Live Broadcast

Terry and the Pirates

June 24, 1973 · Record Plant Sausalito

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Twelve days after their first show, Terry and the Pirates broadcast from the Record Plant with John Cipollina on lead guitar and Copperhead's rhythm section behind him. Donahue hosted. The full broadcast survives on the Internet Archive and YouTube.

Session
Type
Live Broadcast
Date Recorded
June 24, 1973
Date Broadcast
June 24, 1973
Archive note

KSAN 95 FM broadcast. Record Plant Sausalito, 6/24/1973. Tom Donahue series. CENSUS 2026-05-31: Recording CONFIRMED. URL1: Internet Archive (terry-the-pirates-1973-record-plant-ksan). URL2: YouTube full broadcast (bEwtpzemJ9Y). Hosted by Tom Donahue. A possible edited re-broadcast version also circulates, plus audience-source fragments (per michaelcross.me.uk Cipollina discography). PERSONNEL (original founding lineup): Terry Dolan (rhythm guitar/vocals), John Cipollina (lead guitar, ex-Quicksilver Messenger Service), Greg Douglass (guitar), James 'Hutch' Hutchinson (bass, ex-Copperhead), David Weber (drums, ex-Copperhead). Both Hutchinson and Weber were still active in Copperhead when they joined the Pirates. FOUNDING DATE: June 12, 1973 per Comanche Boots liner notes (Rockasteria/Terry Dolan estate). The band's first-ever gig was June 12, 1973. The KSAN broadcast on June 24 was twelve days later, one of the earliest documents of the original lineup. CIPOLLINA CONTEXT: Left Quicksilver October 1970 after friction with Dino Valenti. Formed Copperhead 1971; Columbia LP released 1973 but label support collapsed when Clive Davis was fired. Cipollina said CBS threatened booking agents not to book Copperhead. Rolling Stone ranked him #32 greatest guitarists (2003). Died May 29, 1989, age 45. CLIVE DAVIS FIRING DATE SOURCED 2026-08-12 (Tom): May 29, 1973. Two citations, both located by Tom during article drafting. Contemporary: Cash Box, June 9, 1973 issue, identifies the firing as Tuesday the 29th, https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/70s/1973/Cash-Box-1973-06-09.pdf. Retrospective: Los Angeles Times profile, December 1, 1996, gives the date as May 29, 1973, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-01-ca-4455-story.html. This date was previously unsourced in this record and had been flagged during drafting as not usable in article prose. It is now supportable and appears in the published child article as 'when Clive Davis was fired on May 29, 1973.' The date matters to this record because it fixes the Copperhead label collapse just under four weeks before the June 24 KSAN broadcast, which is the interval the article turns on. Recording Type: FM Broadcast. Audio: Yes. Confidence: High. CHILD ARTICLE PUBLISHED 2026-08-12: /journal/ksan/terry-and-the-pirates-twelve-days-old-june-24-1973, full route built and live on 2200studios.us. Audio links (Internet Archive + YouTube) verified rendering in the appendix.

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