“Fresh Air” by Quicksilver Messenger Service

Quicksilver Messenger Service's 1970 album Just for Love had one single, and "Fresh Air" made the most of it. Dino Valenti, back in the San Francisco band since the start of the year, wrote the words under the pen name Jesse Oris Farrow while Gary Duncan wrote the music, though only Valenti got the credit. They cut it in May and June 1970, in the middle of the band's move to Hawaii, and you can practically smell the salt breeze: a loose, rolling groove and John Cipollina's guitar at its most fluid, which Allmusic's Matthew Gruenwald counted among his finest work.

On stage it often opened the show and stretched out to ten minutes, room enough for Duncan and Cipollina to duel. It became the band's most successful single, with nine weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.