I Revolutionise Rock Poster Art!

In 1966, this hung in my dormitory room!

I wasn’t gigantic on the San Francisco rock boom. Indeed, I detested most of it. I thought most of the bands were ugly, and nearly all of the music self-indulgent. I don’t think there’s ever been another time when so many mediocre instrumentalists felt called upon to display their lack of talent for what seemed hours on end. I found Janis shrill and imitative. I found the Dead numbingly boring. Jefferson Airplane had a couple of nice tracks, but their fervent smugness put me off. 

But I loved Wes Wilson’s art nouveau-inspired posters for the Fillmore Auditorium as much as I hated most of the San Francisco bands whose names you might have been able to make out on them if you figured out Wes’s ultra-psychedelic lettering, inspired by that of the Austrian poster artist Alfred Roller. And boy, did I figure it out, to the point of being able to do a very credible imitation of it. 

Armed with my ability to imitate Wes Wilson’s lettering style and a great deal of bravado born out of stupidity, I ascertained the address at which Bill Graham, the city’s pre-eminent concert promoter, had his office, and, with a stack of the posters I’d drawn in my little dormitory room at UCLA while I should have been studying, and with a carload of bravado, headed for it. 

I hadn’t bothered phoning ahead to request an appointment. I was sort of a hippie — sometimes I attended class barefoot, and in a little necklace I’d made myself — and surely Bill had had much experience dealing with such free spirits as I. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Bill wouldn’t both see me and invite me to replace my idol as his in-house poster artist. 

I presented myself at his office. His young male assistant asked if I had an appointment. I rolled my eyes. How deeply uncool. The assistant did some eye-rolling of his own and asked me to wait a minute. He disappeared into an inner office, from which a window-rattling rumble of umbrage soon emanated. 

Himself stormed out to where I was waiting, breathing fire, glowering to melt the walls. He saw that I was innocence itself! — that is, a little twerp — and, instead of taking a large bite out of me, sighed, “You can have three minutes now, or longer than that later in the week if you make a fucking appointment and come back.” I gulped, and said I’d take the three minutes, as I was hitch-hiking back to Los Angeles later in the day.

He looked at my stuff, which I realise now wasn’t very good, except for the lettering. He was much kinder than I deserved. He studied my work with care, and complimented me on it.

In the end, though, I didn’t design a single Fillmore poster. Instead, my buddy Bill hired a woman I understood to be his girlfriend. Maybe he'd misplaced my phone number. Wes Wilson was heard from again 15 years into the 21st century, when a typeface named in his honour suddenly appeared. It misses the point that Wilson’s lettering was designed for curves, and doesn’t look gorgeous when all the characters are the same size. I went on to glorious careers as a polemicist, novelist, musician, actor, graphic designer, and humourist, knowing barely an hour’s frustration.