Jerry Miller, founding member of the legendary band Moby grape and one of the most influential musicians in the San Francisco music scene of the 1960s, died Saturday, July 21, 2024, in Tacoma at the age of 81. Miller was a contemporary of Jimi Hendrix and Larry Coryell, and they would often get together to watch touring bands visiting the Seattle area. The Washington-bred musician was born in 1943 and participated in local Tacoma bands like the Elegants, the Incredible Kingsmen and the Frantics.
Miller’s guitar work was much admired by his contemporaries such as Eric Clapton, Stephen Stills, David Crosby and Taj Mahal. Both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant extolled him, as Led Zeppelin was said to have covered Moby Grape songs at their very first rehearsal.. Eric Clapton called him the “best guitar player in the world” when he first came to the U.S. His guitar skills were so magnificent that Rolling Stone included him at No. 68 on a ranking of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
Moby Grape was considered one of the top bands of the flower-power era – setting itself apart by cranking out an earthy mix of blues, country, folk and chugging rock ’n’ roll. Moby Grape’s debut album, released in 1967 and simply titled “Moby Grape”, contained 13 songs. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 124 on its original list of rock’s 500 greatest albums, describing it as “genuine hippie power pop.”
By Harvey Kubernik
Moby Grape made Buffalo Springfield revise their musical direction, and even influenced Led Zeppelin’s early recorded repertoire. On Zep’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” Plant & Co. actually took [bassist Bob] Mosley’s opening line from “Never,” the opening track on Moby Grape’s 1968 Grape Jam LP. Plant, who has touted Moby Grape in the media for decades, is thanked in the credits by the band inside 2007’s Listen My Friends! CD package. Hollywood-based psychedelic pop rockers Cosmo Topper this century have covered [guitarist Peter] Lewis’ “Sitting by the Window” in live dates regularly. The Doobie Brothers were not only heavily influenced by the Grape (just one listen to “China Grove” will validate this), but it was none other than Lewis and [guitarist Skip] Spence who steered the band to Warner Bros. in 1970. According to Lewis, the Doobies were hoping to actually have Spence in the band and apparently gave them their name. Moby Grape’s recorded sound on vinyl also informed the Pretenders.
The Grape, although heralded as part of “The San Francisco Sound” (whatever that was), was a mixture of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle musicians. Basically built around Skip Spence, (original Jefferson Airplane drummer and songwriter of “My Best Friend” and “Blues from an Airplane,”) who was returning to guitar – his main instrument. Peter Lewis, a child of Hollywood (son of actress Loretta Young and television producer Thomas Lewis), an excellent guitarist and songwriter in his own right, was a refugee of various L.A. bands, including his own group, Peter and The Wolves. The third guitarist, Jerry Miller, was a veteran of the hard-boiled Pacific Northwest bar band scene, who cut his teeth playing briefly with Bobby Fuller in the El Paso area, and in 1966 did one recording session in Hollywood with The Chocolate Watchband. Miller as a teenager ran in the same Seattle circuit as Jimi Hendrix.
“We would go to the Spanish Castle club, half way between Tacoma and Seattle,” remembered Jerry Miller.”We’d sit there right in front and watch Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry. And Larry Coryell was there as well. We’d all sit and watch these guys at the foot of the stage and watch all their fingers. We’d watch the Frantics, Wailers and the Continentals. But for Jimi, there was a guy [he] was inspired by, named Jerry Allen. He was a Stratocaster player and most of us up here played the big [Gibson] L-5s and then Jimi had the Strat.
“One time we saw Gene Vincent,” continued Miller. “We saw Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Little Richard. Chuck Berry was unbelievable. Chuck opened the show for Ray Charles, La Vern Baker, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers in 1957. I even took a date with me. I was 12. When Chuck came out and hit the opening notes to ‘School Days’ I knew ‘This was it!’ Everyone went to these gigs in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s because if you wanted to be a guitar player you had to. In 1952 I also saw Hank Williams. I was 7. My dad took me down there in a truck and we rode in the rain. I couldn’t be in the area where everyone was drinking and fighting.
“Later, Jimi and I sat one time together at the Whisky a Go Go,” Miller concluded, “when T-Bone Walker was gigging with John Lee Hooker, and I jammed with T-Bone and Jimmy Reed. The crowd wanted Jimi to play, but they called out for ‘Purple Haze’ and he didn’t want to do it again. I knew T-Bone’s family a little bit.”
As far as Moby Grape performing at the Monterey International Pop Festival, Miller offered: “We played first on Saturday because everybody was arguing. Nobody wanted to play first and I said that would be fine for me. Not the best position for breaking into show business! We were perfect. We played everything exactly right. Had we played later at anytime on that show we could have done the same as anyone else. Our original spot opening for Otis Redding later in the evening was given to Laura Nyro. But the festival ended up pretty good.
“At the Monterey festival I saw Jimi and Otis take over the show. I saw Jimi before his set, sitting in the music room, the dressing room, hanging out. Brian Jones the guitar player from The Rolling Stones was there. We chatted. He was all over the place. He was having fun. As a guitarist, I don’t think you can set things apart. Jimi’s set at Monterey was extremely right. Monterey was perfect. I was sitting right in front of Jimi at Monterey. It was wonderful, especially with a pipe coming from your right and a pipe coming from your left. Pretty soon you’re sitting there spinning. We sure had a good time. And Jimi got to see me, too. We were both left-handed guitarists. Here we are a couple of schmucks from Seattle…
“… it was the first time I had seen Jimi Hendrix since a few years earlier when we used to watch together a lot of the touring bands who would visit the Seattle area. All the guitar players would show up then at the Spanish Castle, the Tiki or Birdland. Myself, Jimi and Larry Coryell … we would all go. [The] guy we would check out, Jerry Allen, who was funky to a rat. He’d get up there with his Stratocaster guitar and arch his ass out. Man, he was the funkiest. Later, after he was established, Jimi wrote a song ‘Spanish Castle Magic.’ It was a venue in Midland, right between Seattle and Tacoma.
Moby Grape’s Jerry Miller with Skip Spence, performing onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, on June 17, 1967 in Monterey, California.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
“In the movie Monterey Pop you get to see Jimi. What Jimi did was that he did the full chord thing. Anybody can play lead a hundred miles an hour. But to do a full package with a three-piece and have the P.A. and the lights. It was his day. It was beautiful. He had it. The sound was right, the color was right, and it was the chords. The Stratocaster and the Marshall amps. It came out with the full-body flavor. The Marshall amps gave the bottom a nice hairy bottom and a full six-string blend with meat. The meat and potatoes. After his show at Monterey, Jimi was signing girls’ breasts. They would pull up their sweaters, hand him a tube of lipstick, and he’d sign his autograph. I said to him, ‘That looks like a nice job.’
“I saw Otis Redding deliver. He’s in the Monterey Pop movie. What I saw that night was Otis turn that great big place into a living room. That’s what you want to do. Jimi played for the big place, and filled the big place up. But Otis, earlier when he got up there, he turned the big place into a living room. And it was that intimate. That’s what you call an artist that can bring it all in. I had never seen anything like it. Even in the very back, because I roamed around the place, and they felt like they were in his living room. And Booker T. and the boys, [Steve] Cropper, [Donald] Dunn, [Al] Jackson, were so familiar with the material they set it all up. Just magic. From every place in the whole area it was good to hear and no one yelled. Cropper was always so clean and fine. And the band was always so clean and fine, yet soulful. Those tunes are classics. Cropper’s guitar playing is beyond reproach.
“The Monterey movie shows the community. It’s wonderful. The Monterey festival, and the movie live on, even though some people who performed were friends of mine like Jimi, Janis Joplin, Pig Pen, Jerry Garcia, but their music lives on. That’s pretty cool. It’s not good that they’re not here. I’d love to see them. Sometimes they become immortal by going out quicker.”
Taken from an article that ran in Goldmine print in 2007
