Opening night of Moby Grape's stand at the Fillmore West, with the Jeff Beck Group and Mint Tattoo beneath them on Lee Conklin's BG-130.

Moby Grape in July 1968 were a band already coming apart. Their 1967 debut is one of the best records the San Francisco scene produced — five songwriters, three guitars, no weak track — and Columbia had destroyed its launch by releasing five singles from it simultaneously, a stunt that made the band look like a marketing exercise. By this stand Skip Spence had left after the breakdown that produced *Oar*, and the group playing the Fillmore West was a diminished version of the one on the sleeve.

Beneath them, the Jeff Beck Group were on their first American tour and about to eclipse everyone on the bill: Beck on guitar, Rod Stewart singing, Ronnie Wood on bass. *Truth* had been released that month. Within two years Stewart and Wood would be in the Faces and Beck would have wrecked and rebuilt the group twice.