The San Francisco Chronicle has more. And here's even more on the last years of Spencer Dryden's life, from an AP report:
Mr. Dryden retired from performing 10 years ago, although he had not been working much before that. "I'm gone," he told The San Francisco Chronicle last May. "I'm out of it. I've left the building."
A benefit concert last year featuring Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule raised $36,000 for Mr. Dryden, who had two hip replacement operations and was facing heart surgery at the time. His Petaluma home and all his possessions had been destroyed in a fire in September 2003. He learned he had stomach cancer last year.
He died at his Petaluma home,little more than a shack really, that he rented on the back end of somebody else's property outside of Penngrove.
More on Spencer and his musical career here.
The Jefferson Airplane's website has this tribute page up for Spencer, including these words from Grace Slick.
Though Spencer was the oldest member of our band he was, in some ways, the youngest. He lived in his imagination. A master of "fills" on the drums, he could connect disparate phrases & unify a seemingly impossible leap of time changes. I know because I was often the main offender with my strangely written hybrid tempos. From Los Angeles, he was more "San Francisco" than a lot of people who were born there. His thought processes were almost always from a gentle storybook hopefulness rather than the pragmatic truss that often inhibits creativity. Many of his ideas could not be realized in the paradigm of the times but that didn't stop him from enjoying enthusiastic late night marathons involving lots of paper, pencils & endless ideas for music, movies, books & television. We laughed & talked about an impossibly carefree future. We argued & cried about imposing realities. We loved. And he is loved.
Grace wrote the song "Lather" for Spencer. It began,
"Lather was 30 years old today, they took away all of his toys."
More comments from the Airplane's tribute page, from fans:
To the rest of the Airplane...you never really knew how much your music affected those who listened...and understood.
He is free and out of pain now, but wish he hadn't gone so soon.
From his ex-wife, Sally Mann Dryden (Romano.)
I never stopped loving Spencer, despite his foibles and Lather-like tendencies, which all seem incredibly inconsequential now. We were truly the loves of each other's lives, and that will never, never change. Go Home, Spencer, pure peace and perfect love are waiting for you there. The circle remains unbroken, and your place in it is secure. "Through an open window where no curtains hung, I saw you coming back to me," looking just the way you did when we met at Jorma's in 1968, so impossibly handsome and young. Go on now and take my heart and never-ending love with you. Thank you for all things Airplane, for your humor, your love, your generosity, your art, your lasting friendship, for Jesse, Jackson, and Jeffrey, and for saving my life when it needed saving. I love you with all my heart--forever, forever, forever. I am so looking forward to seeing you on the other side.
So Spencer died poor, but loved by many. R.I.P. Spencer Dryden, and thank you for your music.