24 BAM Magazine/November 1977

MOBY GRAPE
Still Crazed After All These Years
By Clark Peterson
The song ended, but the malady lingered on. There was guitarist Alexander “Skip” Spence, stage
right at the Old Waldorf on September 26, convulsed in a blissful euphoria. Only a few seconds
later he was completely deadpan – from manic to depressive in the time it takes to say, “Moby
Grape lives!” While Peter Lewis attempted to sing a soft ballad at stage right, Spence mumbled
incoherently into his mike. Well, I guess one man’s distraction is another man’s comic relief.
It doesn’t take any special insight to see that the latest incarnation of Moby Grape, the
legendary San Francisco band that first popularized the three-guitar style, has gone through the
proverbial hard times. While many people (including myself and Mink DeVille’s Willy DeVille)
steadfastly believe that they are still the best rock band to ever come out of California and that their
sensational first album is a classic, they slipped dramatically with each of their four successive
albums. Today, three original members – Spence (31), Lewis (32), and Jerry Miller (34) – have the
unmistakable appearance of having more ZigZag papers between their fingertips than guitar picks.
“Is that what I spy – a binky? My life for a binky!” gasps Peter Lewis, ogling a joint. We
are slumped on hotel beds at the Holiday Lodge in S.F. The atmosphere is high school locker room.
Such words as “ya know” I “man” and “together” are bandied about, though the overriding
impression is another word that comes up often in their conversation: “crazy.” Though bassist
Christian “Skeeter” Powell and drummer Fuzzy John are mild-mannered musicians who watch this
bull session with bemusement, Spence regularly breaks into hysterics.
“A flying saucer lands at the White House, asks President Ford for a cup of sugar!” He
bubbles over like a foamy soda fountain Coke, interrupting the conversation he’s been carrying on
with himself. The other guys join in the raucous laughter and then return to their binkies –
something that caused them trouble years ago.
Back in the Summer of Love, Moby Grape was an exhilarating act. Their label, Columbia,
organized a coming-out performance for them at the old Avalon Ballroom complete with Moby
Grape wine distributed free in their own bottles and 10,000 orchids from radio station promotion.
After the show, the band repaired to Marin County, where they were arrested for possession of
marijuana and contributing to the delinquency of minors.

“It was a frame-up,” Miller remembers painfully. “There was no marijuana involved – just
politics.” The bust hurt their careers and contributed to their decline.

Walked into the courtroom

Knowing this was going to bring me down.
The big, fat, bald
Representative of Justice
And the prosecutor began to frown.
I said, “I’m sorry for the things I’ve done,
And I’m sure to change my ways.”
The judge looked down at me and said,
“For getting smart, boy,
I’m going to give you more than a lifetime.”
I’ve got murder in my heart for the judge.
From “Murder in my Heart for the Judge” by Don Stevenson, © 1968 Moby Grape Music (BMI)
A few days after the Holiday Lodge interview, publisher/editor Dennis Erokan,
photographer Dave Patrick, and I drive the weaving trek to Boulder Creek to interview the three
founding Grapes at Jerry Miller’s house. After a lip-smacking lunch at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz,
where people gazed at the eclipse while the three of us gazed at the gorgeous native women, we
finished the last leg of our journey.
Miller lives on top of a tree-covered hill so secluded that we joke about finding a platoon of
Beaver Patrol scouts to navigate for us. Upon arriving, Miller shows us his downstairs rehearsal
room where Lewis (son of actress Loretta Young – for what it’s worth) temporarily lives, the
surrounding woods, and the upstairs where most of the interview is to take place. As Spence, who
lives down the hill, talks by himself a few feet away, Miller and Lewis reflect on the band’s rough
days. When asked why Spence left the group during the New York recording sessions for their
second album, WOW, the twosome flash worried looks at each other, pause, and then Miller speaks.
“That New York trip must have put him through the ringer,” he begins, briefly switching to
a semi-Swedish brogue. “You take the Albert Hotel with your cock-a roaches in there and your
doorman selling heroin and fire drills at three in the morning. You work from noon until 4 a.m. and
then go back to that dumb hotel and tap your foot until they’re waking you up with the phone to go
back to the studio. Pretty soon you get cross-eyed and crazy, and the smog gets to ya. It was the
lowest level of living imaginable. It was stupid for us to be paying $150 an hour to record and live
in that piece of shit. Our minds were nowhere; we weren’t elevated or anything. You have to keep
clean and go where it’s not funky and there’s no rats and you can breathe. Our mistake was
allowing ourselves to be fucked around to that extreme. Otherwise we’d have been okay.”
Spence, reported to have been in mental institutions after serious drug abuse in the years
following the Grape break-up, made an immediate impression on Miller when they first met in the
‘60’s: “Skip was so crazed, I thought, ‘What’s he going to do, beat tambourines?’ But when he
came to the gig, he had a guitar and I went, ‘Whew, three guitars!’”
John Chesleigh, the band’s present manager, attempts to shed some light on Spence’s
enigmatic behavior. “At one point, Skip was laid out on a slab at the morgue and had been
pronounced dead; and then he sat up,” Chesleigh maintains. “There’s no doubt about it: he’s spaced
out. He has brain-cell damage from when he ‘died.’ His heart had stopped and the air to his brain
had stopped. As far as everything else goes, he’s totally together. “ Chesleigh later said that Spence
would sometimes sit out the last set of a three-set date, and was the first to start destroying amps
onstage.
Before joining Moby Grape, Spence was the Jefferson Airplane’s drummer on their first
album. It was through the Airplane’s manager, Matthew Katz (rhymes with “gates”), that Spence
met the other four Grapes. Lewis tells the story:
“I had a band called Peter & the Wolves with Bob Neukirk on drums,” Lewis relates.
“Neukirk joined up with Joel Scott Hill and Bob Mosley, replacing Johnny Barbata [now with the
Starship] on drums. The group folded, so Joel and I decided to try it together. I asked Joel who we
should get for bass and he said, ‘I know this guy Bob Mosley, but he’s crazy.’ I said, ‘Well, who
cares?’ so we called Mosley down to L.A.
“He was playing in bars in Gilroy,” Lewis continues “He comes to L.A. with these dark
glasses on and his hair all razor-cut. His hair used to be down to his ass, so I figured he must have
gone through some changes. I thought, ‘This guy is crazy.’”
The threesome played one night with another drummer, then got a call from Bob Neukirk
saying that Matthew Katz wanted to form a band with Neukirk, Hill, Mosley, and Lewis.
“Joel didn’t want to do it because he thought Matthew was crazy,” Lewis says, resuming his
tale. “So it ended up being the three of us. We came to Frisco and met Skippy and played together
and then decided the drummer wasn’t makin’ it. Mosley said, ‘I know this guy Jerry Miller, and
Don Stevenson’ – who I heard was fuckin’ great – ‘but -they only work together.’ I said, ‘Great,
let’s get ‘em.’ That’s how the group started. No ego trips.” Soon after, the band played in the film,
“The Sweet Ride.”
Though Katz started it all rolling, he also wanted to call a halt to it due to a legal wrangle
over the name. (Katz ended his involvement with the band early in their career, but claimed he still
had legal ownership of their title.) In 1973 when the group played under the name Moby Grape
(with originals Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, and Bob Mosley, and newcomers Johnny C. and Jeff
Blackburn), one of their gigs was a Sounds of the City show at Winterland. The booking was Bill
Graham’s way of giving local groups a chance at the big stage on Tuesday nights for reduced ticket
prices. The Grape canceled. The official reason was the Mosley had to return to the marine
reserves.
Miller: “Matthew Katz was therewith an injunction to stop us from playing as Moby Grape,
if it every got that far. He didn’t know we had canceled. We were through the week before with the
Starwood [L.A.) gig and weren’t going to do the Winterland gig no matter what. I got a letter from
New York saying the big local union wants union dues from the gig, and I never even played it.”
This was the third time Moby Grape had dissolved. The first time things began failing apart
was during the already mentioned WOW sessions. The members feel that David Rubinson, who
produced all but their Truly Fine Citizen album, had rushed them and even rained one song, “Bitter
Wind.” The song begins as a beautiful, moody ballad, but like too many songs recorded in the late
‘60’s (even Johnny Rivers fell victim), it contains a “psychedelic” passage. The spine-tingling
harmony and Mosley’s soulful booming voice deteriorate into a cacophonous melange.
 Lewis: “That was not our idea. It’s pretty much supposed to be folk-rock, but the producer
[Rubinson] did all of that after we finished recording it and were satisfied. It was beautiful before
that.”
The album featured another gimmick (this time a positive one) Rubinson thought up – a
78-rpm track. Written by Spence and introduced by Arthur Godfrey (who was found recording in
the adjacent studio), the song is a humorous, authentic-sounding period piece, circa 1940. “Just
Like Gene Autrey: A Foxtrot,” however, was not the only gimmick on the double disc. Two other
Spence compositions included a crashing motorcycle and a speeded-up Chipmunk-type vocal. The
other half of the album was a solid, bluesy jam with Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield.
Moby Grape’s third album, ‘69, found that Spence had left, although one of his songs
recorded in New York, “Seeing,” was included. Rubinson’s liner notes talk of how the group “lost
all faith in themselves and stopped loving their music, stopped respecting each other,” and how
now they were starting all over with as fresh outlook.
“The back of that album cover is all bullshit,” Miller says, venting his anger. “As far as
saying we weren’t together for so long is true, but to say we were together then – we weren’t at all.
There’s never been any change, really. The album was recorded in sections. Me and Pete and Skip
would come in, and then Bob would do some and we’d be together. But it wasn’t together. We
weren’t communicating as people. We weren’t a band. Actually, it never has been flowing together
in the normal sense of the word. It always has been just a shade on the crazed side – the managerial
end of it – or if not, we would take the bull by the horns and fuck it up.”
After ‘69, which contained the sumptuous “It’s a Beautiful Day Today” by Mosley (who
was the next member to quit), the three remaining members recorded Truly Fine Citizen.
“I don’t like much from that album,” Miller concedes. “It was done in three days in
Nashville. There was only me and Peter and Donald with this bass player, Bob Moore, that Bob
Johnson [the producer] found. There wasn’t enough time to do good songs and the producer was a
joke-teller – that’s all.”
Before the band made this Nashville trip, Spence was there recording his own album, Oar,
on which he played all the instruments. In between relapses, Skip expands on his own history:
“It was recorded on an old three-track machine in 1968,” he says of Oar. “Now the album is
a cult item. Someone has 82 copies left in the City and it’s starting to come back.” Seven hundred
copies were sold worldwide.
Spence will not (or cannot) talk much about his days with the Airplane and recording on
their first album. “When I first started with them,” he says, “I couldn’t play worth shit. I learned
everything from this band. I learned drums in ‘65 when Marty Balin asked me to play. I met him at
the Shelter, in San Jose. It’s a folk music club. . .” Spence then starts laughing uncontrollably.
When he ceases, he continues.
“I met Marty at the Chateau Liberte,” he says, changing his story. “I met [the guys in Moby
Grape] later, but then again, there’s been another space going on that I can’t explain.”
In 1971, the original Grape regrouped and recorded 20 Granite Creek, their first album for
Warner Bros. (The title comes from the house address where it was recorded near Santa Cruz.) “We
finished the damn thing off at Pacific,” Miller spits, “which is dog meat.”
Not much was heard from the band until 1973 when they briefly reformed with Lewis,
Miller, and Mosley, and played the Bay Area. There was little magic on their opening night show at
the Great American Music Hall as Mosley spent the evening with his eyes on his shoes. “Well, he’s
got some great shoes,” cracks present Grape manager Chesleigh, who is quite a wit. (When asked
why the band keeps disbanding, Chesleigh quipped, “They’re just a bunch of disbandits.”
Mosley, who should have been brimming over with confidence, struck up another pose
altogether. “He was shy,” Lewis confides. “Sometimes he wouldn’t sing onstage because he’d get
uptight at himself.” Mosley ended up joining the Marines when he got his draft notice, and was
discharged after a fight. He’s been seen this summer playing in Santa Cruz with the Ducks (Neil
Young, Jeff Blackburn, and Johnny C), after turning down an offer to rejoin Moby Grape. (Mosley
has a house and family in San Diego where he spends most of his time.)
When Bill Graham was asked last year if he thought the Grape would ever come back, he
responded, “I hope not. Invariably they get together for the wrong reasons. I was involved with
them reuniting once, and it cost me.”
The band got together this past July. “Jerry called me in Ojai [near Santa Barbara],” Lewis
remembers vividly. “I was rooting up weeds in the garden and heard the phone, and I knew it was
Jerry so I just kept walking. I knew he’d keep ringing. He said, ‘Things are exciting, man. Better
get up here.’ I said, ‘Okay, tomorrow?’ And he said, ‘Right on..’” The excitement was Neil Young,
the Ducks and the crowds they were attracting to Santa Cruz. The Grape took advantage of it.
“Fuckin’ A, man!” Miller exclaims, enthusiastic over the impact the Grape has been having.
“This fuckin’ band’s got more fuckin’ work no matter what the hell the deal is, ya know? With any
artistry you put together, you usually have to fight and fight to get yourselves a draw. It’s weird.”
Time will tell if the 1977 Moby Grape will remain together – both as a group and in the
cliched sense. They say they are each free to go off as Miller has done before (for example, to
perform with Mike Finnegan). When asked if they have to keep the band going to prove to record
companies that they can last, they demur. Though on the one hand they are excited, on the other
they call this resurrection “no big deal.”
The Grape’s comeback was made possible when another band, the Original Haze, folded
and left Miller and Corny Bumpus (the Grape’s flute, sax, and organ man) free. Says Miller, “The
Haze was good, but it became impossible to finance an eight-piece band without a draw.” Miller
played lead guitar for the Haze for several years and previously had joined with Bill Champlin and
Fuzzy John in the Rhythm Dukes, not to mention playing with Fuzzy John and Mike Finnegan as a
trio. He believes it was his guitar work used on the Bobby Fuller Four’s classic “I Fought the Law
and the Law Won.”
In the late ‘60s, Miller would use two Marshall and two Bassman amps for his 1961 Gibson
L-5. He now wishes he had used less.
“We played the Fillmore East, but we didn’t know how much more the PA systems were
together than when we had last played there,” he remembers of a Grape concert. “We had all kinds
of totally unnecessary equipment, and then B.B. King came on after us with this little amp so tasty
and fine it picked up every note. I said, ‘Hey, let us do that again!’”
Their drummer, Don Stevenson, who now lives in Seattle, couldn’t handle the decibel level
back then. “Donald went to Frustration City,” Miller continues. “We should have cut back a bit, but
we got locked into the vibe of the time and tried to get all this power together. He’d finish by
kicking his drums off the stage.
Stevenson was portrayed as a bad boy on their first album cover, photographed by Jim
Marshall at the Junktique store in Fairfax. His middle finger, bared in the familiar gesture of
contempt, was soon enough erased to make the cover palatable to Middle America. The original
copies are collector’s items. “Someone might look at that finger and have a heart attack and die,”
laughs Miller, bringing to mind the stuffy character Margaret Dumont played in Marx Brothers
films.
The Grape all look back on that debut album as their best, despite the technically hazy
quality of the group vocals. “Our intention was three-guitar vocal harmony,” Miller explains.
“We’d figure we’d take each other’s regular songs and make gems out of ‘em, which is what we
did.” A large part of the songs’ appeal was the intricate guitar passages – each guitar going its own
way and yet flowing smoothly.
 “We knew about that in the beginning,” Lewis comments, “and that’s why we wanted to
play. We were hep to that – that was keeno.” Now he looks back and sees all their trials and
tribulations that followed.
“I talked to the Eagles,” he sighs, “and they said we were responsible for good things that
happened to them. They learned from our mistakes. Now it’s the best it’s ever been for me as far as
material and attitudes and energy. Everyone’s a little older and more cooperative and less
egocentric.”
In performance, the Grape are still as uneven as they’ve always been. When they’re not
dazzling and creating an enormous energy, they can be ragged (singing off-key, starting and
stopping separately) and sloppy (lunging for the mike when caught off-guard). When Lewis, who
sings and writes engaging songs, was given a chance to solo on guitar at the Old Waldorf, he
produced notes that made the crowd wince. Their freewheeling, loose personalities make for
likewise performances. And with Spence’s antics, they can be embarrassing.
What saves Moby Grape are those thrilling moments when Miller’s fingers thrash up and
down his fretboard in a guitar frenzy, or when Lewis sings one of his pretty, melodic compositions.
And with Corny Bumpus injecting several additional instruments into the Grape’s guitar-based
sound, the band has a plethora of styles to draw on. Even with this diversity, they do not quarrel
over material as they used to. It’s not allowed. Though the Byrds, one of their heaviest influences
(and also newly reformed) were notorious for in-fighting, Moby Grape would sooner collapse from
a marijuana-induced awkwardness.
“If you get toasted enough, everything sounds good,” Miller smiles, dragging on a binky.
“You get up onstage and you feel fine as frog fuzz.” END
 Rubinson Remembers Grape
David Rubinson, San Francisco’s famous re cord producer, discovered Moby Grape playing
with Quicksilver and Big Brother & the Holding Company many years ago, in San Francisco. He
wanted to sign all three to Columbia, but the label told him to pick one; he chose Moby Grape.
Reached for comment, Rubinson had this to say:
“I put my job on the line for them. There was no such thing as rock and roll in 1967 at CBS.
The Byrds and Paul Revere & the Raiders – that was it. When I brought the Grape in, they signed
for five grand. I took them away from Elektra and Atlantic, who had money in the bank in escrow. I
flew execs from CBS out here at my expense. I believed in them very, very, very much, but the
only thing I’ve reaped from it all is great disappointment.
“I thought then and still think they were the best American rock and roll band ever put
together. Peter Lewis is one of the great song writers America ever produced, and Jerry Miller is
one of the great guitar players ... there’s no reason why they haven’t reached a higher level of
success. Don Stevenson finally picked up his sticks and went back to Seattle and has some store.
Nice fella. Skip Spence is literally a genius. He sees the truth in everything. I guess that was
difficult for him to cope with. And Bob Mosley is easily the best rock and roll bass player I ever
heard, with more power and strength than any when he was on, and clearly a great, great, great,
white blues singer with a marvelous presence onstage. Obviously, this is a phenomenally talented
group of people, and they can blame other people if they wish for never living up to their potential
but the truth is that they found ways to lose. Consistently, whenever they could make a choice, they
constantly made the choice which would allow them to lose.
“We went back to New York [in 1971, when the band decided to reform again]. They sold
out the Fillmore East three nights. People were screaming for tickets, and Spence refused to get on
the plane to come and play. Then we came to the Fillmore West and did great business, and Mosley
refused to go on. Obviously it was a group of self-destructive, brilliantly talented people, and it’s
too bad because they were the closest thing America has produced to the Rolling Stones. It’s a
tragedy to me.
“As for me ruining ‘Bitter Wind,’ Mosley heard a tape put up in error by a CBS engineer,
was knocked out by it, and insisted a piece of tape go in backwards. We had a giant disagreement
about that – I hated it. The other guys were there when that happened in L.A., where WOW was
also done. It was during their overblown Sgt. Pepper period.
“About the 78-rpm song on WOW, everybody was taking all this shit too seriously. There
were people who had put bands together, basically, to give everybody a good time, and here were
these records being torn to pieces and microscopically investigated by so-called music critics –
something that still goes on. They were picking apart all the notes, and who sang what, and what
does this mean cosmically, and so forth, so we wanted some humor. In looking back, I wish I’d
done more of that.
“Concerning the liner notes on ‘69, they approved them as I read them on the phone. They
were very moved and thought it was the absolute truth, and it still appears to me to be the absolute
truth.
“Finally, about Matthew and me taking all their money, neither of us got rich from them.
They generally earned about one-third of what they think they earned. They signed publishing
agreements and signed things away. About two years ago I got them all together. We couldn’t put a
record out because Matthew Katz owned ¾ of this and ½ of that, and somebody at South Star
Music owned ¾ of this, and so forth. My object was to get them as much money as possible ... I
lent them $40,000-$50,000 when I was recording 20 Granite Creek, paying them salaries every
week whether they worked or not, on the basis that I would audit CBS and figure out who had
gotten how much and was owed how much and make a deal with Matthew Katz. It came to 200
pages of documents. We delivered all this information to them and as was typical, they couldn’t
agree on who would get paid what. Then the government came in with a tax lien and held up any
royalties. Because of this lien on their income, I’d hesitate to say what would happen if they had a
hit record tomorrow.”
Would Rubinson produce another Grape LP? “NO!” Will the Grape continue their pattern
of disbanding and reforming every few years? “That’s too depressing to think about.” –Clark
Peterson