Huey Lewis and the News told us back in the 1980s that the “heart of rock ‘n’ roll is in Cleveland.” He forgot to mention that the soul of rock ‘n’ roll is in San Francisco, where it all started back in the 1960s, when it was good to be groovy but better to be psychedelic.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the complex imagery and hand lettering of the psychedelic rock posters that called the faithful to the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom for concerts and happenings. Commissioned by rock promoters Chet Helms and Bill Graham, the posters were created by a small group of mostly untrained graphic designers.
The early posters were small, 14 by 20 inches at the most, with many being handbills and postcards. They were printed on bond paper or vellum on offset litho presses. They were the ephemera of the day, not meant to last beyond the concert date. But many did. Some originals and many more reprints were sold in record stores and head shops to fans and collectors.
Recently, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) acquired more than 800 rock posters from the collection of Sheryl and David Tippit. More than 200 will be featured in “The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area,” running March 31 through July 19.
In his reevaluation of this short-lived genre of popular American art, Darrin Alfred, AIGA associate curator of graphic design at DAM, casts them as a postmodern reaction to International Style. He also sees the genre coming full circle toward the end of the psychedelic era, when images embodied cleaner lines and sparer images infiltrated the designs.
Add to this overview the illustrators’ own intent to commit to paper the vibrant colors and morphing images induced by hallucinogens and you have the basis of the psychedelic experience. The word “psychedelic” was coined from the Greek word for soul. Today, it refers to any brightly colored or patterned object.
In the 1960s, everything from the music and light shows to rubber floors and neon-colored clothing imitated the psychedelic experience. Even ever-vigilant members of the establishment were baptized into the cult of the psychedelic by association.
It is little wonder that the posters that brought the counterculture to hear the Yardbirds, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, even Andy Warhol and His Inevitable Plastic Velvet Underground, were the front lines of communication about the psychedelic experience.
To a young audience, much of which was as unschooled in art as the artists themselves, those intricate posters were as unique as a newborn. In truth, they were informed by designs from the Art Nouveau period, Art Deco, Surrealism, Japanese woodblock prints of the Floating World and images of Native Americans. In the posters can be seen elements of Op and Pop, even oblique references to the color theories of Josef Albers.
The first rock poster is attributed to Mike Ferguson and George Hunter of the Charlatans. It was used to advertise their mid-1965 gig at the Red Dog Saloon. But the tone for a generation of poster makers was set by Wes Wilson, as Darrin Alfred explained.
Since so much of the art is “trippy” and its artists better known to niche collectors than the community at large, a short course in the founding artists is in order.
Wes Wilson, Liquid Lettering
Wes Wilson was the first artist to work consistently for both the Fillmore and Avalon, although, as a kid who liked to draw, he really had no formal training. Wilson got his start doing paste-ups at a San Francisco press.
He was the innovator of the wraparound lettering that is synonymous with the rock poster movement. The lettering, which looks as if it is moving or melting, was key to replicating the dance hall experience, with its sensory engulfing amplifiers and acid-effect light shows.
Wilson’s first rock poster was for a Trips concert at the Longshoreman’s Hall in 1966. He then executed a dozen or so posters for Chet Helms before signing on exclusively with Bill Graham, who offered him more artistic freedom. Wilson stopped making posters in 1967. He then went on to publish Off the Wall , a popular art journal devoted to the poster image.
Bonnie MacLean, Detached Faces
Bonnie MacLean was the only woman to successfully breach the bastion of the then male-dominated rock enclave. The wife of Bill Graham, she worked as co-promoter, doing everything from counting money to designing the “upcoming events” chalkboard in the Fillmore lobby.
When MacLean, who was also untrained, began creating posters, she took her visual cues from Wilson, but eventually developed a style of her own.
MacLean experimented with cultural diversity and often focused on facial expressions. Her faces generally have an ethereal look, detached and aloof. The flourishes surrounding the images are reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley. The details often incorporate bits of head-shop paraphernalia.
MacLean went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts, Mexican Extension. Over the years, she has exhibited in many group and solo shows.
Alton Kelley And Stanley Mouse, The Family Dog
Alton Kelley (who died in 2008 at the age of 67) and his partner Stanley Mouse, along with Chet Helms, were founding members of the Family Dog commune. According to rock chroniclers, the Family Dog actually started the psychedelic dancehall craze, throwing the first event at the Longshoreman’s Hall in 1965.
Kelly, a hot rod enthusiast from New England who painted pinstripes on motorcycle gas tanks, designed the first Family Dog flyers. He could draw anything, but was at a loss when it came to lettering. When he met Stanley Mouse, who had by then made a name for himself in Detroit as a hot rod artist, the artistic unit was complete.
During the Avalon Ballroom years, the team created 26 posters, including the famous 1966 Zig Zag man poster for Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quick Silver Messenger Service. Although the inspiration for this poster is clearly the rolling paper trademark, the duo frequented the public library, borrowing liberally from the images they found there.
They appropriated ideas from Edward Curtis’s photographs of American Indians and illustrations from Nineteenth Century novels. The Grateful Dead logo was an adaptation of an image in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Victor Moscoso, Academically Trained
The first trained artist to focus on the fun and glory of rock, Victor Moscoso had studied color theory at Yale under Josef Albers. He could not help but incorporate Albers’ theories in his work, though after twisting them to suit his own bent, turning them upside down, combining intense and contrasting colors, they were hardly recognizable as such.
With vibrating color combinations and lettering pushed to their limits, bordering on illegibility, Moscoso’s posters jump and vibrate.
As 1966 rolled around, Moscoso formed his own company, Neon Rose, and was able to retain rights to his works. He also became a regular contributor to Zap Comix .
Rick Griffin, From Comics To Counterculture
A Southern California native, Rick Griffin was an established comic book artist for Surfer Magazine . His first San Francisco art exhibition was for the Jook Savages. When organizers for the Human Be-In saw his work, he obtained a commission.
Griffin’s inspiration was the Old West. Bold colors and a distinctive style of hand lettering were his trademarks. As he saw it, the lettering was as much a part of the graphic image as the graphics themselves.
Griffin went on to illustrate and publish The Book of St John , and create album covers for Maranatha! Music, a Christian record label. He died in 1991.
Lee Conklin, The Acid Test
Of all the posters, Lee Conklin’s are the most directly expressive of the psychedelic experience. In all-night sessions, the artist worked frantically, laying forms into nearly every single letter and figure. His objects are rarely what they appear to be at first glance. What begins as the letter D might morph into a bird, then after a blink or two transform into two birds.
Conklin’s alternative realities and occasional dark images reflected the growing Haight-Ashbury scene and its predilection for psychedelics.
Conklin is now a fulltime artist working out of his home studio in Columbia, Calif.
David Singer, A New Direction
By the time David Singer became a staff artist in Graham’s company, the appeal and effect of over-the-top posters was wearing thin. Graham was looking to take things in a new direction and Singer delivered. He had, prior to that, been working almost singularly with photographic materials, and conjured a style that was cooler and more reserved.
Singer pulled images from books and magazines, added his own hand lettering and invented what he called “visual poems.” Ultimately, he created 67 posters for the Fillmore during the last two years of its existence.
Singer went on to have a successful career in art until 2006, when he suffered a stroke.
While these were the innovators, works by other poster artists of note will also be on display at DAM. They include Paul Zavorskas, Michael Wood and Pyzis Studios, Robert Fried and Jonathan Julian, Michael Ferguson and George Hunter, Joe Gomes, Brighton Goodfellow and Jack DeGovia.
The legacy of the rock poster resurfaced in the heady graphics of the Grunge Movement of the 1980s. Overall, psychedelia remained of, about and for its time, eclipsed by “good design,” Helvetica and fonts created for the Internet.
No discussion of the rock poster would be complete without a nod to Chet Helms and Bill Graham. Ironically, they began as partners but became competitors early in the game, when Graham snaked the Butterfield Blues Band away from joint management.
When it came to the posters, Helms was often very involved in the design, suggesting images, directing the creative process.
Throughout his career, Helms maintained a laid back “antibusiness model” approach to producing. He died in 2005 at the age of 62.
In contrast, Graham was all business, except when it came to the making of posters. He pretty much gave the artists a free hand.
Graham eventually became the world’s top promoter, organizing and managing such events as Live Aid in 1985, A Conspiracy of Hope in 1988 and Human Rights Now! Tours for Amnesty International.
Bill Graham died in a plane crash in 1991, while returning from a Huey Lewis and the News concert.
“The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965‱971” will engage your mind and perhaps even send you scurrying to the garage for a second look at those album covers you have meaning to take to the dump. Many of whose images were created by or inspired by the poster artists.
The Denver Art Museum is at 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver. For information, www.denverartmuseum.org or 720-865-5000.
