IN AKIRA KUROSAWA'S 1950 Japanese film classic Rashomon, four strangers are discussing a rape and murder. Each agrees that brutal crimes have been committed, but that's about all they can agree on. The seductive film's strength is that it presents each side of the story in a completely plausible way, so that the viewer comes away unsure which of the versions presented is the truth-if any.

Like Rashomon, the story of Jefferson Airplane, the band's Paul Kantner has astutely postulated, is also one of many truths. There's a cliché these days, "If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there." It's a wisecrack intended to imply that denizens of that era were so zonked-out that their craniums have been reduced to space dust. But that's not the case here: the former members of Jefferson Airplane were there all right, and they do remember the '60s. Yet each has such a distinctive personality and outlook on life, and the '60s was such a kaleidoscopic whirl, that, despite being in the same band, no two of them experienced the Airplane years the same way.

As in Rashomon, reality here is a composite-or a close approximation of one-that materializes when all of the jagged pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are locked into place. Through interviews, extensive research, common sense and process of elimination, an epic tale slowly-and incredibly-emerges.

Jefferson Airplane was comprised of highly creative, forward-thinking individuals who, by happenstance, found themselves involved in one another's lives at the vortex of the '60s. Breaking down barriers, challenging authority and oneself, walking on the edge of society's rules-it was a way of life not only for the Airplane but for a generation. A genuine youth movement was unfolding, something that had never before occurred. Whether the young-led by the cutting-edge rock bands of the day-were going to change the world was never the question in the '60s, only how.

Today we may snicker at the naiveté of such sentiments, an honest belief that rock musicians who sometimes had trouble finding their own feet could somehow make a serious dent on global politics and basic human consciousness. But perhaps the notion isn't as nutty as it seems in this revisionist, jaded age. More was accomplished than some care to admit. A revolution did occur, even if most of its skirmishes involved ideas and words rather than weapons and bloodshed.

For San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane, music was the vehicle toward change. They celebrated freedom, growth, experimentalism, searching, risk-taking, adventure, independence, open-mindedness, love and good ol' fun. Their music promoted strength in the face of adversity and staring mortality in the eye. It rejected phoniness and fear, especially of the unknown and the hostile, it proclaimed that it was okay, even recommended, to believe in the impossible, to trust oneself, to surrender to fate and encourage chaos. The Airplane, in a manner of speaking, even said it was okay to be a jerk, as long as being a jerk was what you really wanted to be.

Just as there are few definitives in the Jefferson Airplane story, there is no single, accepted way of experiencing their music. For some, the Airplane was at its core a collective of superb musicians honing their craft as they went along, engaging in brain-bending improvisational safaris into rugged sonic terrains previously uncharted. The band's instrumentalists, particularly lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady and drummer Spencer Dryden, were widely praised for their aptitude as innovative players.

Others gravitated mainly toward the distinctive voices of Grace Slick, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner, and to their words, which any two listeners-including, quite often, those in the band-might interpret differently. Or might choose not to interpret at all.

Some perceived the Airplane, from around 1968 on, anyway, as a politically-oriented band, while others preferred the love songs or their impressionistic works. Some thought of them just as a dance band and, for sure, they were that too-music to take large quantities of drugs and go berserk to.

The Airplane fit all of those descriptions, and more; that's what kept them alive for seven years. When all of those components came together, a force beyond their control took over and transformed Jefferson Airplane into a mind-altering substance. That they attained greatness on many occasions goes without saying; that they had their bad nights does too.

The Airplane was a constantly mutating organism-no two of their albums were alike and their personnel changed several times. Their concerts were unpredictable. One never knew where they would head next, and neither did they. Kantner describes them as an "orchestra without rules." That's how they-and their faithful-liked it.

That it couldn't last forever was virtually written into the script.