THE LEGACY OF BILL GRAHAM
AUTHENTIC POSTERS
INCREDIBLE PHOTOGRAPHY!

Grateful Dead Handbill

Grateful Dead Handbill
Bill Graham organized his early concerts like a menu: in order to get the ice cream, you had to eat your vegetables. Junior Wells was Graham's choice of vegetable this January, and the Dead and The Doors were dessert. Wilson's poster has been interpreted several ways over the years: some thought the figure was menacing, but the artist insisted it was an African art-influenced portrait of a smiling old man.
Print Variations
The handbill was only printed once before the concert and features the green, purple and red of the original poster. It measures 4 3/8" x 7".
About Wes Wilson
When the Avalon Ballroom and Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium began to hold weekly dance concerts, Wilson was called upon to design the posters. He created psychedelic posters from February 1966 to May 1967, when disputes over money severed his connection with Graham. Wilson pioneered the psychedelic rock poster. Intended for a particular audience, "one that was tuned in to the psychedelic experience," his art, and especially the exaggerated freehand lettering, emerged from Wilson's own involvement with that experience and the psychedelic art of light shows.