Quicksilver Messenger Service consists of , Bobby (bass), David Freiberg (bass, keyboards, guitar, vocals), Gary Duncan (guitar, vocals), Greg Errico (drums), Jimmy Guyett (bass), John Bird (guitar, vocals), Michael Lewis (keyboards), Tony Menjivar (percussion).
Quicksilver Messenger Service was one of San Francisco's original psychedelic bands in the 1960s, along with The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the rest.
The original band members were John Cipollina ( guitar), Gary Duncan (guitar, vocals), David Freiberg ( bass guitar, vocals and viola), Greg Elmore ( drums), and Jim Murray (vocals, guitar and harmonica), although Jim Murray left before the band recorded.
There is some confusion as to whether or not the group was formed around Dino Valente. According to Cipollina: It was Valente 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, Valente was arrested for possession of marijuana, and spent the better part of the next two years in jail. But Gary Duncan notes: That’s the story Cippolina 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 Cippolina, 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!
