Soundbites from Peter Golding : Rock Graphic Originals
Peter Golding was a serious collector over a period of 30 years in between his day job as a fashion designer in London. His life long passion of art was used to illustrate some of the greatest bands of that time both in the UK, Europe and the USA. Here he talks about his favourite items from his collection.
Recently he created with publisher Thames & Hudson, Rock Graphic Originals– Revolutions in Sonic Art from Plate to Print ‘55-’88, featuring over 750 examples from his former collection including posters, artworks and logos, created for the bands that epitomised their era. From San Francisco and the West Coast, through Detroit and New York to swinging London and revolutionary Paris. Grab yourself a copy of this beautiful book at Thames & Hudson here.
Below Peter talks to MAG_BTM about some of his favorite pieces from his former collection.
Fighting in the Streets by unknown artist
“I went to the Hyde Park rally in the 60s. Allen Ginsberg was talking and it was a whole hippie sort of scene which I was drawn to at the time. I hardly knew much about it all and nobody else did either it seemed. I found this particular poster on the ground all crumpled up. It was actually hand stencilled on some rough sort of paper. If you look closely here’s even a typing error! It wasn’t pretentious, it had a message and was just real – that’s what I loved about it. This is the one of the few that I’ve kept all these years, not because it was the first but it was the most meaningful to me because of its simplicity.”
Skull & Roses by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley
The Grateful Dead used the iconic Mouse and Kelley image of the skeleton with roses from the 1966 Family Dog poster for their tour in 1971. Appropriated from Edmund Joseph Sullivan’s ‘Skeleton and Roses’ illustration from a 1913 edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Mouse and Kelley turned it into a logo, becoming so familiar that the single rose was enough to evoke the band.
Plate for Psychedelic Shop poster, 1966 by Rick Griffin
Designed to celebrate the first anniversary of this shop on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco, Griffin met the organisers of the ‘Human Be-in’ en route to the printers and wound up making a poster for that event. Marijuana leaves, mushrooms, peyote buttons, and hippie paraphernalia line its border.
Pink Floyd at the UFO Club July 1967 by Hapshash
Michael English and Nigel Waymouth came up with the ‘CIA v UFO’ concept to represent the conflict between the repressive forces of the establishment and the new counter-culture.
Poster promoting ‘UFO – Dusk to Dawn’ 1967 by Mike McInnerney
Part of London’s ‘Psychedelic School’, McInnerney worked in IT before crossing over into the music scene designing amongst others, the gatefold sleeve for the Who’s rock-opera album Tommy (1969).
Signature Eyeball by Rick Griffin
The eyeball was the motif legendary artist Rick Griffin returned to time and time again. It originated in ancient Macedonia and Egypt, where it was a symbol for the Eye in the Sky or God’s Eye, and created the most iconic of all the sixties psychedelic images.
