by Richie Unterberger

One of the best '60s San Francisco bands, Moby Grape were also one of the most versatile. Although they are most often identified with the psychedelic scene, their specialty was combining all sorts of roots music - folk, blues, country, and classic rock roll - with some Summer of Love vibes and multi-layered, triple-guitar arrangements. All of those elements only truly coalesced, however, for their 1967 debut LP. Although subsequent albums had more good moments than many listeners are aware of, a combination of personal problems and bad management effectively killed off the group by the end of the 1960s.

Many San Francisco bands of the era were assembled by recent immigrants to the area, but Moby Grape had even more tenuous roots in the region than most when they formed. Matthew Katz, who managed the Jefferson Airplane in their early days, helped put together Moby Grape around Skip Spence. Spence, a legendarily colorful Canadian native whose first instrument was the guitar, had played drums in the Airplane's first lineup at the instigation of Marty Balin. Spence left the Airplane after their first album, and reverted to his natural guitarist and songwriting role for the Grape (the Airplane had already recorded some of his compositions). Guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson were recruited from the Northwest bar band the Frantics; guitarist Peter Lewis had played in Southern California surf bands like the Cornells; and bassist Bob Mosley had also played with outfits from Southern California.

The group's relative unfamiliarity with each other may have sown seeds for their future problems, but they jelled surprisingly quickly, with all five members contributing more or less equally to the songwriting on their self-titled debut (1967). Moby Grape remains their signature statement, though the folk-rock and country-rock worked better than the boogies; "Omaha," "Sittin' by the Window," "Changes," and "Lazy Me" are some of their best songs. Columbia Records, though, damaged the band's credibility with over-hype, releasing no less than five singles from the LP simultaneously. Worse, three members of the group were caught consorting with underage girls. Though charges were eventually dropped, the legal hassles, combined with an increasingly strained relationship with manager Katz, sapped the band's drive.

Moby Grape's follow-up, the double-LP Wow, was one of the most disappointing records of the '60s, in light of the high expectations fostered by the debut. The studio half of the package had much more erratic songwriting than the first recording, and the group members didn't blend their instrumental and vocal skills nearly as well. The "bonus" disc was almost a total waste, consisting of bad jams. Spence departed while the album was being recorded in New York in 1968, as a result of a famous incident in which he entered the studio with a fire axe, apparently intending to use it on Stevenson. Committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital, he did re-emerge to record a wonderful acid folk solo album at the end of 1968, but that would be his only notable post-Grape project; he struggled with mental illness until he died in 1998.

Another unexpected blow was dealt when Mosley, despite his membership in a band that emerged from the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic scene, joined the Marine Corps at the beginning of 1969. The band did struggle on and release a couple more albums during that year, and the best tracks from these (particularly the earlier one, Moby Grape '69) proved they could still deliver the goods, though usually in a more subdued, countrified fashion than their earliest material. The group broke up at the end of the '60s, although they would periodically reunite for nearly unheard albums over the next two decades, in lineups featuring varying original members. Their problems were exacerbated by Matthew Katz, who owns the Moby Grape name, and has sometimes prevented the original members from using the name when they worked together.

Moby Grape

Even one of the most misguided marketing campaigns in history couldn't obscure the sheer brilliance of this San Francisco-based quintet's self-titled 1967 debut. Guitarist Skip Spence was the original Jefferson Airplane's drummer, and lead guitarists Peter Lewis and Jerry Miller, bassist Bob Mosley, and drummer Don Stevenson were seasoned garage-band veterans. Everybody sang, everybody wrote songs, and their musical influences were equally diverse. They favored tight compositions and performances in an era when most groups didn't, so naturally they were the subject of a huge bidding war. To celebrate its triumph, the record label released five singles - and the album - simultaneously. People cried "hype" and not one of 'em hit. The album, however, was a solid seller and remains the rock upon which the group's reputation still rests. The slashing guitars and soaring harmonies of "Omaha" and "Hey Grandma" still snap, crackle, and pop! The sock-it-to-ya soul of "Changes" and the dueling guitars and vocals of "Indifference" still rock. The gentle folk ballad "Fall on You," the delicate "Sitting by the Window," and the country-flavored "8:05" are all strong songs, distinguished by their balance of four-part harmonies and three-guitar power. - Don Waller

Moby Grape

Personal Information
Members include:

Peter Lewis (b. July 15, 1945, in Los Angeles, CA), guitar and vocals;

Jerry Miller (b. July 10, 1943, in Tacoma, WA), guitar and vocals;

Bob Mosley (b. December 4, 1942, in Paradise Valley, CA; left band 1969 and rejoined in 1971), bass and vocals;

Alexander "Skip" Spence (b. April 18, 1946, in Windsor, Canada; left group 1968 and rejoined periodically [d. April 16, 1999]), guitar and vocals;

Don Stevenson (b. October 15, 1942, in Seattle, WA), drums and vocals.

Career
Group formed in San Francisco, 1966; signed with Columbia Records and released debut, 1967; Spence diagnosed as schizophrenic and hospitalized after breakdown, 1968; Spence recorded solo album, Oar, 1969; Mosley left band to join Marine Corps, 1969; group broke up in 1969 and re-formed without Spence for 20 Granite Creek, Reprise; lost rights to name and royalties, 1973; re-formed in various combinations and under various names for independent labels, including 1990 cassette release, The Melvilles.

"Columbia Records is devoting prime promotion time to the buildup of a new rock 'n' roll group from San Francisco called the Moby Grape," reported Billboard on June 6, 1967. "The campaign got under way last week with the unprecedented simultaneous release of five singles and one album." In retrospect the announcement reads like an optimistic forecast for the doomed Hindenburg zeppelin, because Columbia's full- scale hype contributed to the band's premature burnout.

After releasing a debut album that critics in the ensuing decades have come to regard as a classic, Moby Grape fizzled out and seemed destined to appear as a mere footnote to rock history. Yet critical respect and an enduring following among musicians and other fans kept their reputation alive, and the 1993 release of Vintage, a CD boxed set, promised to teach a new generation of listeners what all the hoopla was about.

"The Grape's sound was an ahead-of-its-time aural stew of blues and country and soul and rock and jazz and psychedelia dished out with a breathless ensemble approach that was almost proto-punk in its intensity and with high-lonesome neo-Everly Brothers vocals on top," wrote Steve Simels of Stereo Review. David Fricke, in the liner notes accompanying Vintage, deemed the group "the kind of do-it-all combo that comes along only once or twice in a rock & roll generation."

Yet if they were a band that "had it all," as Simels claimed, they were also a band that lost it all. The loss of the legal rights to the name Moby Grape and to their recordings - not to mention two members' affliction with severe mental problems - hampered most efforts at reconstruction; several reunions featuring various founding members under a variety of names have transpired over the years. Yet the spirit that animated the Grape's debut album still burned in its founders well into the 1990s.

The group formed in San Francisco in 1966. It consisted of guitarist Peter Lewis, the son of film star Loretta Young and alumnus of the band Peter and the Wolves; bassist Bob Mosley, formerly of San Diego; lead guitar veteran Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson, refugees from Washington state who'd played with Mosley in their transplanted San Francisco group the Frantics; and Canadian-born guitarist Alexander "Skip" Spence, who'd played drums with the Jefferson Airplane, a band later to become one of the region's best-known musical exports.

While they were all talented players and songwriters, Spence radiated a special quality that seemed to lie behind his brilliant, offbeat compositions as well as his later disintegration. "Skippy was always 'high' on this other level," Lewis told Fricke. "His mind was always churning over with stuff. It was hard for him to sit and talk. He didn't deal in words, but in ideas. Yet he was an inspiration, always able to get people going on his trip." Lewis added that Spence "was the most unique songwriter I'd ever heard." He had a lot of competition in his own band, however, and with Mosley's ferocious, bluesy singing, Miller's stinging lead guitar, and the whole group's evanescent harmonies - not to mention good looks - Moby Grape seemed destined for superstardom.

Mosley came up with the name, which served as the punchline to a popular absurdist joke, "What's purple and swims in the ocean?" The grim resonances of Moby Dick, Herman Melville's novel about an obsessed sea captain's pursuit of the white whale that eventually sinks his ship, would not make themselves apparent until later. The quintet set up in a Sausalito, California, club called The Ark and began rehearsing on a regular work-week schedule. After a while, Fricke wrote, Moby Grape "went from being an extraordinary collision of strangers to the tightest, most talked-about band in San Francisco."

At a time when onstage diffidence, spacey, ponderous compositions, and an open contempt for "show business" were expected on the rock scene, they played carefully honed and energetic pop. As Simels of Stereo Review reflected years later, "the Grape differed from the rest of the Bay Area bands by playing mostly concise, singles-oriented rock-and-roll and openly aspiring to pop stardom, neither tendency exactly PC [politically correct]."

Moby Grape's marathon rehearsals drew other local musicians, many of whom jammed with the group, and a growing number of music industry representatives. The band's obvious potential led to a bidding war won by Columbia Records. The agent of their signing - and, inadvertently, their near-destruction - was producer David Rubinson, who worked for the company. "I came out to San Francisco in December 1966, a month before [counterculture milestone] the Human Be-In," he told the authors of Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out. "The best band out here then was Moby Grape. Bar none." The Vintage booklet cites Rubinson's hopes for the quintet: "When I first saw them play, I knew that this was a band that could go around the country, around the world, and really kill."

After signing Moby Grape in 1967, Rubinson brought them into the studio. He oversaw the album-making process carefully, focusing on potential singles at the expense of the members' more experimental side. Yet he helped capture the effervescence and invention of the group, and the result was, in Fricke's words, "that rarest of rock artifacts, the Perfect Debut Album." Simels insisted in 1978 that "no collection of American music, let alone rock-and-roll, is complete without it."

With songs like Mosley's barnburning "Mr. Blues," Lewis's melancholy "Sitting By the Window," and Spence's "Omaha," it reflected the talents of each player and formed a coherent document. Fricke dubbed the latter song "arguably Moby Grape's finest two-and-a-half minutes on record, the absolute distillation of everything that made them great, and should have made them famous." He added that the song "was the Beatles on speed, at once demonic, ravishing and irresistible."

Rubinson sold Columbia's promotional machine on the album only too well. The label released five singles at once, giving radio programmers too much to choose from and diluting the focus that usually characterizes an aggressive album promotion. A small furor erupted when Columbia discovered belatedly that Stevenson was sticking up his middle finger in the cover photo; subsequent airbrushing failed to suppress the controversy. Other disasters followed, most notably a release party at the Avalon Ballroom. Ten thousand purple orchids were dropped from the ceiling and had roughly the same effect as banana peels on the floor. Bottles of wine with "Moby Grape" labels sat unopened because someone forgot the corkscrews.

To top things off, Miller, Lewis, and Spence were arrested after the party for marijuana possession and for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Though Moby Grape retained some momentum, it was clear that things were happening too fast; they were expected to be superstars together without having come up together. As Stevenson remarked to Fricke, "It was like the bell that signalled us out of the gate was the death knell."

Moby Grape's jinxed beginning was soon followed by more trouble. Wow, released in 1968, featured one track - Spence's trippily nostalgic "Just Like Gene Autry: A Foxtrot" - that could only be played at 78 rpm and a bonus album of lengthy improvisations called Grape Jam. It fared poorly. Skip Spence, meanwhile, had become seriously unbalanced and was briefly institutionalized; Rolling Stone translated Stevenson's phrase "psychological breakdown" as "a freak-out." Spence left the group that year to record his solo opus Oar, which Mike Mettler of Guitar Player called "a textbook example of how to record the disintegration of a mind."

Moby Grape continued as a quartet; after an exceptional performance at a Philadelphia pop festival they knew they could survive as a band. They bought houses near one another in Boulder Creek, California, rehearsing on Stevenson's porch. Thus the four got to become friends more naturally, and wrote the material for Moby Grape '69. The album represented a partial recovery, but as Miller told Fricke, "the magic didn't happen."

The same was true, only more so, for Truly Fine Citizen, recorded without Mosley, who quit the group to join the Marine Corps. Lamented Rolling Stone's Ben Gibson, a huge fan of the debut, "I couldn't believe my ears. I hadn't heard in months a more complacent, pathetic LP." The review ended by suggesting that perhaps the time had come for the band "to call it a day." And they did, breaking up just after its release.

The first Moby Grape "reunion" came with 1971's 20 Granite Creek, which marked the return of Mosley and - for one instrumental track - Spence. It earned the approval of Rolling Stone, but wasn't a harbinger of great things to come: the group broke up again. Another reunion was planned but in 1974 the group found out that former manager Matthew Katz owned the rights to the name.

To add insult to injury, Katz assembled a group of unknowns that performed and even recorded as Moby Grape. The original members therefore performed under names like Maby Grope, Legendary Grape, and the Melvilles and released a cassette- only album in 1990 that Fricke considered "the closest thing to a real second album as the band has ever made." Miller's band continued to play, occasionally with Lewis and Stevenson, but Spence and Mosley suffered recurrences of their problems - both had been diagnosed as schizophrenic - and were, as Guitar Player's Mettler explained, "at best regretfully described as 'itinerant."'

Though the 1993 release of Vintage was described by Simels as "the rock reissue of the year," Entertainment Weekly reported that the boxed set would provide no royalties for the members since "the rights to their songs and even their name were signed away in a 1973 settlement without the band's knowledge," as a lawsuit filed on their behalf against Sony Music claimed. The article ended with Spence, who'd been under supervision in Northern California, hoping to "get Mosley and bring him in"; the bassist was reportedly living without shelter in San Diego. As Spence said in a 1968 Jazz & Pop interview before his breakdown, "All we have is each other, really - that's the nitty gritty basics. The rest of it goes, comes and goes - that's all we have, and that's the key."

The music, meanwhile, had finally achieved the recognition that had been forestalled the by the group's career woes. Celebrated musicians like Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and the Doobie Brothers had praised them publicly, and Michael Stipe, lead singer of alternative heroes-turned-superstars R.E.M. covered "Omaha" with the group the Golden Palominos.

Chrissie Hynde, whose group the Pretenders served up a mix of raw energy, pop smarts, and soul akin to the Grape's, told Rolling Stone in 1994 that she listened to their debut "a couple of hundred times in 1969, but when I heard it again [recently], it blew my mind. I realize[d] how very influenced I was by it. It's been in my subconscious the whole time." As Simels observed of the boxed set, "It's hard to imagine anybody hearing it without concluding that this was a very major band indeed. Not to mention a quintessentially American one."

Selected Discography
On Columbia, unless otherwise noted Moby Grape (includes "Hey Grandma," "Mr. Blues," "Sitting By the Window," "Indifference" and "Omaha"), 1967. Wow (includes Grape Jam and "Just Like Gene Autry: A Foxtrot"), 1968. Moby Grape '69, 1969. Truly Fine Citizen, 1969. 20 Granite Creek, Reprise, 1971. Live Grape, Escape, 1978. Legendary Grape (cassette only), Herman Records, 1990. Vintage: The Very Best of Moby Grape, Sony, 1993. Solo and other recordings Skip Spence, Oar, 1969. Bob Mosley, Bob Mosley, Reprise, 1972. Mosley and Jerry Miller, Fine Wine (released in Germany only), 1975.

~ Simon Glickman