Biography Peter Lewis

Peter Lewis is a musician in Austin, TX. He sometimes performs as Chicken Sink, Wet Replies, and Unimaginable Knitting Mistakes.

Peter Lewis (born July 15, 1945) is one of the founding members of the band Moby Grape. Three of his better known songs with Moby Grape are "Fall On You" and "Sitting By The Window" from the self-titled first Moby Grape album and "If You Can't Learn From My Mistakes", from Moby Grape '69.

Peter Lewis is one of two sons of actress Loretta Young (d. 2000) and writer-producer Tom Lewis (d. 1988), and accordingly spent much of his childhood in Hollywood. His older brother, Christopher Lewis (b. 1944), is a writer and producer of films primarily for television. Peter Lewis and Christopher Lewis are nephews of actresses Polly Ann Young and Sally Blane, sisters of their mother. They are also half-brothers of Judy Lewis (b. 1935), daughter of Loretta Young and Clark Gable. Musician David Lindley is their cousin.

In his youth, Peter Lewis attended military school and later, after a period of time in the Air Force, became a commercial pilot, initially working for Shell Oil. He cites Tim Hardin and Fred Neil as important influences, and credits Linda Eastman with introducing him to their music.

His first band was The Cornells.

Lewis now lives in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara, California, with his wife and two children.

Lewis is noted in particular for his lifelong efforts to assist fellow Moby Grape bandmates Bob Mosley and Skip Spence (d. 1999) in countering the challenges of schizophrenia. Lewis has a personal sensitivity to psychiatric challenges. As a child of eleven, in the context of his parents' acrimonious divorce and custody dispute, he suffered a nervous breakdown in New York City and was involuntarily hospitalized for a period. As of 1969 with Moby Grape, he recalls, "I was under the care of a psychiatrist, taking all this Librium so I could stay with the band."

Bob Mosley credits Peter Lewis with assisting Mosley out of a period of approximately five years of homelessness in the 1990s. Bob Mosley describes the circumstances as follows: "In 1996, Peter Lewis picked me up along the side of a San Diego freeway where I was living, to tell me a ruling by San Francisco Judge Garcia gave Moby Grape their name back. I was ready to go to work again."

With respect to Skip Spence, Lewis was sceptical of the labelling of Spence as a schizophrenic, in circumstances where related treatments were not resulting in significant improvements. Lewis sought out and participated in alternative healing therapies for Spence. In particular, he recalls, "Through my dad, who'd become a born-again Christian, I'd met these monks in Lucia above Big Sur, who were really serious about rational metaphysics. Their faith beyond reason overwhelms you every time. Since the doctors couldn't help Skippy - they kept objectifying his problem: 'He's a paranoid schizophrenic' - and were never going to heal him - all they were interested in was keeping him out of McDonald's with a machine gun - it was the only place I could think of to take him."

In recent years, in addition to performing occasionally with Moby Grape, Lewis was a guitarist with the reformed Electric Prunes (2000-2003), contributing to their Artifact album. He has also developed a career as a solo artist. He has released two albums on the Taxim label: Peter Lewis and Live in Bremen. Peter Lewis occasionally performs as a duo with David West, his collaborator on Live in Bremen.

In 2010, Lewis appeared with Stu Cook at the SXSW festival, performing with The Explosives

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