水银信使

Quicksilver Messenger Service is an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. The band achieved wide popularity in the San Francisco Bay Area and, through their recordings, with psychedelic rock enthusiasts around the globe, and several of their albums ranked in the Top 30 of the Billboard Pop charts. They were part of the new wave of album-oriented bands, achieving renown and popularity despite a lack of success with their singles (only one, "Fresh Air" charted, reaching No. 49 in 1970). Though not as commercially successful as contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver was integral to the beginnings of their genre. With their jazz and classical influences and a strong folk background, the band attempted to create an individual, innovative sound. Music historian Colin Larkin wrote: "Of all the bands that came out of the San Francisco area during the late '60s, Quicksilver typified most of the style, attitude and sound of that era."

The band's members included John Cipollina, Gary Duncan, Greg Elmore, David Freiberg, Nicky Hopkins, and Dino Valenti. Valenti drew heavily on musical influences he picked up during the folk revival of his formative musical years. The style he developed from these sources is evident in Quicksilver Messenger Service's swing rhythms and twanging guitar sounds. After many years, the band has attempted to re-form despite the deaths of several members. In 2006, Duncan and Freiberg toured as the Quicksilver Messenger Service, using various backing musicians.

History

Formation

There is some confusion as to the real origins of the group. According to John Cipollina:

It was Valenti who organized the group. I can remember everything Dino said. "We were all going to have wireless guitars. We were going to have leather jackets made with hooks that we could hook these wireless instruments right into. And we were gonna have these chicks, backup rhythm sections that were gonna dress like American Indians with real short little dresses on and they were gonna have tambourines and the clappers in the tambourines were going to be silver coins." And I'm sitting there going, 'This guy is gonna happen and we're gonna set the world on its ear.'

The next day, Valenti was arrested for possession of marijuana and spent the better part of the next two years in jail. However, Gary Duncan has stated:

That's the story Cipollina told everybody. But according to Dino, that wasn't the case at all. When he'd been looking for a band, he'd talked to Cipollina, and everybody somehow put two and two together. He actually lived with us when he got out of prison, and while we played some music together and wrote songs, he had no interest in playing in Quicksilver; he wanted to start his own career. Well, when his own career didn't do so well, he had more interest in playing in Quicksilver!

Whether or not Quicksilver Messenger Service was what Valenti had in mind, it appears from Duncan's recollections that he had at least talked with Cipollina about forming a band; Cipollina remembered that:

I was recommended to Dino, probably because I was the only guy playing an electric guitar, let alone lead, at the time…We talked about rehearsing one night and planned to rehearse the following night but it never happened. The next day Dino got busted.

David Freiberg, a folk-guitarist friend of Valenti, was recruited to the group. He had previously been in a band with Paul Kantner and David Crosby but like Valenti he had been arrested and briefly jailed for marijuana possession and had just been released. "We were to take care of this guy Freiberg", Cipollina recalled, and though they had never met before, Freiberg was integrated into the group. The band also added Skip Spence on guitar and began to rehearse at Marty Balin's club, the Matrix. Balin, in search of a drummer for the band he was organizing (which became Jefferson Airplane), convinced Spence to switch instruments and groups.

To make up for poaching Spence, Balin suggested that they contact drummer Greg Elmore and guitarist–singer Gary Duncan, who had played together in a group called The Brogues. This new version of the group played its first concert performance in December 1965, playing for the Christmas party of the Committee (improv group). Drummer Greg Elmore and guitarist Jim Murray were added to fill out the original band.

It was a band without a name, Cipollina recalled:

Jim Murray and David Freiberg came up with the name. Me and Freiberg were born on the same day, and Gary and Greg were born on the same day, we were all Virgos and Murray was a Gemini. And Virgos and Geminis are all ruled by the planet Mercury. Another name for Mercury is Quicksilver. And then, Quicksilver is the messenger of the Gods, and Virgo is the servant, so Freiberg says "Oh, Quicksilver Messenger Service".