Moby Grape

A Very Cruel Fate

The cruel fate of Moby Grape beclouds the best band out of the sixties

I am no musicologist, nor am I a sixties’ bands historian, but I know what music I like now and I knew what music I liked back then and when it comes to Moby Grape, these two likes very much coincide. I still, fifty plus years on, listen to them, often, enraptured, amazed.

To me, Moby Grape (and many scholars and band historians agree) was the best band to come out of San Francisco in the sixties, if not the best band out of that decade, period — save The Beatles.

The band had a unique configuration with bass and drums and three guitars: Bob Miller, who was, and still is, an excellent blues guitarist; Skip Spence, who was more of a renaissance man (which his stint as Jefferson Airplane’s original drummer bears witness to) — not an overly skilled but yet very innovative guitarist; and Peter Lewis, the finger picking folk guy with the great, deep, vibrating voice.

Bob Mosley was the bass player and Don Stevenson rounded out the band on drums.

Another thing that set them apart from the crowd was that all five members were lead vocalists, and good at it — making for, yes, amazing harmonies.

Their debut album, the eponymous “Moby Grape” made its way to Sweden in the summer of 1967 and I bought it the moment it arrived in my record store (on the recommendation of I no longer remember who).

Once I had listened through it, it was the album (LPs we called them back then, Long Playing records, vinyl of course, and analog of course) I played the most (along with Sgt. Pepper, which, as an aside, was released on the same day as “Moby Grape”) out of my, at that time rather small collection of 30 albums or so, could not afford more.

As another aside: an album at that time cost 25 kronor, about five bucks in 1967 money. Consider that my rent was thirteen bucks: this should put things in perspective: Albums, in other words, on my budget, were very expensive.

That said, my little collection included The Beatles (naturally), Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Country Joe and the Fish, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and the other usual sixties’ suspects — but “Moby Grape” occupied pride of place.

I still love this album as much as I did back then and I am very glad, these days, to read that many music writers agree: it was the best album out of San Francisco, period.

Why then, isn’t Moby Grape a household name?

Turning to Wikipedia, who has a better grasp on the details than I do:

“Moby Grape’s success was significantly impeded by decades-long legal disputes with their former manager, Matthew Katz.

“Legal difficulties originated shortly after the group’s formation, when Katz insisted that an additional provision be added to his management contract, giving him ownership of the group name (my emphasis).

“At the time, various group members were indebted to Katz, who had been paying for apartments and various living costs prior to the release of the group’s first album. Despite objecting, the group members signed, based in part on the impression that there would be no further financial support from Katz unless they did so.

“Neil Young, then of Buffalo Springfield, was in the room at the time, and kept his head down, playing his guitar, saying nothing. According to Peter Lewis, ‘I think Neil knew, even then, that this was the end. We had bought into this process that we should have known better than to buy into.’

“The dispute with Katz became more acute after the group members’ rights to their songs, as well as their own name, were signed away in 1973, in a settlement made without their knowledge between Katz and the band’s manager, and producer at the time, David Rubinson.

“This was also a settlement made at a time when Bob Mosley and Skip Spence were generally recognized as being legally incapacitated due to the effects of schizophrenia.”

According to Jeff Tamarkin, a music historian: “The Grape’s saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less.”

IN my view, the spirit of the band did not survive their first visit to New York (to record their second, not nearly as good, album, where Skip Spence, gripped by drug-induce madness, sundered it forever.

Moby Grape was never Moby Grape after that.

To stoned me (hashish my vehicle of choice) in my small, cold Stockholm apartment, listening to Moby Grape on my surprisingly good (father-bought) stereo, they were gods.

I’d listen to, say, “Indifference” and take in the album sleeve photos (especially the great live-on-stage shot on the back cover), reifying my amazing musical heroes: no song sounded better, no voices more amazing, no rhythm more driving, no flight less earth-bound.

Imagine then the contrast when, in the late 90s, I read online that not only was Skip Spence incarcerated in a mental hospital somewhere in San Jose, but also that Bob Mosely was homeless and derelict in the San Diego area.

Back to Wikipedia:

“In 1996, three of Mosley’s fellow band members, Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis and Don Stevenson, in part reformed Moby Grape with the objective of helping Mosley recover emotionally and financially.”

Later, Bob Mosley described the circumstances: “In 1996, Peter Lewis picked me up along the side of a San Diego freeway where I was living, to tell me a ruling by San Francisco Judge Garcia gave Moby Grape their name back. At that, I was ready to go to work again.”

Earlier attempts by Moby Grape band members to help Mosley out of homelessness had been less successful.

Peter Lewis described one such attempt: “We went to find Bob, and there he was, living in this cardboard box. He had these friends, the squirrels and the lizards that he had. And I brought this guitar, cost me a hundred bucks, you know, and I left that with him and a tape of Moby Grape songs and a tape recorder with batteries in it and some extra batteries.

“So, the next weekend, I came back, and there was no guitar, but the cassette case, well, he had tried to tear all the tape out of it and had left it, you know, down there in the bushes. And that’s all that was left. Bob was gone.”

Anybody interested in the cruel fate of Moby Grape can Google them and find a fair amount written about their ups and downs. All I want said here is that from a young Swede’s viewpoint the band walked divine streets up there with our Maker, His favorite band. My life back then would have been much less without them.

And then to look back — and it has been fifty years and more since then, of course — and realize that they were just humans, just like me, and that they probably have suffered a lot more than I have.

Some sort of cosmic unfairness is how it strikes me today.

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© Wolfstuff