Skip Spence was one of the Holy Trinity of critically revered and maybe unjustly labeled “acid casualties” of late 1960s/early ‘70s music. Along with Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and the 13th Floor Elevators’ Roky Erickson, Spence was a star-crossed figure idolized for his all-too-brief contributions to shaping psychedelia through his work with Moby Grape and his one incredibly stark and endlessly intriguing 1969 solo album, Oar.
His briefly burning creativity and agonizingly slow decline are profiled in a wonderfully comprehensive new biography, Weighted Down: The Complicated Life of Skip Spence. Author Cam Cobb spoke with many of Skip’s family, friends, and bandmates to create the first authoritative chronicle of his artistic development and achievements and a sympathetic one of his long battle with mental illness, addiction, and homelessness.
Skip Spence’s love of music was likely genetic. He was the son of a traveling salesman who supplemented his income by playing music in hotels and as an aspiring songwriter. His mother would buy Skip a guitar at age ten, and he would soon be off and running. Cobb shares two intriguing anecdotes from his early years. The first is when he is in the sixth grade and telephones Little Richard to ask him not to quit rock ‘n’ roll when the artist announces his retirement to become a preacher. The second is when he meets a rising young star, Wayne Newton, no less, at a hotel pool.
After a brief stint in the Navy, Skip Spence will cut his teeth in the San Jose folk scene alongside future luminaries, including Jorma Kaukonen, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and Paul Kantner. He took his first of many acid trips in late 1964. Once LSD is introduced to his circle of musical associates and inspired by Dylan’s example at the Newport Folk Fest, they will all drop the acoustic folk sounds and go electric.
Spence joins a band called the Manes and pumps out covers of Rolling Stones, Beatles, and other British acts before he is enlisted into the early Jefferson Airplane by founder/singer Marty Balin. Balin likes his
“look” and charisma and asks him to be the band’s drummer, an instrument he has no experience with but will quickly learn to play. Skip will also perform and co-write two songs on the Airplane’s debut album before abandoning (or being fired for going AWOL) by the band in April 1966.
Seeing another legendary San Francisco group that he is briefly a part of, Quicksilver Messenger Service, inspires SkipSpence to take up guitar again in hopes of leading a band of his own, one that will play the tunes he is now writing: the legendary Moby Grape.
Cobb provides a nearly daily chronicle of Moby Grape’s early history – from their development in jam sessions at Spence’s home in Corte Madera and early gigs on a Sausalito ferry boat/restaurant to the recording of their hugely influential and unfortunately overhyped titular 1967 debut album. A quintet where all members were excellent songwriters, singers, and players, Spence would pen three standout tunes on this debut, including the classic single “Omaha“.
Moby Grape was the subject of a fierce record label bidding war that Columbia Records would win. Producer David Rubinson would call them “the best of the San Francisco bands” because they could boil psychedelia down to “three-minute songs with five-part harmony.” But Columbia would sabotage the band straight out of the gate through excessive hype. They would release five singles at once, ensuring none rose to the top of the hit parade.
The overly ornate launch party at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco would also be over-the-top, with Moby Grape-branded wine, a drop of 30,000 flowers, and more corporate kitsch that rubbed their hippie fans and critics the wrong way. Three members of the band would be busted after leaving the party for possession and consorting with underage girls. Shortly after, they would miss out on having their solid performance at the Monterey Pop included in the film of the famous festival when their manager demanded $1 million for the rights to their performance.
Moby Grape’s nefarious manager, Matthew Katz, would be the most significant damper on their career for decades. Though they parted ways with him in mid-1967, he would harass them and Spence for years, claiming ownership of the band’s name and sending a legion of imitators on the road until the band finally won their legal battle in 2005.
Moby Grape gigged heavily to promote their album, opening for Jimi Hendrix at a memorable show in Santa Barbara and doing television appearances, including The Mike Douglas Show. They began working on their follow-up album, 1968’s Wow, while living in a rental home in Malibu and in sessions in New York beginning in November 1967. This album would feature three Skip Spence tunes, including the hilarious “Just Like Gene Autry: A Foxtrot“, a 1930s-styled number that features old-time ukelele singer/actor Arthur Godfrey, and “Motorcycle Irene“, a song of lust featuring revving engines.
During these sessions, the band recorded what became one of Spence’s definitive compositions, “Skip’s Song” later released in a more ornate and less effective arrangement on the group’s third album, Moby Grape ’69, as “Seeing”. Grape guitarist Peter Lewis tells Cobb that the song “was Skip’s premonition of what might happen to him because he had been taking a lot of acid at that point.” Drummer Don Stevenson comments that it’s a stark, stripped-naked song that “would’ve been perfect on Oar.”
Skip Spence’s legend is anchored by what followed in June 1968, when the band was back in New York City recording and for performances at the Fillmore East. After disappearing for a few days with a groupie, Spence heads to the hotel where his band is staying and busts down the door to a bandmate’s room with an axe. This will land him for a five-month stay in Bellevue, Manhattan’s notorious mental hospital. He will be there with Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol.
Legend erroneously tells that when Spence was released from the mental hospital, he bought a motorcycle and immediately rode down to Nashville, in his pajamas, to record his most famous work, the solo album Oar. Cobb corrects this entrenched legend, saying that Skip first returned to California to bring his wife and kids to the sessions, which unfolded over 11 days between December 3rd and 14th, 1968. In the Sessionography at the book’s close, Cobb provides excellent detail on the recording process. Skip played all the instruments and recorded many more than 12 tunes included in the original album release. Released in May 1969, Oar reportedly sold only 700 copies, making it the worst-selling rock album in the history of Columbia Records.
After Oar, Spence returned to San Jose and became involved in several short-lived projects. These included a duo with his old friend, musician Billy Dean Andrus, ending when Andress died of an overdose at 24, and in jams with two Doobie Brothers-to-be who idolized him, Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons. As he got into Christianity, Spence partnered with multi-instrumentalist Gordon Stevens to create a rock opera that included many of Oar‘s songs. They hoped to debut it in a geodesic dome.
By this time, heroin and speed had entered the picture, which blew up the first of many attempted Moby Grape reunions in 1971. In 1972, his wife and children left him. Legend has it that Spence would OD and then wake up in a body bag in a morgue asking for a cup of water. By the early 1980s, he was homeless and addicted, going in and out of mental institutions 30 times and, finally, declared a ward of the state.
Beginning in the early 1990s, Skip Spence and Moby Grape’s fortunes were revived when Sony and boutique labels like Edsel and Sundazed began reissuing their work to much critical acclaim. The original reissue of Oar by Sony in 1991 added four unreleased tracks, while a subsequent Sundazed reissue boasted six more.
In 1999, the Birdman label released a fundraising album, More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album. It features beautiful covers of the original record’s tracks by Spence superfans, including Robert Plant, Robyn Hitchcock, Tom Waits, Beck, Mark Lanegan, and others. He will get to record again when he is asked to create a track for an X-Files soundtrack album, Songs In the Key of X. The track, which featured his old Jefferson Airplane bandmate, Jack Cassidy, would ultimately be rejected.
As he approaches his end, Spence will reunite with his children. They track him down using a detective and make peace with him. He will find stability with his last partner, Terry, who will get him out of a care facility and nurse him back to health.
Besieged by hepatitis and lung cancer, Skip Spence died in April 1999, two days short of his 53rd birthday. He took his last breath as his family played the Oar tribute album. He died around the time of the sixth song, according to Cobb, Mudhoney’s take on “War in Peace“.
Like Joel Selvin’s recent book on the mentally challenged drummer Jim Gordon, Drums & Demons, Cobb treats Skip Spence’s struggle with mental illness with insight and sympathy. While this is a solid reason to buy Weighted Down, a more powerful one is how he dissects and casts a glowing light on Spence’s slim but resonant work as a composer of some of the most influential music to come out of San Francisco’s psychedelic scene. Credit should also go to Skip’s sister, Sherry, for her insights into his life and the fine collection of photos featured.