Terry Grimley: Here's Johnny – but will Moby Grape ever make it to Bilston?
With the news that Quicksilver Messenger Service are playing the Robin in Bilston next month, the question has to be asked: can Moby Grape be far behind?
Anyone prepared to read on beyond what is probably an incomprehensible opening sentence deserves a word of explanation. Quicksilver Messenger Service (QMS) is a psychedelic rock group formed in San Francisco in 1965 – one of the minor acts around the time of the Summer of Love on the celebrated underground scene dominated by Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead.
Although over the years it built up an extensive and rambling discography (British session pianist Nicky Hopkins became a member for a while), there are two albums which catch the band in its vintage early period.
The second of these, Happy Trails, is notable for the fact that the first side is an apparently continuous (though in fact spliced together from different sessions) live performance of the late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? QMS apparently always leaned to the freewheeling, improvised end of the San Francisco spectrum.
Despite numerous personnel changes and the deaths of former members like original guitarist John Cippolina, QMS is still on its feet, boasting two founder members in guitarist Gary Duncan and bass player David Freiberg. For its first-ever performance on UK soil it is now about to complete the pilgrimage from San Francisco to Bilston previously trodden by Jefferson Airplane founders Paul Kantner and Marty Balin.
Now, to Moby Grape. I’d always had a soft spot for this other low-profile San Francisco band thanks to a single hearing of its second album, Wow, at a party in 1968.
The first time I went to New York, 20 years later I headed for Tower Records on Broadway expecting to find it reissued on CD, and was puzzled to find the band seemed to have vanished without trace.
Moby Grape are legendary for the wrong reason, as one of the most spectacular music industry foul-ups in rock’n’roll history.
Formed in late 1966, they boasted no fewer than four singer-songwriters including Canadian guitarist Skip Spence, a thread linking several San Francisco bands. Starting off with the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Spence was persuaded by Marty Balin to switch to drums to join the fledgling Jefferson Airplane, playing on their first album.
Though Moby Grape’s debut album achieved classic status (Birmingham band The Move covered its opening track on their own debut album), things started to go wrong immediately. An over-enthusiastic marketing strategy saw all the tracks released as singles, thereby preventing any getting air-play.
A launch event featured purple balloons which burst, making the floor hazardous, and special bottles of Moby Grape wine but no corkscrews.
A backlash was inevitable and by the time they came to record Wow they were in disarrary – a fact largely covered up on the record by lavish string and brass arrangements.
There was a notorious incident when Spence, overdosing on LSD, went looking for two members of the band at their hotel armed with an axe, actually smashing down the door in the style of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
Fortunately they were at the studio, and by the time Spence followed them there they had returned to the hotel.
He was arrested and sent to a mental hospital (on being discharged he rode all the way to Nashville on a motorbike, wearing only pyjamas, and recorded his only solo album).
Spence died of lung cancer in 1999, but the other members have survived to curse their bad luck for 40 years.
The worst aspect of it was that in their naivety they signed away the rights not only to their songs but even the name of the band to their manager.
Neil Young, then a member of Buffalo Springfield, told them not to do it.
According to a magazine article I chanced upon in my doctor’s waiting room last week, the lawsuits were finally settled in 2006, in the band members’ favour.
The reunited Moby Grape reappeared to play in front of 40,000 people at the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park last September.
The moral of this story, it seems to me, is to do with the way youthful enthusiasm can turn into a lifelong burden.
Moby Grape still make occasional appearances, sometimes helped out by the sons of two original members.
If they ever make it to Bilston it’s got to be worth a tram ride.
* The Quicksilver Messenger Service play The Robin 2, Bilston, on August 27.
