Paul Jones of the Manfred Mann band with "The Mighty Quinn", so like their 3rd or 4th biggest hit.
Paul Jones actually left Manfred Mann well before the revamped band cut "The Mighty Quinn"---but not before he sang on the record
some think still to be the British Invasion's prettiest love song (though the Beatles would top it for that quality with "For No One," and
then there'd come the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset") . . .
Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"
! No longer availableManfred Mann the band name was picked by their first record producer, who thought they needed a name shorter and punchier and
chose the name of their keyboardsman---over the objections of Mann himself. They were anomalous among British Invasion bands
for playing edgy, harder rock on their singles but harder core blues and even jazz on their albums, and for not touring the U.S. as often
as their fellow British Invaders did despite their hits.
Cracks began to appear when guitarist/saxophonist/flautist Mike Vickers decided to leave to concentrate on songwriting and production.
Then Paul Jones decided to take a crack at a solo career that would include acting as well as singing, though he didn't actually leave
until early 1966. Those allowed Tom McGuinness to return to playing guitar as the band enlisted Jack Bruce to play bass and sing---for
a short while, anyway. Bruce joined the group because their touring commitments in Europe would help him pay the rent---he'd been
fired from the less commercial Graham Bond Organisation after a few too many rows with drummer Ginger Baker---and it's Bruce's
bass you hear on "Pretty Flamingo," though he didn't sing the number; Jones cut it just before he departed. But Bruce had a slightly
bigger fish to fry---after sitting in with John Mayall's Blues Breakers, he struck a friendship with their then-guitarist, Eric Clapton,
and decided to try working with Clapton separately; shortly after, Baker, too, sat in with the Blues Breakers and, equally impressed
with Clapton, invited him to join a new group he planned. When Clapton talked Baker into settling bygones with Bruce because Bruce's
ability on bass was nonpareil, the three had a new trio---Cream.
Mann, McGuinness, and drummer Mike Hugg then replaced Bruce and Jones with Klaus Voorman---the longtime Beatles associate who'd
learned to play bass in the interim---and singer Mike d'Abo and, with a new recording contract, and took the group in a slightly more
pop direction with folk and psychedelic experimentation thrown in, and it was that lineup that produced "The Mighty Quinn" and
several other hits and misses before it transformed, with a few personnel changes, into the Chapter Two and then Manfred Mann's
Earth Band lineups.
Nicky Hopkins, renown pianist with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane too I believe, stints with Jeff Beck as well; his initial solo album turned out an interesting version of "(can't get no) Satisfaction"
In 1971, during early sessions for
Exile on Main Street (the last genuinely great Rolling Stones album), after Keith Richards bolted
over the presence of Ry Cooder to augment the band in the studio (just as he'd done previously when Dave Mason was invited to con-
tribute to
Let it Bleed), Mick Jagger and Stones rhythm section Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts lingered with Hopkins and Cooder
to do a little jamming. Surprisingly, the results were released on an album,
Jamming with Edward; the two highlights of that
album were these (the album wasn't billed to the Stones; depending on whom you ask, it's usually addressed by its title as the name
of the lineup, or by the five players billed equally on the jacket):
Jamming with Edward, "Blow with Ry"
! No longer availableJamming with Edward, "Edward's Thrump Up"
! No longer availableHopkins had been a full-time member of the Jeff Beck Group after their first album,
Truth; the group imploded while
touring on their second album,
Beck-Ola, and shortly before they would have played Woodstock. He joined
Quicksilver Messenger Service in time to cut their third album,
Shady Grove, where the highlight was his very un-
Quicksilver-like . . .
Quicksilver Messenger Service, "Edward, the Mad Shirt Grinder"
! No longer availableThat change in Quicksilver's direction (they'd previously been a kind of metaphysical twin-guitar jam outfit led by guitarists
John Cipollina and Gary Duncan) was almost nothing compared to the one kicked into place when founding member Dino
Valenti---who'd been jailed before they really got off the ground thanks to a marijuana bust---returned and, to the surprise
of many, took over entirely as the lead singer and chief songwriter. Though it produced a few bright moments to come,
Valenti's reedy voice (he's politely described as making fingernails on a blackboard resemble a string quartet) alienated as
often as it welcomed fans; the consensus to come was that the band might have been better off taping his mouth shut
while leaning on his obvious abilities as a songwriter. They scored an unlikely FM radio hit with "Fresh Air" from
Just for
Love, but their best moment of the Valenti era might have been his protest number that provided the title for the
followup, and Hopkins is a key element of it:
Quicksilver Messenger Service, "What About Me"
! No longer availableNicky Hopkins battled Crohn's disease most of his life and died in 1994 of complications from intestinal surgery related to it.
He was only 50. Of the rest of his Quicksilver cohorts (he left the band after
What About Me), John Cipollina, their
influential guitarist, died of emphysema in 1989 at 45; and, Dino Valenti---whose real name was Chet Powers (he billed
himself as Dino Valenti as a performer and, usually, Jesse Oris Farrow as a songwriter)---recorded one solo album but
otherwise laid low in the Bay Area following Quicksilver's final demise, until his death in 1994 at 57; he suffered a brain
aneurysm in the 1980s and may also have had adverse effects from anti-convulsive medications. As much as his identity
is tied to Quicksilver, Valenti's best-known song is still probably . . .
The Youngbloods, "Get Together"
! No longer available
