Jerry Miller, Moby Grape Lead Guitarist and Co-Founder, Dies at 81

Jerry Miller, greatly admired lead guitarist of the 1960s group Moby Grape and one of the architects of that era’s San Francisco sound, died Sunday at 81 in his hometown of Tacoma, Wash. News of the death was shared by friends and family on social media. No cause was given.

A text from Miller’s wife, Jo, was shared to the Moby Group fan page on Facebook Sunday: “Everybody flood the ether with Jerry Miller’s music. Play it all day long for me and him. And thank you all so much.”

Miller’s guitar skills were such that Rolling Stone included him at No. 68 on a ranking of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Moby Grape’s tenure as a quintessential part of the west coast counterculture rock scene was a relatively short but influential one. Formed in 1966, the band broke up three years later, managing to release four albums for Columbia during that window, including a self-titled debut in 1967 (reaching a chart peak of No. 24) and 1968’s “Wow/Grape Jam” (No. 20). A fifth album was recorded for Reprise during a fleeting reunion in 1971. Further reunion albums appeared in the 1980s, but the group’s impact was never best measured on the charts, or in the number of years it endured.

Miller’s admirers included 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 first rehearsal.

In 1999, Rolling Stone’s David Fricke wrote a five-star reassessment of Moby Grape’s debut album, three decades on from the group’s heyday. “They had the looks, the songs, the guitars (three of ’em) and the singing (five drop-dead, blues-angel voices) — everything they needed to be America’s Beatles and Rolling Stones combined,” Fricke wrote. “Everything except the luck.” Possibly commercially cursed or not, the group merited a place in the pantheon, per Fricke, especially with such a remarkable entry. “Cut in three weeks for $11,000, ‘Moby Grape’ is one of rock’s truly perfect debut albums and a pivotal document of ’60s rock in radiant mid-mutation. Funky country, folk rock, acid punk, frat-band R&B: They’re all here, whipped into a 13-song fireball of wide-screen vocals and meticulous guitar sizzle. … Moby Grape never became stars, but… their legend is secure.”

The Washington-bred musician was born in 1943 and participated in local Tacoma bands like the Elegants, the Incredible Kingsmen and the Frantics, the last of which located to San Jose. Several members of that band regrouped as Moby Grape in 1966.

Miller loved the band’s three-guitar approach. “When we first started rehearsing, we just sounded so good,” he said in a video interview with Saint Bryan in 2016, calling the multiply-pronged approacy “more different than anything i’d ever experienced. Three guitars — i’d barely ever layed with more than me! it was great, and right then, we knew we had something. We laughed al the way home. We said, ‘This is gonna be good.’ And it was, until some things went haywire. … We all sang, we all wrote, and we thought, ‘Hell, there’s no end to the possibilities here.’ We were all young and handsome.”

Despite the run of albums on a major label, Moby Grape ran into unusual obstacles. Skip Spence, who was the most visible of the group members — even though it unusually had several lead singer-songwriters — developed serious drug issues and ended up being institutionalized. Its lineup reduced to four, the band was offered a booking at Woodstock, but bassist Bob Mosley shocked the others by joining the Marines before they could play the festival. Even then, Moby Grape soldiered on as a trio for a time.

Miller was profiled by a local newspaper, the Inlander, in 2014, in a story that reported on his constant gigs in the area. “He never rehearses, and says most of his practice comes from teaching guitar two to three times a week for $50 a lesson,” the paper wrote. “The local gigs and lessons — combined with Social Security, a few royalties and occasional tours with aging members from ’60s supergroups like Quicksilver Messenger Service or Jefferson Airplane — all enable Miller to ‘get by,’ as he puts it.” At a local diner bar where Miller’s band played, the owner said, “A lot of people, when they find out … they come back and they’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? What’s he doing here?'”

Photos were posted on social media of Miller cheerfully being joined by friends and family in an 81st birthday party less than two weeks before his death.

After Miller’s passing, his daughter, Sarah Kabbani, also posted a message on Facebook, describing what it was like “to live with a legend…..and be the first-born kid in a wild time of some epic partying and revolutionary music.

“Late night jam sessions, getting to sneak into a gig here and there,” she continued. “Jerry (Garcia) letting me stay up after Michan (her mother) went to sleep, hiding me under pillows on the couch if she woke up, so I could stay up late with him and listen to him play. Afternoons of mowing and fluffing the lawn together. Building a giant train set in the barn. And buffing our bicycles to ride to the store for snacks. At one point I thought he was making me do too many chores. At another point I finally realized he just wanted me to do everything with him. We just saw him in SF and I’m so thankful now. He gave me a big smooch and told me I was da mos buutiful girl.”