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Alexander “Skip” Spence: Oar
Alexander “Skip” Spence
Oar
(Columbia, 1969)
Alexander Lee “Skip” Spence found himself in the Bay Area after spending the first part of his life in Ontario, Canada. After a brief stint as a folk singer, he joined San Francisco psych pioneers Quicksilver Messenger Service as a guitarist. QMS started playing gigs at the Matrix in San Francisco, while Marty Balin, the club’s owner, was keeping an eye out for talent to help form his new group, Jefferson Airplane. Spence got talked into playing drums with Balin and company, even though he’d brought himself up on the guitar. He proved to be a successful drummer and helped record Jefferson Airplane’s pre-Grace Slick debut, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Soon after, he was released from his position at the traps, due to general flakiness and missing too many rehearsals.
Spence reacquainted himself with the guitar and psychedelically soldiered on to help form Moby Grape, one of the most underrated bands of the era. Grape’s heave psych/country sound, along with their stellar musicianship, allotted the band above-average commercial success. Spence penned the first Grape’s song “Omaha” that appeared on the lower half of the American Billboard Charts.
Towards the end of recording Grape’s second album, Wow, in New York, Spence was checked into Bellevue Mental Hospital after splitting open his fellow bandmates’ hotel room door with a fire ax, reportedly after ingesting far too much LSD. When nobody was on the other side of the splintered mess he decided to take his sharp instrument of choice over to the studio. Luckily, he was subdued before he could cause any real harm and subsequently spent six months in Bellevue, diagnosed as schizophrenic. The day he got out he drove a motorcycle all the way to Nashville to record his first and only solo record—the eccentric and unhinged 1969 masterpiece, Oar.
All the songs on Oar gently bleed into one another. Considering the previous ax-wielding, Oar starts out on a peaceful and happy note. “Little Hands” tells of a utopian society where “Children are singing / The truths that they’re bringing / Freedom is ringing all ‘round the world.” Other than the tranquil inception, an underlying dark and fatalistic tone is mildly evident throughout the record, even in a couple of songs that come across as fairly humorous. For example, “Lawrence of Euphoria” is akin to a drug-induced Shakespearian court jester performance.
The truly psychedelic spots on Oar are phenomenal. “War in Peace” is driven by an onerous bass groove. The fuzzy guitar solos and fluttering falsetto vocals are so drone-inducing, they almost sound like they could be lifted from Can’s Tago Mago. And, if you listen closely, you can pick up some weird effects that sound like to a murder of crows nesting in the chimney of a nuclear reactor.
Oar got the reissue treatment in the late ‘90s by two different labels. In 2000, Sundazed put out a version with a whole bunch of extra tracks from the original recording sessions. This is the one to get. The majority of the extra tracks are like one stream-of-conscious ballad. At times, Spence loses himself in the bassline and stumbles over his words, but there is purity in these throwaway tracks.
Along with the Sundazed reissue, Birdman Recordings put out a tribute album just the year before in 1999, More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album. This is also worth picking up if only for the Tom Waits version of “Books of Moses.” Waits’ rock quarry vocals seem right at home on this track, with a little washboard-style percussion thrown in. Jay Farrar’s voice also lends well to the drawn out, cheeky country ballad, “Weighted Down (The Prison Song)”, which seems equally inspired by Spence and Johnny Cash.
Within the weirdness that is Oar, whether due to bad acid or just general bat-shit craziness, it seems as though all of Spence’s muses are trying to talk over one another, fostering a gentle cacophony of melodies and lyrics. The end result is something genuine and magnificent.
Listen: Various Songs from Oar [at myspace.com]
» Previously: The Bugs Bring the Party
11 Comments
Thanks for the comment. Like a lot of information coming out of the late 60s, the accounts vary on what exactly Skip Spence’s roll was in Quicksilver Messenger Service. Some have that he played guitar briefly (e.g. http://www.classicbands.com/quicksilver.html) while some have that he only auditioned for the group (e.g. http://www.jeffersonairplane.com/others.html — scroll down to the entry on Skip Spence). The basic details remain the same on both — Marty Balin spotted Spence at the Matrix, thought he had a good look for Jefferson Airplane, and recruited him for the band — but yeah, it’s tough to tell if Spence was an active member of the band. Seeing as we found more references to him being in the band for a short period than not, we went with that.
I remember seeing Skip Spence many times during his post Moby Grape times in San Jose. He wandered the streets and visited the surplus store I worked at while I attended college…Occasionally I would see him jam with some of the local bands, notably Reindeer Sky, with the unheralded guitar master Kevin Moore,(playing and performing still, in San Francisco.)Skip was amazing in those jams, but would get so spacey. The places he took his music to were truly mind bending. I bought Oar and expected Moby Grape. I was disappointed, but I think after all these years I should revisit the album.My interest has been renewed with your article, Thanks !
i love being caught with my cool music pants down. I had Beck’s cover of “Halo of Gold” on this japanese import EP I spent way too much money on about 6 years ago, and never took the time to learn that it was a cover, it sounded so very “Beck.” And yet, Skip Spence is a name I’ve always been familiar with. Thanks for the tip!
I went to high school in the Bay Area in the late 60s and saw all the legendary SF bands many times — Quicksilver and Moby Grape were always my favorites. Though I was familiar with Skip Spence’s history with Jefferson Airplane, your article is the first I’ve seen that links him to Quicksilver — that’s amazing. Where did you find that information?
One quibble: Is it accurate to describe Moby Grape as underrated? I guess in terms of commercial success, yes, but one of the reasons they crashed and burned on the national record scene was because the expectations were so high based on their local repuation. That’s what prompted the infamous simultaneous release of (what was it?) five singles from their first album. The rest wasn’t history.
This is a personal anecdote I recently posted for the younger crowd @ MetalSludge.com:
One of my favorite San Francisco bands from the late ‘70s was the legendary Moby Grape. I saw them play several times @ Chet Helm’s Avalon Ballroom on Sutter ess, which was the smaller, rival room to Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium.
Moby Grape had fantastic group vocals, y driving 3 guitar rhythm section, making them somewhat of a harder rocking psychedelic version LA’s Buffalo Springfield.
One of the more popular genic members of the Moby Grape was guitarist, vocalist riter Skip Spence. Skip had already achieved national recognition for writing ng drums on the 1st Jefferson Airplane album, which had come out in 1966.
By 1968, Moby Grape was being billed as the Next Big Thing, quite possibly San Francisco’s answer to the multi talented Beatles. The Grape was hyped all over the U.S. record company released 3 debut singles to much fanfare.
But Skip Spence, one of the enigmatic leaders of the San Francisco scene, became one of its very 1st drug casualties, up leaving the band before they reached their goals, after being briefly committed to the psychiatric ward for the criminally insane @ Bellevue hospital in NYC, during recording sessions.
Out of the band ob, Skip Spence eventually gravitated to Santa Cruz, some 60 miles south of San Francisco. This was during the time that he recorded his legendary, but erratic, solo album “Oar”, that many today consider to be a cult classic, somewhat like the final work of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett.
In ‘69-70, I was attending college in Santa Cruz CA. I used to surf almost every day @ a place called The Hook, between Pleasure Point ola, where I would run into Skip Spence several times a week.
Skip Spence used to ramble over to the cliff-side parking lot @ The Hook stand there, for hours, under the redwood trees on the cliff-side bluff overlooking the Pacific, almost every afternoon…totally disheveled n down, silently staring out @ the peeling waves of this famous Santa Cruz point break, ing all the surfers climb up the cliff to access the rocky beach 30 ft below.
We’d be out in the water for a 2 hour session…you came climbing back up the cliff…Skip Spence would still be standing in the same spot, always alone, staring off into infinity. I never once saw Skip speak or interact with anybody; we all kind of shied away, because Skip was almost from another world; he was older, ngly richer, ally unapproachable.
I remember all the locals whispering ing @ Skip, saying “He used to be a famous Rock Star” etc. Skip was still in his late 20s, had the Rn’R haircut, groovy clothes…but the guy was just a totally lost soul, run-down…was less than 2 years after his band was all over the rock press ining shows all over the U.S.
Skip Spence went down the tubes just like Brian Jones did, @ the same time…only it took several more decades for him to die. Skip reportedly ended up being pretty much a homeless schizophrenic street person, reportedly surviving on welfare uts for several more decades, before dying of lung cancer in 1999.
So goes another of my child-hood heroes.
“Oar” remains as one of the more inconoclastic, and also among the very worst, albums of its time. Self-indulgent to the point of irretrievability and impossible of redemption, one wodners what the record company was thinkng at the it was released. Given the utter lack of label support or promotion beyond the barest minimum, we can conclude that Skip was just too spaced out, and too emotionally ill, to be regarded as a seriosu artist or musician ever again. “Oar” regularly appears on various “worst of” lists. The Rolling Stone review at the time expressed exasperation and disilluion at the guy who seemd to have had such strong counter-culture/rock credentials–in the end, his disbilities got teh best of him. Just exactly WHO is in this “cult” that regrads Oar as a so-called cult-classic anyway? Is it anyone with an ounce of musical taste and verve? OAR was nothing less than the product of a confused and helpless man (so was “An Evening With Wildman Fisher” but hell, no one thinks he was a fucklin’ genius, he was just crazy, and even Frank Zappa understood that for what it was).
NPR broadcast a piece on the old Moby Grape band today (December 20th, 2007) on All Things Considered. It was always clear to the band and everyone else at the time (except the hype meisters and certain deluded fans) that Skip’s problems developed in earnest in connection with his recreational drug use, including hard drugs. Not at all good for someone with documented emotional disorders (Brain Wilson had similar issues, ppl seem to choose to forget the enormous damage that the drug scene did to self-indulgent ppl both now and back then!) Another band member (Bob Mosely?) was diagnosed as bi-polar ans was homelss, living in a cardboard box years after the band broke up..then their old manager had schemed to take all the rights to the Moby Grape name, which only recently was resolved by the courts. An amazing streak of bad luck, huh? Why don’t you give us some REAL journalism, Crawdaddy, and document, what actually happened to so many musicians and bands because of bad management, bad decisions, bad behaviour, and bad drugs? Yeah, I know it wouldn’t be as much fun as simply re-hypiong the same old shit all over again, would it?
Hey Java Master,
Read the fucking feature article on the Mekons you finger pointer. Ho Ho HO.
Okay, Jocelyn, I read it…now what? Just another band, anotherband story, I’ve read millions of ‘em. too many of them have the same sort of ending , too. If you want to survive in rock n’ roll, I don’t care what genre you are, you have GOT to have your shit together. The music by itself will NOT see you through (but we can always hope, can’t we?). The Mekons’ long and challenging history underscores the importance of understanding the business side of the music, the nature of touring and promotion (and the s.o.b’s who are the promoters, bookers, talent agents, ticketing agents, and all the rest of the entertainment industry). It was never easy to be in aband, it requires writing talent, vision, musicality, and courageto put yourslef out there. Kudos to Th emekons for their preserverance.—Now what does any of this have to do with poor Skip Spence and “Oar”?
Java Master,
In your words: Why don’t you give us some REAL journalism, Crawdaddy, and document, what actually happened to so many musicians and bands because of bad management, bad decisions, bad behaviour, and bad drugs?
So, I did. And I don’t think many bands have had the same ending… I think what the Mekons did is pretty rare and special.
As far as Spence goes… and this section of writing goes… it’s mostly about the excitement of finding this record in an old bin. Of discovery. Maybe YOU already knew about it, but think about all the people who did not. If you don’t want to read things like this, there’s always the back button.
Oar is a record I’m jut now ettling into… slowly. Anyone out there notice the similarities to John Wesley Harding throughout the record… “yin to your yang”?