Skip Spence, born Alexander Lee Spence on April 18, 1946, was the co-founder and singer / guitarist of San Francisco's gem band Moby Grape. In a tradition that spanned through Syd Barrett and Joe Meek to Brian Wilson and in some respects Gene Clark, Skip was what some would call a crazy genius, but slightly more so than the others. In 1969, he was admitted to Bellevue, a psychiatric hospital in New York City, and officially diagnosed with schizophrenia. Skip died in 1999 of lung cancer after living a very hard life, but not before leaving the world with his wonderful music. His first solo album, Oar, was entirely written during his stay at Bellevue and recorded over 7 days in Nashville immediately after he was released from his 6 month stay there. 

Skip moved from his birthplace of Ontario to San Jose, California in the late '50s so his father could find a steady job. Around the same time, his parents bought him his first guitar and he began experimenting with the sounds of the instrument. Around 1966, Marty Balin, founder and lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, met Skip at The Matrix in San Francisco and convinced him to be their new drummer. Although Skip didn't have any experience drumming, he was up for the gig. But that didn't last long. After a spontaneous trip to Mexico, abandoning Jefferson Airplane without a word, Balin fired him for good. 

And that's when Moby Grape was born. With the help of Matthew Katz, former manager of Jefferson Airplane, Skip brought in Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson from Seattle band The Frantics, Peter Lewis of the Cornells, and The Misfits' Bob Mosley, on lead guitar, drums, guitar, and bass, respectively. Their name apparently came from the punch line to a joke: "What's big and purple and lives in the ocean?" 

Although Jerry Miller is often credited with being the lead guitarist of the group, Moby Grape employed the three-guitar technique, coined "crosstalk," which created, what Geoffrey Parr called, "a collage of sound." Their debut album, Moby Grape, was released September 1967 and peaked the Billboard charts at #24. But during the recording session of their second album, Wow, Skip attempted to break down the door of Jerry Miller's hotel room door with an axe, known as the "fire axe incident," the first of many crazy stunts he would pull. In an interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Jerry described the event: 

"Skippy changed radically when we were in New York. There were some people there that 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 axe to the doorman's head."

Things would only get worse from there. In New York sometime later, he again tried to break down a hotel room door with a fire axe, this time Don Stevenson's, allegedly full of acid. In an interview by Jud Cost, Peter Lewis described the following: 

"It was like that scene in The Doors Movie. He thought he was the anti-Christ. He tried to chop down the hotel room door with a fire axe to kill Don (Stevenson) to save him from himself. He went up to the 52nd floor of the CBS building where they had to wrestle him to the ground. And Rubinson pressed charges against him."

After that incident, Skip was taken to "The Tombs," the Manhattan Detention Complex, a jail in Lower Manhattan, then subsequently admitted to Bellevue Mental Hospital, where he was pronounced a schizophrenic. After his release, and the completion of Oar, Skip contributed to one last Moby Grape album, 20 Granite Creek, one of my favorite albums of all time. But because of his constant drug use, specifically heroin, acid, and cocaine, and his heavy drinking and combined mental illness, Skip was incapable of maintaining any sort of steady musical career. He spent the remainder of his days as a transient in Santa Cruz and ultimately died of lung cancer in 1999, two days before his 53rd birthday. 

Like any musician with a troubled past, Skip Spence will always be remembered for his magical music, despite all the crazy shit. And rightfully so. Music journalist Heather Phares described Skip Spence as "one of psychedelia's brightest lights," maybe one that burned a bit too brightly, but without which we'd be lost in darkness. 

The end.