Wes Wilson, a pioneer of psychedelic concert art, has died. He was 82.
Wilson was a primary artist for Bill Graham and Chet Helms, the two famed promoters of the San Francisco sound at the Fillmore and Avalon venues.
The many regional bands he helped make famous included Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Wilson was known for wildly obscure hand-drawn lettering, said to be easily accessible by viewers on hallucinogenic drugs. “Nearly cryptic letters filled every available space, lines melted into lines, colors clashed … and the psychedelic poster was born,” his web site bio noted.
His contemporaries were the psychedelic artists Victor Moscoso, Alton Kelly, Stanley Mouse, Bob Fried, Gary Grimshaw and Rick Griffin.
Wilson began his career in graphic arts as a printer, after serving in the Army. He made an ultra-bright antiwar poster in 1965 featuring the American flag with stars in the foreground in the shape of a swastika, the top title asking: “Are We Next?”
“I’m glad I did something to significantly express my shock and anguish as an American about such an obviously erroneous and costly ethical ‘mistake’ as was the Viet Nam War,” Wilson wrote decades later on his blog. (He described himself as a “a real, basic American guy.”)
That poster and another led to what he called his “15 minutes of fame” as a concert poster maker. The antiwar poster attracted the attention of Family Dog promoter Helms and later, Graham. Wilson typically received about $100 for a poster, with turnaround of less than a week. Although Graham paid more than Helm, the artist and promoter eventually came to a bad end over royalties.
He designed the poster for the Beatles’ final concert, at Candlestick Park. One of Wilson’s Grateful Dead posters was used on the cover of Life magazine in September 1967.
He said his favorite psychedelic bands were the early Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, Big Brother & the Holding Company and the Doors. (He wasn’t much on the Grateful Dead.)
Wilson attributed his success to “fate, good luck, and plenty of late nights.” He looked back with fondness on the “wonderful good ole days in the mid-60s out in San Francisco,” but in the early ’70s left the city for the Ozarks, where he continued to do art and raised cattle.
Robert Wesley Wilson was born July 15, 1937, in Sacramento. He died of cancer Jan. 24 in Leanne, Mo., where he lived for many years.
A true pioneer. I became obsessed with the psychedelic era when I was a teenager in the late 1980s. I had concert posters on my wall that I didn’t even realize were done by Wes. I remember thinking when I was a teenager that a lot of the people I revered were generally 20 to 25 years older than I was and that eventually it would get to the point where all those people started leaving the planet. And now we’re at that point. Sad, but I guess that’s the cycle of life. Rest in peace, Wes.
My love for psychedelic posters was really the other half of my love of psychedelic music. In 1967 I couldn’t imagine one without the other. My walls were covered in posters with black lights and different colored flashing lights that would make some posters appear to move, more so depending on what you may have just smoked. All these years later, I still collect psychedelic posters from the 60s and only a few years ago purchased the Wilson poster featuring Grace Slick that’s shown in this posting.
For me and many others, the poster artists were just as a big stars as the rock bands creating the music that inspired those posters. Wilson really was the father of psychedelic posters and I recommend anyone who appreciates psychedelic posters, check out the site: TRPS The Rock Poster Society. They have poster conventions in San Francisco every year, where you can still meet some of the few artists from the 60s poster movement who are still alive. Wes used to show up at those events every year. Two of the giants of the psychedelic poster movement are still alive and still attend, Stanley Mouse and Victor Moscoso. I also want to recommend a DVD documentary on the history of rock posters, American Artifact. You can find it on eBay for $10-$20 or get a free copy when you join TRPS.
As Astroman pointed out, the cycle of life will all too soon remove we who were so lucky to be young during that magical time when psychedelic music and posters were born, but the music and the posters will last forever to be discovered and enjoyed by many generations to come. Thanks Wes, for all you gave us and all you inspired and will continue to inspire.
I spent a couple of summers in the late 60s traveling between Los Angeles and the Haight, where I picked up a copy of Wilson’s “The Sound” poster (Sept. 23, 1966), which has adorned every apartment I’ve lived in for the past 50 years. There was nothing like these posters — before or since. Long live psychedelia.
the big five are thinning out, i think only Moscoso and Mouse are left. American originals all, they defined a funky DIY approach to the rock concert poster that some still hint at but cannot capture.
Only a short time after Wilson’s passing, the woman who pretty much picked up the torch when Wilson and Graham fell out, Bonnie MacLean also died. She was a woman in a man’s world of poster art and proved herself well worthy of the task. I have one of her posters, BG-65 hanging in my dining room entrance and just the day before her passing, my girlfriend and I decided to hang another of her posters, BG-84 on the other side of the entrance, never even considering who the artist was, only the artwork. Maybe we were channeling Bonnie’s energy. Does that sound weird? This double passing reminds me too much of the close passing of Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson.