LOCAL COLOR

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE’S JOHN CIPOLLINA, A BOLD, ORIGINAL AND UNHERALDED STYLIST WHOSE PLAYING ANTICIPATED THE FUTURE OF ROCK

- ALAN DI PERNA

JOHN CIPOLLINA EMBODIED EVERYTHING EMBEDDED IN THE TERM “ROCK GUITAR GOD.” TALL AND SLENDER — WITH LONG, DARK, SIDE-PARTED HAIR FRAMING A PAIR OF MODEL-QUALITY CHEEKBONES — HE STOOD OUT EVEN AMONG THE COLORFUL CAST OF WILDLY TALENTED CHARACTERS WHO MADE UP THE SAN FRANCISCO PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC SCENE OF THE MID TO LATE SIXTIES.

His amp rig was like something out of Tom Wolfe’s Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Stream-Flake Streamline Baby — a hybrid tube/transistor stereo tower of tone, crowned with gleaming metal horns and flashing automotive lights. You half expected the thing to sprout massive tires and go roaring off down the highway. Armed with this primordial super-stack and his beloved 1961 Gibson SG, Cipollina did things that bordered on the occult. A bold, original stylist, his guitar work with Quicksilver Messenger Service played a key role in defining the San Francisco psychedelic sound, also anticipating much of what was to come in rock guitar playing.

But outside of a small, if devoted, cult following, he is not as well or widely remembered today as, say, Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, Carlos Santana, and other guitarists who came out of San Francisco during the psychedelic era. Which is a shame, as Cipollina was every bit their equal. By the time of his relatively early death — in 1989, at age 45 — he’d been reduced to playing small Northern California clubs, his health seriously compromised by emphysema and often in need of a wheelchair to get around.