The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
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Rock legend's long, strange trip stops in Chelsea
Moby Grape founder Peter Lewis playing Friday at McKune
Story and Italic Lyrics By Terry Jacoby
PUBLISHED: June 5, 2008
How's this for a way to spend the day? "I write and record music, I paint andI wait for my wife to get home."
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This is the life of Peter Lewis. But how Lewis got here is the real story. And the fact that he actually arrived here is another story. And that cob webs still linger and issues still fester and demons still dance is yet another story.
So while it might seem like he's in a good place right now, Peter Lewis is not all that far from the edge of the cliff. He's seen his share of people go over that edge, taking with them a part of him. The fact that he knows the trail to that edge and all it's pit falls helps keep him walking on terra firma.
Still, he admits, there are days the voices rise out of the depths of his past. It's just that now he seems to know how to answer them.
The "Peter Lewis Story" can be found in many places - tragedy, adventure, mystery, comedy. Like many rocks stars, his life is both fiction and non-fiction, falling somewhere between what fans want to believe and the reality of the truth.
The only running theme in the Peter Lewis story is that there is no running theme.
There's no blood on my hands, but there's dirt up my sleeve
Forever is at hand dear friend, no matter what you believe
One step at a time may be too fast a pace to keep
You stand to conquer fears, but sacrifice from your knees
Lewis is one of the founding members of Moby Grape, an American roots rock and psychedelic group considered by many to be the best rock band to emerge from the San Francisco music scene in the late sixties. The band was originally known for having all five members contribute to singing and songwriting, and who collectively merged elements of jazz, country, and blues together with rock to form an exciting and original sound. They later became known for other things - more tragic than exciting or original.
To understand where Lewis is now in his life is to learn what Lewis went through earlier in his life. We are all made up of components consisting of where we come from, family, beliefs, experiences, lessons learned and lessons not learned. If Lewis had not learned some of those lessons yesterday there is a good chance he might not be here today.
"A lot of good people didn't make it through the sixties," Lewis said this weekend from his home in Solvang, Calif., near Santa Barbara. "The people that did survive have to show people that we are OK. Right now, I'm OK. And if it gets worse, so what. Things go bad for everyone. You just have to deal with it."
Lewis, the son of Academy Award winning actress Loretta Young and screenwriter Tom Lewis, began dealing with the bad early in his life.
"Childhood was good until I was about 11," he says. "It was like paradise. We lived in a place called Doheny Ranch, 365 acres in the middle of Beverly Hills before it was all developed."
Paradise didn't last long.
"People used to say, 'you had everything.' But when I was 11 my parents got divorced, and my dad took my brother Chris and me to live in New York. We had been going to a military school that was too difficult for me. I was the kid who wanted to compete and be involved, but at that point we'd already been to nine different schools. And now there's this tremendous upheaval in the family."
So Peter did something he would do a lot of throughout his life. He stood up for himself.
He didn't like living in New York City. He wasn't thrilled to be with his father, who felt the same way about Peter.
"There were seven kids in my class in the school I was going to, and they'd been taking Latin and French since the first grade," he said. "I had a panic response. I went completely nuts and ran out of the classroom into the streets of New York City. I had a nervous breakdown. I spent the night in Grand Central Station and the next morning I found my way home. They found me on the roof, trying to get up enough guts to jump off."
It was a young age to be standing at the edge of the cliff.
His father, who was a vice president of an advertising agency and never around at the time, turned Peter over to a behavioral psychologist.
"He wanted to put me in a mental ward," he said. "They tricked me into going to the psychiatric hospital by telling me I was getting a physical exam. And when I got there they shot me full of Thorazine and locked me up until I promised to go to school. I was completely screwed up."
Standing on unfamiliar ground your fate drowns in the well
Turn the other way and try to avoid what's sure to be your farewell
You got nothin' to hide unless you count the secret they keep from you
When you don't have nothing to hide, you don't have nothing to lose
Peter Lewis owes a lot to music. You can start with sanity and drive down the highway until you reach survival. Without music to grab a hold of, Lewis would have more than likely let go of life.
Sitting in that psychiatric hospital he noticed a guitar and a TV. And a flashing red light that said EXIT!
"There was a guitar in there and a TV and that's where I saw Ricky Nelson for the first time on the Ozzie and Harriet Show," he said.
Ricky Nelson wasn't exactly Elvis Presley, but Lewis didn't need the king. He just needed a way out.
"I hated that place, but I learned that if I just held onto the guitar people would stay away from me because I'd look occupied," he said. "In a weird way that whole experience was responsible for me starting to play the guitar. Ricky Nelson gave me this thing: 'I want to be like that guy.' And I latched onto it."
Lewis escaped New York, back into the arms of his mother and back to California where he belonged. But he didn't escape his problems and kept the edge of that cliff in full view.
He was "sort of the semi-juvenile delinquent type." He ran away and one time they caught him in Las Vegas at age 13.
"I was disturbed," he said. "I never really recovered from my experiences in New York."
But there was this guitar. It was never far away. And now girls and surfing and Ricky Nelson were ringing in his ears. While he may not have known how to get there, he knew where he wanted to go.
"I met Charlie Correll during my first year at Loyola and he took me to where he was playing with Art Linkletter's son, Bob," Lewis said. "And it was Bob who got me into the electric guitar."
Lewis, Correll and Linkletter helped form the Cornells, an LA-based band that played mostly surf music and who opened at the Hollywood Bowl for (comedian) Soupy Sales and played the LA Sports Arena with Bobby Freeman, the Coasters and Wayne Newton.
Lewis went off to Purdue University and in 1966 helped form Moby Grape with frontman Skip Spence, the original drummer for Jefferson Airplane. In 1967, they released "Moby Grape," now and at the time considered an exceptional rock album.
They were called everything from the "American Rolling Stones" to "the next big thing." Critics and fans loved the record with the song "Omaha" reaching the American singles charts in 1967. The band even performed at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival.
This is when things began to pop for Moby Grape. While some of the mistakes were out of their hands, others were quite literally self-inflicted. Marketing blunders were made, legal trouble emerged and their relationship with their manager crumbled. Alcohol and drugs were as prevalent as chord changes and long hair.
The band's second album "Wow" was anything but.
"We made a huge mistake with that album," Lewis said. "The Beatles had just released Sgt. Peppers so we tried to put out a record just like that instead of doing what we did so well on our first record. It was a mistake because many of the songs we couldn't play live. We couldn't reproduce that sound on stage back then."
As it turns out, Moby Grape never got back to the success it had with its debut album.
I just signed, a suicide note
My faith conceding, every word I wrote
I could not afford, the steep price to pay
Was resigned to the fact, there wasn't any other way
I bowed to my fears, and surrendered to the pain
There is a line on the Moby Grape page on Wikipedia that jumps right off the computer screen: "unfortunately (Moby Grape) never fully realized its potential." Those words can certainly sting. But they also can weigh on a person, even destroying them if they let it. "Never realizing your potential" isn't exactly what you want on your tombstone - or Wikipedia page.
But that certainly fits the life of Skip Spence, a gifted and brilliant musician who Lewis cherished as a friend - and still does. Spence was never the same after allegedly consuming large quantities of LSD. And even though the band carried on for a few more albums, they were never the same without Spence.
Spence was committed for six months to New York City's Bellevue Hospital, where he was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia. He died in 1999 of lung cancer at the age of 52.
"Skip was never crazy around me," Lewis said. "And it wasn't about crazy, it was about not being understood. And when you got away from the band members, no one understood us. We are stuck together and we are the only ones who can relate to one another.
"When Moby Grape ended there was some serious suffering that went on after that. And no one suffered more than Skip. He suffered more than I ever did and he never got bitter. That's the lesson, among others, he left me. No matter what happened, he never got bitter."
It took Peter Lewis a long time to shake off the troubled legacy of his band.
"I had a lot of anger and I still deal with it," Lewis said. "But I have learned that the best decisions have to be meaningful. It's like the pollywogs in a pond when the water dries up. Either you grow lungs and survive or you die."
Rock 'n roll is many things to many people. It's an escape, it's a way out, it's a way in, it's a friend, a lifejacket, an excuse and a way of life
Rock 'n roll also is a teacher - Bruce Springsteen once wrote, "I learned more from a three-minute record than I ever learned in school" - where the students never stop studying. And Lewis is always studying - playing, writing, listening, growing and most importantly reaching. He's reaching for that next level.
You see, dedicated musicians are forever studying music 101, trying to understand and better experience this beautiful art form that no one ever truly masters. And no one owes more to music than Lewis.
"Music was my saving grace," he says. "If you can keep from losing your faith in music, then you've succeeded. Even if you never get to be super famous, you can still write and record songs. Where ever I was in my life, at any time, I could always go in my room and play my guitar. It was the one thing that was always there for me."
And it's still there for him.
At 62, Lewis has been married to his wife Corin since 1979. They live off a golf course in sunny California, a safe distance from the cliffs that once seemed so close. He could have been a major rock star. He is going to have to settle for being a minor rock star. As long as he can continue "writing tunes," painting and "waiting for his wife to come home," he's learned to deal with that.
Has he accepted that? Probably not. After all, he's a pollywog with lungs still swimming in this giant pond.
It's tough to explain, gut-wrenching to discuss, impossible to defend
I know where I am right now, but I also know where I've been
The lights flicker out, the music fades and my heart beats from fast to slow
All my fears and disappointments are packed up by the side of the road
I'll hide here tonight in the warmth of your arms, sit back and enjoy the show
If the past wants to find me, search no more, but this time I won't be alone
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