The psychedelic era produced it’s fair share of remarkable guitarists. Jimi Hendrix invigorated the blues with a cosmic twist. Jerry Miller of Moby Grape injected some country licks into his band’s early power pop masterpieces. Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead captivated the hippy generation with seemingly endless jamming marathons in legendary auditoriums like The Fillmore. One of the most singular talents and instantly recognisable players to emerge from this era was Quicksilver Messenger Service’s John Cipollina.
John Cipollina and Quicksilver Messenger Service were one of the house bands of the San Francisco acid rock scene. Their music is indubitably linked with this period, with flower-child lyrics and extended space-blues jams. The guitar playing of Cipollina was what really set them apart from the crowd though. The best phrase to describe his playing is left-of-centre. His style was a striking amalgamation of blues, jazz, classical and thumb-picked rock, all delivered with extensive wiggling of his Gibson SG’s whammy bar. His intense vibrato style would influence many future guitarists like Tom Verlaine, Nels Cline and Richard Thompson. Check out this video from Cipollina’s solo career. Please excuse the mooners near the start of video, they mean no harm.
Quicksilver is not one of the more celebrated bands from this period. This could be down to their inconsistent recorded legacy. Having said that, the band did produce some interesting music that is worth a listen. What makes most of their stuff interesting for me is Cipollina’s idiosyncratic guitar style, incorporating jazz and classical licks with a unique blues-rock vocabulary. He is one of Quicksilver’s signature tunes, Gold and Silver. The use of unusual time signatures and elongated instrumental sections make it an early example of jazz-rock.
Recommended Listening: Happy Trails – Quicksilver Messenger Service
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:g9fpxqt5ld6e
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:g9fpxqt5ld6e
Some Top Quicksilver Moments: Who Do You Love, Mona, Gold and Silver.
3 comments:
Thanks for the opportunity to relive a time when JC was still with us. John was one of my best friends until the day we met in 1966 until his untimely death in 1989. John was an amazing guitarist, an all-around nice guy, who never said a bad word about anyone, and a fan of the macabre. A kindred spirit for me and someone I will miss as long as I live.
RIP John.
Thanks for the comment Warren. All I hope is that I made few more people aware of your buddy and his gifted playing.
I'd be interested to know the source of the info that Cipollina influenced Richard Thompson, or Nels Cline for that matter. Please don't say it's just from listening to them play.
I do know that Jamie West-Oram (of The Fixx) named Cipollina as one of his guitar heroes in Musician magazine years ago. Also, Eric Clapton posted a nice message at the johncipollina.com guestbook some years after John died; I strongly suspect that Clapton had thought of him while putting together the Crossroads Festival, and had found the website while looking for how to contact him, until learning he had died more than 10 years before (Eric mentions being unaware that Cipollina had died until seeing the website. He had played with John at a famous studio jam with the Dominoes, the one where Eric invited Neal Schon to join Derek And The Dominoes. He joined Santana instead.
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