Editing Moby Grape (section)

===1968===
The second album, ''[[Wow/Grape Jam]]'', released in 1968,<ref name="Larkin"/> was generally viewed as a critical and commercial disappointment, even though the album charted at No.&nbsp;20 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts, partially due to the special low price double-album packaging. The album included the track "Just Like Gene Autry, a Foxtrot", a tribute to the [[big band]] era which was tracked to only be played back properly at the speed of 78 RPM.<ref name="Larkin"/> The ''Grape Jam'' LP was one of loose, improvised studio jams with outside musicians. Also in 1968, the band contributed to the soundtrack of the movie ''[[The Sweet Ride]]'',<ref>Contributing the song [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063662/soundtrack "Never Again"]. A film clip containing the performance is accessible via YouTube; direct link not provided due to potential breach of copyright issues.</ref> and appeared, credited,<ref>Identified in script as "The Moby Grape" band playing that night at the club.</ref> in the film.

The band was also introduced to a wide group of UK listeners in 1968 through the inclusion of "Can't Be So Bad", from the ''Wow'' album, on the sampler album'' [[The Rock Machine Turns You On]]'' ([[Columbia Records|CBS]]).

But, amidst this success, troubled times plagued the band when founding member Spence began abusing [[LSD]], which led to increasingly erratic behavior. According to Miller: "Skippy changed radically when we were in New York. There were some people there (he met) who 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 [[Hotel Albert (New York, New York)|Albert Hotel]].<ref>University Place and East 11th Street, New York City. Now an apartment building, it was at the time a famous hotel originally owned by the brother of artist [[Albert Pinkham Ryder]]. The hotel was named in his honour. [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] used one of the hotel's rooms as his studio. Other famous guest was [[Thomas Wolfe]]. Patrick Bunyan, ''All Around The Town: Amazing Manhattan Facts and Curiosities''. [[Fordham University Press]], 1999.</ref> They said at the reception area that this crazy guy had held an ax to the doorman's head."<ref name=Parr /> After spending time in the infamous [[The Tombs|Tombs jail]] in New York, Spence was committed to New York's [[Bellevue Hospital]], where he spent six months under psychiatric care.

Recalling this troubled time for Spence, Lewis said, "We had to do (the album) in New York because the producer (David Rubinson) wanted to be with his family. So we had to leave our families and spend months at a time in hotel rooms in New York City. Finally I just quit and went back to California. I got a phone call after a couple of days. They'd played a Fillmore East gig without me, and Skippy took off with some black witch afterward who fed him full of acid. It was like that scene in [[The Doors (film)|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. They took him to the Tombs (and then to Bellevue) and that's where he wrote ''Oar''. When he got out of there, he cut that album in Nashville. And that was the end of his career. They shot him full of [[Thorazine]] for six months. They just take you out of the game."<ref name="auto"/>