Moby Grape

Moby Grape is an American rock band founded in 1966. Part of San Francisco's psychedelic music scene, the band merged elements of rock and roll, folk music, pop, blues, and country. They were one of the few groups of which all members were lead vocalists and songwriters. The group's first incarnation ended in 1969, in part due to members Bob Mosley and Skip Spence suffering from mental illness.

Career

1966–1967

The group was formed in September 1966 in San Francisco at the instigation of Skip Spence and Matthew Katz. Both had previously been associated with Jefferson Airplane, Spence as the band's first drummer, playing on their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and Katz as the band's manager, but the group had dismissed both of them. Katz encouraged Spence to form a band similar to Jefferson Airplane, with varied songwriting and vocal work by several group members, and with Katz as the manager. According to band member Peter Lewis, "Matthew (Katz) brought the spirit of conflict into the band. He didn't want it to be an equal partnership. He wanted it all." 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, group members signed without seeking outside legal advice, believing in part 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, and 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." joined guitarist (and son of actress Loretta Young) Peter Lewis (of the Cornells), bassist Bob Mosley (of the Misfits, based in San Diego), and Spence, now on guitar instead of drums. Miller and Stevenson had moved the Frantics from Seattle to San Francisco after a 1965 meeting with Jerry Garcia, then playing with the Warlocks at a bar in Belmont, California. Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco. Once the Frantics were settled in San Francisco, Mosley joined the band.

While Miller was the principal lead guitarist, all three guitarists played lead at various points, often playing off against each other, in a guitar form associated with Moby Grape as "crosstalk". The other major three-guitar band at the time was Buffalo Springfield. Moby Grape's music has been described by Geoffrey Parr as follows: "No rock and roll group has been able to use a guitar trio as effectively as Moby Grape did on Moby Grape. Spence played a distinctive rhythm guitar that really sticks out throughout the album. Lewis, meanwhile, was a very good guitar player overall and was excellent at finger picking, as is evident in several songs. And then there is Miller. The way they crafted their parts and played together on Moby Grape is like nothing else I've ever heard in my life. The guitars are like a collage of sound that makes perfect sense."

All band members wrote songs and sang lead and backup vocals for their debut album, Moby Grape (1967). Noted rock critic Robert Christgau listed it as one of the 40 "Essential Albums of 1967". In 2008, Spence's song "Omaha", from the first Moby Grape album, was listed as number 95 in Rolling Stones "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time". The song was described as follows:

<blockquote>On their best single, Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis and Skip Spence compete in a three-way guitar battle for two and a quarter red-hot minutes, each of them charging at Spence's song from different angles, no one yielding to anyone else."</blockquote>

thumb|left|The [[Mantra-Rock Dance promotional poster featuring Moby Grape]]In a marketing stunt, Columbia Records immediately released five singles at once, and the band was perceived as being over-hyped. Miller-Stevenson's "8:05" became a country rock standard (covered by Robert Plant, Guy Burlage, and others).

One of Moby Grape's earliest major onstage performances was the Mantra-Rock Dance — a musical event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. At the event Moby Grape performed along with the Bhaktivedanta Swami, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and fellow rock bands Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company donating proceeds to the temple. The group appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967. Due to legal and managerial disputes, the group was not included in the D.A. Pennebaker-produced film of the event, Monterey Pop. Moby Grape's Monterey recordings and film remain unreleased, allegedly because Katz demanded one million dollars for the rights.

The Moby Grape footage was shown in 2007 as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the film. Miller recalled that Laura Nyro was given Moby Grape's original position opening for Redding, "because everybody was arguing. Nobody wanted to play first and I said that would be fine for me." In addition to the marketing backlash, band members found themselves in legal trouble for charges (later dropped) of consorting with underage girls, and the band's relationship with their manager rapidly deteriorated.

1968

The second album, Wow/Grape Jam, released in 1968, and appeared, credited, in the film.

The band was also introduced to a wide group of UK listeners in 1968 through the inclusion of "Can't Be So Bad", from the Wow album, on the sampler album The Rock Machine Turns You On (CBS).

But, amidst this success, troubled times plagued the band when founding member Spence began abusing LSD, which led to increasingly erratic behavior. According to Miller: "Skippy changed radically when we were in New York. There were some people there (he met) who were into harder drugs and a harder lifestyle, and some very weird shit. And so he kind of flew off with those people. Skippy kind of disappeared for a little while. Next time we saw him, he had cut off his beard, and was wearing a black leather jacket, with his chest hanging out, with some chains and just sweating like a son of a gun. I don't know what the hell he got a hold of, man, but it just whacked him. And the next thing I know, he axed my door down in the Albert Hotel. They said at the reception area that this crazy guy had held an ax to the doorman's head." The remaining three released their final album for Columbia, Truly Fine Citizen, in late 1969, with session bassist Bob Moore filling in for the departed Mosley during the sessions for the album. Truly Fine Citizen would be the final work conducted by the band prior to their initial dissolution.

1970s–1980s

In 1971, the original five members reunited and, along with violinist Gordon Stevens, recorded 20 Granite Creek for Reprise Records. whilst Miller and Been went on to form The Original Haze, also originating around the Santa Cruz area, before joining Lewis and Spence in another reformation of Moby Grape; this time joined by keyboardist/sax Cornelius Bumpus, drummers John Oxendine and Daniel Spencer, and bassist Chris Powell. The band released 1978's Live Grape album on Escape Records before again splitting in 1979. Following these shows Spence departed the band (for the final time), and his role within the group was filled by Dan Abernathy for recording and touring purposes.

Due to continued legal battle between the band and Matthew Katz over ownership of the "Moby Grape" name, other names were used during this period for performance or recording purposes; including Mosley Grape, Legendary Grape, Maby Grope, the previously used Fine Wine, and The Melvilles. as, while it was originally issued as a Moby Grape cassette-only release, the tape eventually had to be withdrawn due to pressure from Katz's legal team; and it was subsequently repackaged and reissued as being by The Melvilles. Despite Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley and Peter Lewis continuing to release solo records in the 1990s and 2000s, Moby Grape has not released an album of new material since the release of Legendary Grape in 1989.

1990s–2000s

The debut album and Wow/Grape Jam were first released on CD during the late 1980s by the San Francisco Sound label, a company owned by their former manager, Matthew Katz. These releases suffer from mediocre sound and poor quality packaging. It is also contended that Moby Grape has never been properly compensated for recordings released by this label. The double CD 1993 Legacy Recordings compilation Vintage: The Very Best of Moby Grape includes their entire first album and most of Moby Grape '69, selected tracks from Wow and Truly Fine Citizen, as well as studio outtakes and alternate versions, in much better quality. Spence lived in a residential care facility in northern California, and despite an extended period of homelessness and suffering from mental illness, there was a marked improvement in his domestic life in his later years before he died from lung cancer in 1999, two days before his 53rd birthday.

2000s–present

Amid the ongoing legal proceedings between Moby Grape and Katz, the surviving members of the band decided to dissolve the group once again in 2001. Finally, in 2006, and after three decades of court battles, the band finally won back its name; and subsequently reformed. As described in 1998 by David LaFlamme of It's A Beautiful Day, "Yes (Moby Grape) did, eventually they did win their case. In that case and in the (Jefferson) Airplane case, in both cases, the judge determined that (Matthew Katz) did business in a fraudulent and deceptive manner and that over the years he had continued to, what they call, 'muddy the water' by continually firing attorneys, making postponements and that these decisions could have been made years ago but he was making it impossible for that to happen. Now they have regained the rights to their songs and so on. Thank God. But most of the money that he has made doing to them what he has been doing to me is money he has already made. You can't get that. It's gone! It's gone!" To celebrate, in September 2007, a reunited Moby Grape performed for over 40,000 fans at the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In October 2007, Sundazed Music reissued Moby Grape's first five albums (with bonus tracks) on CD and vinyl. The following month, the label was forced to both withdraw and recall Moby Grape, Wow and Grape Jam from print on both vinyl and CD because of a new lawsuit by former manager Katz. Sundazed stated on their website that they were directed to withdraw the three titles by Sony, from whom Sundazed had licensed the recordings. Following the reunion performance, Stevenson departed the band and semi-retired from the music industry. Moby Grape continues to perform occasionally, performing with core members Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley and Peter Lewis, and in such incarnations as with Skip Spence's son Omar joining on vocals and Jerry Miller's son Joseph on drums. New recording commenced in 2009, following the release of The Place and the Time, a well-received collection of demos, outtakes, alternate versions and otherwise unreleased material from the band's 1960s recording period.

In 2018 a detailed biography - What's Big And Purple And Lives In The Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story by Cam Cobb was published in the U.S. and the U.K. by Jawbone.

Guitarist and co-founder Alexander "Skip" Spence died April 16, 1999, at age 52.

Matthew Katz died on September 30, 2023, at the age of 93.

Guitarist and co-founder Jerry Miller died on July 20, 2024, at the age of 81.

Later releases

Subsequent to the withdrawal of Vintage, Sony released Cross Talk: The Best of Moby Grape (2004), followed by Listen My Friends! The Best of Moby Grape (2007). Legendary Grape was issued for the first time in CD by Dig Music in 2003. In 2009, Sundazed Music issued The Place and the Time, a two-disc collection of alternate takes, live versions and other previously unreleased material.

In February 2010, Sundazed released the First Official Live Moby Grape 'Live' Album on Vinyl and Compact Disc formats.

Tribute albums

Moby Grape has been the subject of five fan-initiated tribute albums, whereby Moby Grape songs are covered by fans of the band. The series commenced with Mo'Grape (2000) and Even Mo'Grape (2002) and has been followed by Still Mo' Grape, Forever Mo and Just Say Mo.

Work outside of Moby Grape

Lewis, Miller, Mosley and Stevenson continued to perform and record, contributing to various artist's projects.

Peter Lewis released a debut CD in 1995 and formed an acoustic duo with David West (released Live in Bremen, 2003). Lewis also spent three years (2000–2003) as a guitarist with the reformed Electric Prunes, contributing to the band's albums Artifact (2002) and California (2004).

Jerry Miller appeared as both a solo artist and as a member of the Jerry Miller Band, and played regularly prior to his death in 2024 in the Seattle/Tacoma, Washington area.

Bob Mosley's relocation to the Santa Cruz area was noteworthy for weekly guest appearances with country music artist Larry Hosford, and in occasional duos with ex-Doobie Brothers keyboardist Dale Ockerman. Don Stevenson, who has rejoined Moby Grape for occasional performances, has developed business interests outside of the music industry, including time share sales of recreational property in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, where he maintains a residence. while Peter Lewis appeared separately.

Personnel

Members

;Current members

Peter Lewis – rhythm guitars, vocals (1966–1971, 1973–1975, 1977–1979, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–present)
Bob Mosley – bass, vocals (1966–1969, 1971, 1973–1975, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–present)

;Former members

Jerry Miller – lead guitars, vocals (1966–1971, 1973–1975, 1977–1979, 1983–1984, 1987–1991, 1996–2001, 2006–2024; died 2024)

Live albums

1978 – Live Grape
2010 – Moby Grape Live

Compilations

1971 – Omaha (features '69 album without tracks "Ooh Mama Ooh" and 'Seeing'; plus "Omaha" from 1st album)
1971 – Great Grape
1986 – Murder in My Heart – compilation album of selections from Wow, Moby Grape '69 and Truly Fine Citizen.
1993 – Vintage: The Very Best of Moby Grape
2004 – Crosstalk: The Best of Moby Grape
2007 – Listen My Friends! The Best of Moby Grape
2009 – The Place and the Time

Singles

1967 – "Fall On You" / "Changes" — Columbia 44170
1967 – "Sitting By The Window" / "Indifference" (2:46 edit) – Columbia 44171
1967 – "8:05" / "Mister Blues" — Columbia 44172
1967 – "Omaha" (BB No. 88, CB No. 70, RPM No. 87) / "Someday" — Columbia 44173
1967 – "Hey Grandma" (BB No. 127, CB No. 94) / "Come In The Morning" — Columbia 44174
1968 – "Can't Be So Bad" / "Bitter Wind" — Columbia 44567
1969 – "Trucking Man" / "If You Can't Learn From My Mistakes" — Columbia 44789
1969 – "Ooh Mama Ooh" / "It's A Beautiful Day Today" — Columbia 44885
1971 – "Gypsy Wedding" / "Apocalypse" — Reprise 1040
1971 – "Goin' Down To Texas" / "About Time" — Reprise 1055
1972 – "Gone Fishin'" / "Gypsy Wedding" — Reprise 1096 (Mosley solo single)