John Cipollina Day
John Cipollina (August 24, 1943 – May 29, 1989) was a guitarist best known for his role as a founder and the lead guitarist of the prominent San Francisco rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service. After leaving Quicksilver he formed the band Copperhead, was a member of the San Francisco All Stars and later played with numerous other bands, including Janis Joplin on the Dick Cavett show. Born in Berkeley, California in 1943, Cipollina attended Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California (as did his brother, Mario, born 1954) and sister, Antonia (born 1952). Their father, Gino, was a realtor, and their mother, Evelyn, and godfather José Iturbi, were concert pianists.
John showed great promise as a classical pianist in his youth, but his father gave him a guitar when he was 12 and this quickly became his primary instrument. Cipollina had a unique guitar sound, mixing solid state and valve amplifiers as early as 1965. He is considered one of the fathers of the San Francisco psychedelic rock sound. To create his distinctive guitar sound, Cipollina developed a one-of-a-kind amplifier stack. His Gibson SG guitars had two pickups, one for bass and one for treble. The bass pickup fed into two Standel bass amps on the bottom of the stack, each equipped with two 15-inch speakers. The treble pickups fed two Fender amps: a Fender Twin Reverb and a Fender Dual Showman that drove six Wurlitzer horns.
John Cipollina did NOT appear with Janis Joplin on the Dick Cavett show — that was Sam Andrew, who left Big Brother when Janis did. Sam had long hair in the same style, and played a Gibson SG, as Cipollina did.
Also, Gino was the father of John’s sister and brother, but he had a different father (but John and his brother and sister had the same mother).
I don’t know if John showed “great promise” as a pianist, but he was classically trained (by his mother), so he could read and write music. I don’t think he really got excited about playing music until he heard Link Wray playing an electric guitar, and then that’s when he found what he wanted to do in life.
Thank You for the details