The group was formed in late 1966 in San Francisco, at the instigation of Skip Spence and Matthew Katz. Both had been previously associated with Jefferson Airplane, Spence as the band's first drummer, playing on their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and Katz as the band's manager, but both had been dismissed by the group. Katz encouraged Spence to form a band similar to Jefferson Airplane, with varied songwriting and vocal work by several group members, and with Katz as the manager. Unfortunately , Matthew (Katz) brought the spirit of conflict into the band. He didn't want it to be an equal partnership. He wanted it all."

  Lead guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson (both formerly of The Frantics, originally based in Seattle) joined guitarist (and son of actress Loretta Young) Peter Lewis (of The Cornells), bassist Bob Mosley (of The Misfits, based in San Diego) and Spence, now on guitar instead of drums. Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson had moved The Frantics from Seattle to San Francisco after a 1965 meeting with Jerry Garcia, Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco. Once The Frantics were settled in San Francisco, Mosley joined the band.

  Unlike most bands then and now, all five members contributed to singing and songwriting.Their music had elements of folk, blues, country and jazz together with rock. The members were frontman and rhythm guitarist Skip Spence (the original drummer for Jefferson Airplane), Lead guitarist Jerry Miller, and drummer Don Stevenson (both formerly of The Frantics), rhythm guitarist Peter Lewis (son of actress Loretta Young), and bassist Bob Mosley. They contributed to hippiedom with the song "Hey Grandma", while "8:05" became a country-rock standard. The group appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 but do to legal problems they were excluded from the film of the event. And other legal problems included charges (later dropped) that the band consorted with underage girls.

  While Jerry Miller was the principal lead guitarist, all three guitarists played lead at various points, often playing off against each other, in a guitar form associated with Moby Grape as "crosstalk". The other major three-guitar band at the time was Buffalo Springfield.

  Like many bands they had their share of problems involving drugs. Skip Spence (according to some) was never the same after dropping large quantities of LSD. Jerry Miller said:"Skippy changed radically when we were in New York City. Their were some people that were into harder drugs and a harder lifestyle, and some very weird shit. And so Skip kind of flew off with these people. Skippy disappeared for a little while. Next time we saw him he had cut off his beard, and he had a black leather jacket on, with his chest hanging out, with some chains, and just sweating like a son of a gun. I don't know what got a hold of him but it just whacked him. And the next thing I know, he axed my door down at the Albert Hotel. They said down at the reception desk that this crazy guy had held an ax to the doorman's head." Spence was committed to New Yorks Bellevue hospital, where he spent six months under psychiatric care. There is an often-repeated myth that on the day of his release, Skip left Bellevue, jumped on a motorcycle dressed only in his pajamas, and headed straight to Nashville for the recording of "Oar."

   Skip's former wife Pat says that Skip first came home to the Santa Cruz area, and the whole family went out to Nashville together. and on the day he was released, he rode his motorcycle dressed only in his pajamas directly to Nashville to record his only solo album, Oar. In Nashville, Skip recorded his only solo album,Oar, playing all of the instruments and producing the album himself.

  Peter Lewis's recollections of this time are as follows: "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 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 took him out of the game."

  The remaining four members released Moby Grape '69, then Bob Mosley left the group. The last 3 members released their final album for Columbia in late 1969, Truly Fine Citizen.

  All 5 members re-united in 1971 and released 20 Granite Creek. Then Spence left again and the band struggled on for a while but never returned to the level of excellence and popularity that they enjoyed in the early years.

  With Spence gone again, the remainder soldiered on for a few years, and later reunited on several occasions, with and without Spence. Bob Mosley and Jerry Miller, together with Michael Been on rhythm guitar (later of The Call) and John Craviotto on drums, recorded an LP that was released in 1976 as Fine Wine on Polydor Records in Germany. Thereafter, Mosley and Craviotto joined with Neil Young to form The Ducks, which played in and around the Santa Cruz area during 1977, and were immensely popular during the band's brief life.

  In the Summer of 1987 Moby Grape, along with It's a Beautiful Day, Fraternity of Man, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, got together for a couple of shows. Original Grapes: Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, Bob Mosley, Skip Spence, and Don Stevenson performed their classics “Hey Grandma,” “Naked If I Want,” “Omaha,” “Fall on You,” and “805,” among others, before fans at the Marin Civic and Cupertino’s DeAnza College. Notwithstanding continuing to perform on occasion, the group has never returned to the level of popularity enjoyed in the early Avalon Ballroom/Fillmore Auditorium days.

  Fine Wine was one of several band names used by Moby Grape members during the course of a protracted legal dispute with former manager Matthew Katz over ownership of the Moby Grape name. Other names used for performance or recording purposes included Mosley Grape, Legendary Grape and The Melvilles. The Legendary Grape album, originally released in 1989, is considered by some to be a Melvilles recording. This is because, while it was originally issued as a Moby Grape cassette-only release, former manager Matthew Katz took legal action, with reference to his alleged ownership of the Moby Grape name. The tape was withdrawn, repackaged and reissued as being by The Melvilles.  Despite Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley and Peter Lewis continuing to release solo records in the 1990s and 2000s, Moby Grape has not released an album of new material since the release of Legendary Grape in 1989. Jerry Miller considers the 2003 remastered and supplemented CD version of Legendary Grape to be an essential Moby Grape album.

  Miller still performs today (2008) as the Jerry Miller Band, playing rockin' blues and the occasional Moby Grape song. Skip Spence after being homeless and suffering from long termed mental health problems and other health problems died in 1999 in Santa Cruz, CA.

  After 30 years of court battles over the management of the band in 2006, they finally won back the rights to the name "Moby Grape" and planned a reunion show with the living members and drummer Aynsley Dunbar and keyboardist Pete Sears. It was to be held in January 2007 but did not take place due to scheduling conflicts. Finally in September 2007 the reunited Moby Grape performed before 40,000 fans at the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco.

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