Volunteers (song)

"Volunteers"
Single by Jefferson Airplane
from the album Volunteers
B-side	"We Can Be Together"
Released	October 1969 (1969-10)
Recorded	April 1969
Studio	Wally Heider Studios, San Francisco, California
Genre	Hard rock[1]
Length	2:03
Label	RCA Victor
Songwriters	Marty Balin Paul Kantner
Producer	Al Schmitt
Jefferson Airplane singles chronology
"Plastic Fantastic Lover" (1969) "Volunteers" (1969) "Mexico" (1970)

"Volunteers" is a Jefferson Airplane single from 1969 that was released to promote the album Volunteers two months before the album's release. It was written by Marty Balin and Paul Kantner. Balin was woken up by a truck one morning, which happened to be a truck with Volunteers of America painted on the side.^[2][1] Balin started writing lyrics down and then asked Kantner to help him with the music. The music is similar to that of the single's b-side "We Can Be Together" and was based on a bluegrass riff that David Crosby had shown Kantner.^[2][1] "Volunteers" also has a similar chord structure and rhythm to "We Can Be Together".^[2]

Toronto Daily Star critic Jack Batten used the following lyrics as an example of how many then-current pop songs "constitute documents as inflammatory and subversive as any anarchist's blueprint for civil war", except that there is nothing hidden.^[3] But Kantner said that "'Volunteers' is not political, outlaws aren't political. That's what the song is about...I don't get involved with crazy revolutionaries. They're spending all their time being paranoid when they could be out on the West Coast enjoying themselves, getting high, meeting lotsa people and ignoring it all."^[4]

Cash Box said that the song's "lyric and more rock-based drive" provide "a commercial drive", and compared it to the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth".^[5] Record World called it "an instant smash."^[6] Boston Globe critic Ernie Santosuosso described it as a song that "will stick in your consciousness."^[7]

Allmusic critic Matthew Greenwald said " It's a heavy rocker, and one of the Airplane's finest – and easily most underrated – singles.^[1] Ultimate Classic Rock critic Michael Gallucci rated it Jefferson Airplane's 3rd best song, calling it one of the band's "most aggressive tracks and a rousing anthem for the more revolutionary arm of Woodstock nation."^[8]

Jefferson Airplane performed the song live at the original Woodstock Festival and that performance was included on the album Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More.^[1]