Quicksilver Messenger Service Guitarist Gary Duncan 1946 – 2019
By Andy Kahn Jul 1, 2019 • 9:22 am PDT
Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist Gary Duncan died on Saturday (June 29) at the age of 72. Duncan reportedly suffered a seizure and was in a coma as a result.
Born Gary Grubb in San Diego on September 4, 1946, Duncan formed the short-lived band The Brogues where he met drummer Greg Elmore. In 1965, Duncan and Elmore joined guitarists John Cipollina and Jim Murray and bassist David Freiberg in the San Francisco-based band Quicksilver Messenger Service. The group, whose one-time member Dino Valenti was at the time serving a prison sentence for marijuana possession, was highly influential in the Bay Area psychedelic rock scene of the late-1960s, often sharing bills with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and others.
Duncan remained a prominent member of Quicksilver Messenger Service throughout the rest of his career, though he took a sabbatical from the group in 1969, the same year their album Happy Trails was released. After not contributing to the band’s album Shady Grove, Duncan rejoined the band with Valenti in 1970 and recorded several more records with the group, ending with 1975’s Solid Silver.
Attempted reunions persisted in the 1980s. In 1986, Gary Duncan’s Quicksilver issued the studio album Peace By Piece, which was followed by a few additional releases. In 2006, Duncan recorded the album Snake Language with Crawfish Of Love. Recent years saw Duncan and Freiberg tour with various incarnations of Quicksilver Messenger Service.
