Question: where did the name jefferson airplane come from

title: Jefferson Airplane
text: The first single from the album , Spence 's `` My Best Friend '' , failed to chart , but the next two singles rocketed the group to prominence . Both `` Somebody to Love '' and `` White Rabbit '' became major U.S. hits , the former reaching No. 5 and the latter No. 8 on the Billboard singles chart . By late 1967 the Airplane were national and international stars and had become one of the hottest groups in America . Grace Slick biographer Barbara Rowes called the album `` a declaration of independence from the establishment ( - ) What Airplane originated was a romanticism for the electronic age . Unlike the highly homogenized harmonies of the Beach Boys , Airplane never strived for a synthesis of its divergent sensibilities . Through ( - ) each song , there remain strains of the individual styles of the musicians ( creating ) unusual breadth and original interplay within each structure '' .