospital until about eight the next morning, when somebody finally found Thompson and he came over with the insurance. Then they admitted him. They started doing a battery of tests that indicated he had a bleed in his brain. Then they started calling all these specialists and Thompson and I were on the phone with the lawyer. Grace was in New York with [her husband] Skip [Johnson]. I was in L.A. with Paul and my sister-in-law, who was now China's nanny. They were basically saying he's going to die. He's not going to survive this, and if he does he's never going to play music again, he's never going to talk again, he won't be able to play the guitar. So it was a real disaster.

Grace Slick: I was in New York doing my solo album. Skip was acting as my manager, but he was sick. He was in the hospital with an intestinal thing, and I thought, man, all my guys are falling apart here. But Paul's was amazing because one out of a million people live through a brain hemorrhage. So he's walking around with an exploded head.

Cynthia Bowman: Actually, we were kind of hopeful because he was as much of an asshole as ever. So we were thinking it wasn't as bad as everyone was saying because he was still an asshole even though he couldn't move his head and he couldn't move his body and he couldn't smoke cigarettes.

Paul Kantner: I was looking up in the sky, expecting to see Jesus come through the clouds, or Mary, or somebody, and nooo, they didn't do that. And nobody talked to me.

Cynthia Bowman: Jeannette organized this little prayer thing in the chapel of the church. I remember a bunch of the wives and girlfriends and I praying furiously. In the meantime, they were going to fly in a specialist from New York and they were going to have to operate. He was in intensive care. But we started praying and hours before they were going to cut his head open, the bleed stopped bleeding. The neurosurgeon who treated him said the chances of that happening are about one in a million. Now Paul was saying, "I'm not sure it was a cerebral hemorrhage." Believe me, it was a cerebral hemorrhage. So we spent a couple more days down there. They have these suites. Crosby was in the lobby playing his guitar. Crosby brought Paul an open-tuned guitar and he spent days in the lobby of the intensive care unit just sitting there waiting for Paul to get better. It was really sweet. It was no big deal, either, just David Crosby sitting there waiting for Paul to get well enough to take this guitar.

David Crosby: I was just being his friend! I heard he was hurt and he was in the hospital and I came by. I mean, I don't want to be mushy, but I love the guy. He's a good guy. He's a stand-up human being.

Cynthia Bowman: I remember they had room service at Cedars-Sinai like a hotel does. So I was eating lobster and drinking Dom Perignon. Then I remember Paul bitching and moaning because he wanted to rent a Lear Jet or something to go home in. The doctor said, "Mr. Kantner, you just had a brain hemorrhage. You can't get in a plane like a Lear Jet and fly home." Then Paul pitched a fit and we all knew he was gonna be fine because he was up screaming and yelling and telling everyone he could do whatever the hell he wanted, goddammit, he was Paul Kantner, blah blah blah. So at that point we all stopped praying. We knew our prayers had been answered.

Paul Kantner: I was smoking big joints in my room in about three days.

Paul never lost consciousness throughout his ordeal, or his wicked sense of humor. Craig Chaquico told Circus magazine's Philip Bashe in 1981 that he was sure Paul had suffered brain damage. "I called him up on the phone and didn't know what to expect," Chaquico said. "I only knew he was conscious. So I said, ‘Paul, how ya doin', man, how ya feeling?' And he goes, ‘Ughathorpswitz.' I didn't know he was kidding!"

After several days, Paul pronounced himself healed; the problem had somehow removed itself and he was checked out. He had defied the odds once again. Only a small fraction live through what he had without permanent damage; Paul Kantner simply got up and walked away, a miracle man. If there were any lingering effects, no one noticed them. Paul went back to being Paul. "I'm still the same old asshole," he told Circus.

David Crosby: He had a lucky circumstance. He had a soft place in his cranium from the motorcycle accident that gave the brain room to expand without crushing itself. So it saved
his life.

Grace Slick: I'm surprised he isn't a serial killer! He's doing real well considering what's going on inside that cranium.