West Coast improvisational legends, Quicksilver Messenger Service, are celebrated across a seven-disc box set.

MAGICAL, FREEWHEELING, IMPROVISATIONAL SKILLS

When we think about the San Francisco of the second part of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the explosion of music and counterculture, that gave voice to the hopes of a generation for a better world, two bands quite rightly come to mind, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. There is of course a third band that deserves to be recognised and celebrated for its contribution, which is Quicksilver Messenger Service (Quicksilver).

Their magical, freewheeling, improvisational skills, marked them out as a live proposition that was thrilling and risk taking. Sweeping audiences up in a whirlwind of sound and taking them on an unpredictable musical journey. In the Quicksilver playbook, musical rules existed only to be broken, matching the ethos of the emerging counterculture that surrounded them. Their influence was keenly felt in the UK, where the Welsh band Man were very enthusiastic admirers. If you look at the cover of Man’s Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics album, there proudly displayed is a vinyl copy of the first Quicksilver album, and a framed print of Quicksilver’s Happy Trails album. Man eventually teamed up with guitarist John Cipollina from Quicksilver for a remarkable UK tour, from which the set at the Roundhouse from May 1975, can be found on Man’s Maximum Darkness album. 

This CD box set, Who Do You Love? – The Recordings 1967-1972, features seven of their albums, bonus material, and a live disc, together with an informative booklet, and is a fitting celebration of the band’s achievements and legacy.  In this review we will focus on their first three albums, which are perhaps the foundation of the bands impact at the time and their subsequent influence, together with the live disc.

DISC ONE: QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE (1968)

The self-titled Quicksilver Messenger Service was the band’s debut release and is a mirror to the contrasting musical elements that made up the band’s sound. It feature’s the classic line up of: John Cipollina, guitar; Gary Duncan, guitar and vocals, David Freiberg, bass guitar, vocals, and viola; and Greg Elmore, drums. On this studio set, you can hear melodic folk rock, psychedelia, and their trademark jazz influenced improvisational forays.

Opening track, Pride Of Man, is a cover of the Hamilton Camp spiritual folk classic, written in 1964. As interpreted by Quicksilver, with its edgy angular guitars and declaiming vocals, it fits perfectly with the late 1960s West Coast ethos of protest through music. Light Your Windows, a Gary Duncan and David Freiberg original, is a psychedelic ballad with some lovely understated vocal harmonies, which in its final coda gives a hint of the band’s more improvised swing driven sound.

The lengthier and purely instrumental Gold and Silver, transports us firmly into the band’s freeform approach, with Gary Duncan and John Cipollina swapping fluid and inventive lead guitar lines with each other, while Greg Elmore on drums, adds a syncopated rhythm, that wouldn’t sound out of place in a modal jazz setting. 

The Fool, over its twelve minutes length, is the defining musical statement on the record. It is a gradually building piece, that feels both tightly compositional and boldly experimental, a challenging feat to pull off. The central melodic themes are full of shimmering beauty, and the changes of pace and mood are well timed. Atmosphere and psychedelia are stamped throughout the instrumental explorations. David Freiberg’s mesmerising and emotionally tinged lead vocal syncs perfectly with the striking choral like harmony vocals provided by The Ace of Cups.  David Freiberg’s viola also appears at a couple of intervals, adding an intriguing new tonal layer. 

DISC TWO: LIVE 1968

Live 1968 provides a raw in the moment snapshot of Quicksilver in the live setting and is full of striking contrasts. Codine, an evocative song about addiction and exploitation, by Buffy Sainte-Marie, the band make their own, with a bluesy chaotic soundscape that soars and crashes. 

Gold and Silver, in contrast, is all about jazz type tempos and interchanging melodies between the guitarists, that must have created a hypnotic web of sound to wash over the audience. Greg Elmore’s expansive drum solo almost impossibly combines jazz and rock and roll rhythmic accents. It is in fact a drum solo that completely holds your interest, something that is not always a given with drum solos.

On the other hand, songs such as Light Your Windows and Dino’s Song show a more tender folk-tinged side to the band, though of course underpinned with an abrasive psychedelia. Something which ensures an edginess to the live renditions of these songs. 

DISC THREE: HAPPY TRAILS (1969)

Happy Trails is the quintessential Quicksilver record, with a major part of the record recorded live at the Fillmore West and Fillmore East. Standing at the centre of the album is Quicksilver’s twenty-five minutes plus reinvention of the Bo Diddley song Who Do You Love. Developed into a six-movement musical suite, it is a towering achievement, that stands equal with the best work of the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.

The improvisational interplay between John Cipollina and Gary Duncan’s guitars is thrilling and otherworldly. Helpfully in the stereo mix, Gary Duncan’s guitar emanates from the left channel and John Cipollina’s from the right channel. They both bring sharply different but complementary guitar styles to their playing. Gary Duncan’s solo work on When You Love, is built around a modal jazz structure, with a gift for integrating melody, flow, and lyricism, to drive each iteration of the solo. John Cipollina’s solo work on How You Love, skillfully uses distortion, feedback, tremolo and vibrato to unleash a collage of imaginative psychedelic styled sounds. His two amplifier and customised SG guitar set up a key self designed factor in providing the scaffolding for his unique style.

Around these two key movements, we have the bookends of Who Do You Love – Part 1 and Part 2, which utilise the thematics from Bo Diddley’s original composition, as jumping off and concluding motifs for the improvised sections. With particularly on Part 1, Greg Elmore’s sublimely subtle syncopated rhythms, simultaneously establishing both a rhythm and blues drive and a jazz ambiance. 

Where You Love, that follows on from Gary Duncan’s When You Love, really lets loose on a free form psychedelic inspired improvisation, where the audience’s voices become a fifth essential instrument. Which Do You Love, which follows from John Cipollina’s How You Love, features David Freiberg leaning into a funk-based bass guitar solo. The remarkable harmonic and rhythmic interplay has in some aspects parallels with the work of the incredible jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius.

While the Who Do You Love suite is the towering centerpiece of the album, there is much else to love about this album, particularly for this reviewer, the band’s take on another Bo Diddley classic, Mona. Here the guitar work becomes quite jagged, and more blues based, with the band introducing it as, “This next one is rock and roll”. John Cipollina offers up some his most soulful playing as he explores the rugged musical core of the song. For a quite wonderful interpretation of Mona, that builds on the Quicksilver template, and adds in some compelling new elements, seek out the live version by Help Yourself, with Man’s Deke Leonard and pedal steel guitar player B.J. Cole guesting, on Man’s Christmas At The Patti album.

DISC FOUR: SHADY GROVE (1969)

Shady Grove introduced to the bands line up, Nicky Hopkins, a highly gifted piano and keyboards player who also graced the work of the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane, amongst many others. Gary Duncan had left the band temporarily and Nicky Hopkins was an inspired replacement rather than taking the road of adding another guitarist.

Nicky Hopkins makes his presence felt immediately on the opening title track, with a rolling bluesy piano style that works well with John Chipollina’s spiky guitar phrases. Flute song, a haunting acoustic ballad, allows Nicky Hopkins space to offer a more classical piano style, while the song itself retains a west coast wistfulness. David Freiberg’s vocal here is beautifully paced and emotionally nuanced.  

Flashing Lonesome has some lilting melodic flourishes and is lifted by an ethereal quality to the harmony vocal sections. It has the strangest of codas, where John Chipollina at his jazziest competes with disembodied voices and Greg Elmore’s free jazz influenced drumming. Words Can’t Say, in complete contrast, is a country styled composition, featuring a trademark soaring John Chipollina solo with a viola counterpoint.

The final track is a nine-minute instrumental opus, that is equal parts west coast looseness, a rollicking blues, and jazz phrasing. Nicky Hopkins effortlessly moves between sinuous piano and organ as John Chipollina adds glistening guitar accents. Shady Grove ultimately succeeds, as it performs the difficult feat of retaining much of the classic Quicksilver sound, while integrating the wider musical palette offered by Nicky Hopkin’s piano and keyboards.

A VERY FINE BOX SET 

This is a very fine box set, that does full justice to a visionary band, that particularly in the live setting were musically transcendent. In their courageous improvisational approach, they shared a not dissimilar musical ethos with John Coltrane, and his scale of ambition in a jazz context. The essay by Mike Mettler, to be found in the accompanying booklet, is an excellent retelling and refection on the Quicksilver story.

A quick note about the other albums in the set. There are some real gems to be found across these, within a more song based musical approach. Standout among these is What About Me, the title track of the 1970 album. It is an ahead of its time treatise on future ecological disaster, the destructive impacts of capitalism, and the felt outlaw nature of protest at that time. The soulful rhythm and blues musical backing, featuring horns, flute and the conga, fits just perfectly. Written by, and featuring a vocal by Dino Valenti, an important figure in the history of Quicksilver, it feels like an anthem to the movements for change in late 1960s/early 1970s America.

A FINAL CODA

As a final coda to this review. I am reminded of meeting John Chipollina in Glasgow alongside members of Man, as they toured the UK together. A meeting I described in my review of Man’s Life On The Road box set. Suffice to say, as a young person, in awe of Man and Quicksilver, meeting them in the Man dressing room, was a dream come true. They were incredibly kind and welcoming to me and my brother and gave us their autographs; and as I recall that moment, I can still see the striking smiling figure of John Chipollina looking up from tuning his guitar. This review is dedicated to the much missed John Chipollina and his comrades in the Man band, at that never to be forgotten meeting, Deke, Micky, Terry and Martin. 

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