BOOKS
THERE
is alegend about Skip Spence. Moby Grape biographer Cam Cobb alludes to it towards the end of Weighted Down, citing an article from the New York Times that depicted Spence’s life as “a cautionary tale of the 1960s”. As the story goes, Skip hooked up with awoman “known to be a witch” who gave him bad acid, prompting aserious deterioration in his behaviour. Faced with achoice between prison or Bellevue psychiatric hospital, he chose the latter. On release, Skip then asked his record label for asmall advance and a motorcycle so he could drive to Nashville to record asolo album.
That record was Oar, an aural roadmap of the singer’s mental turmoil, which failed to deliver him from obscurity. When Spence died in 1999, aged 52, his final moments were soundtracked by More Oar, the tribute album on which the likes of Robert Plant, Mark Lanegan, Tom Waits and Beck showed their appreciation by covering Skip’s songs. Whatever comfort Spence may have gleaned from this is unknowable. What remains is aprofoundly sad story in which the musician’s gifts, and the accompanying myth, are overshadowed by the painful reality of his existence.