Chuck Berry, Grateful Dead, Johnny Talbot and De Thangs - Winterland, March 17 & 18,Fillmore Auditorium March 19, San Francisco,1967

A San Francisco concert poster for the Grateful Dead, Chuck Berry and Johnny Talbot and De Thangs playing at promoter Bill Graham's two principal venues in 1967. Wes Wilson created the graphics & artwork reproduced here, known as BG-55 in the Bill Graham numbered poster series. On the very Friday of this engagement, Warner Bros. Records released the Dead's self-titled debut album. We wonder how many copies of the LP were passed around backstage this weekend. A very big landmark date in what would become rock 'n' roll's longest, strangest trip ever. This is one of the images which seems to have held great interest for psychedelic artists, is that of a beautiful nude woman holding a large snake. Most of the uses of this image were copies from a painting entitled Die Suende (Sin) by Franz Stuck who worked in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. Wilson's here is indeed quite uniquely his own interpretation of Stuck's concept, a hypnotic masterpiece of the psychedelic style that was coming to full fruition & would soon culminate later that year during the "Summer of Love," in its very rarest contemporary form.