(TV) Quiksilver/Cippolina/Influence on Verlaine

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@volpe.dot.gov>]

In several interviews that I have read over the years Verlaine has always disavowed being influenced (or even having listened to much) Quicksilver Messenger Service/John Cippolina.
Leo
Ps: Quicksilver M.S.'s  first (the live album) still sounds great. 
Tom Wizon: I see your music as the link with San Francisco music from the '60s. (laughter) It's psychedelic, not in style, but in terms of the music you've assimilated.
Tom Verlaine: That's pretty ironic, because I didn't like any San Francisco bands when I was growing up. After our first record came out, everybody was saying, "Oh, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Raga Rock..." It's just the twangy guitars. We sound more like the Ventures, in a psychedelic way.
-------------------------
How did this player get to such an exalted level of obscurity? Let's ask him: "I grew up taking piano lessons and liking Wagner when I was in second grade. I love these symphonies but they're totally - well, it's like a universe of sound. I can still remember being in second grade and getting these like, the 'Longine's Society Great Symphonies of the World' records and playing them. They were mono records. I can remember playing them - it was a universe, it wasn't a personality, it was a universe of sound! Things happening."
"And then when somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone. Around tenth grade, somebody played me (actually it was my brother, who would listen to Motown which I thought was like bad jazz at the time). And then I heard 'Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown' and 'All of the Day (And All of the Night)'. Those are the records that made me think the guitar could be as good as jazz. Up until then the electric guitar was a stupid instrument to me. When I heard the solos on those records, the sound, the general sound, that's when it occurred to me that the guitar was a cool instrument."
"Those two singles, like I said were the two big guitar singles and the early Yardbirds' stuff. And Bloomfield's playing on 'Highway 61 Revisited'. That stuff I thought was great. I'm trying to think of the records I had, there in my room, in Delaware. My brother had Sam and Dave records, you know the guitar playing on those records? And the Byrds. The Byrds I really did like. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Maurice Rickard [SMTP:maurice@mac.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, July 26, 2000 10:23 AM
> To:	tv@obbard.com
> Subject:	Re: (TV) prestige signings
> 
> 
> Now playing: Quicksilver Messenger Service, _Lost Gold and Silver_. 
> Whoa.  The star here is definitely John Cippolina's playing.  Anyone 
> know if Tom ever name-checked him?  There's a definite tonal/touch 
> resemblance, particularly in the sustaining and vibrato (though I'd 
> say Cippolina's vibrato is more consistently, uh, "rubbery," not that 
> that's a bad thing.)
> -- 
> Maurice Rickard
> http://mauricerickard.com/
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