‘The Greatest Band That Ever Lived’: Inside the Grateful Dead Showcase | Grateful dead

AArtist Bill Walker is one of those people who always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Having met Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead guitarist and pioneering classical composer, while a student at Southern Nevada University (now the University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Walker was invited in 1967 to make an album cover for the band’s second album, Ode to the Sun. This experience led to an LSD and ayahuasca odyssey in the Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas during New Year’s Eve, and when Walker returned to San Francisco, he painted Ode to the Sun, complete with characters he encountered in the desert.

Ode to the Sun visually demonstrates the intense innovation that occurred in the psychedelic revolution, when music became electrified and LSD became central to the cultural explosion that characterized the 1960s. The Grateful Dead epitomized this spirit in their music and became considered the most American band of all time for being at the center of the psychedelic movement and moving on from the Beat generation that preceded them.

The history of music has been useful to the dead, but the story of art history has not yet been told. Curated by psychedelic guru Brian Chambers, 60 Years of the Grateful Dead is a retrospective exhibition opening at the Chambers Project in Grass Valley, California, on December 6, two days after the band’s 60th anniversary. It is the most comprehensive presentation of original art from the band’s artistic history to date. “The Dead’s visual vocabulary was superior to other musical groups,” Chambers said. “The dead were the connection, and in San Francisco, there were always creative people surrounding them.”

While the display is of museum quality, collecting the works was not a typical curatorial process. Chambers owned some of them, but had to track down other works in unexpected places. “Ode to the Sun” had been in Walker’s sister’s garage in Sacramento, where it had been stored for years.

Other works include an original 1900 drawing of a skeleton amidst roses by Victorian artist Edmund G. Sullivan in the 1913 edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This became the basis for the famous cover of Mouse and Kelly’s 1971 Skull and Roses album. It’s never been included in a Grateful Dead context like this.

Psychedelic comedy master Rick Griffin has 20 works on show, including an original Hawaiian pen-and-ink drawing used on the first Dead album of the same name. “This cover was a revelation and the true key to freedom,” Roger Dean, the artist and publisher, recalled years later. “I can make my own rules, I can do what I want. This was my first Grateful Dead album. In fact, the first album I ever bought.” Also on display will be Griffin’s acrylic circus paintings for “No Net” and “Europe 90” and the original drawing from the 1967 “Pow-Wow Human Be-In” poster that helped launch the “Summer of Love” that year.

The exhibition features 20 artists who created posters and album art for the band, and is the first time these works have been brought together to tell this story. Featured “Big Five” artists include Griffin, Mouse, Alton Kelly, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, along with long-time Grateful Dead collaborators including Walker, Owsley “Bear” Stanley and others who were instrumental in defining the psychedelic era.

Stanley is best known as the band’s sound engineer who helped develop the infamous “Wall of Sound” speaker system that was itself a work of art and another underappreciated piece of the Grateful Dead. gesamtkunstwerk. On display at the Chambers Project are five historical acid test posters designed by Paul Foster that were hand-colored by Stanley, who was also famous for the popular Owsley LSD formula at the time. One poster contains the first public use of the Grateful Dead name, while the poster from the 1966 Trouper’s Club Acid Test in Los Angeles is the only signed copy.

All of the artwork in the display helps tell the story of the dead and the United States. “Psychedelic art is a uniquely American art, and the art of the Grateful Dead lies at its beating heart,” art historian Michael Pearce said in the catalogue. “This gritty display is honest art history at its best.”

Bill Walker was introduced to peyote in 1962 by his uncle’s friend who was a member of the Crow Indian tribe and a stuntman who rode horses in Hollywood. Walker and a few friends went to Big Bend, Texas, where they filled the trunk of a Corvair with peyote, and were able to spend almost every weekend in 1964 and 1965 eating peyote in the desert.

Walker is excited about the exhibition and seeing the work of new artists. Limited edition Grateful Dead merchandise will be designed by artist Zoltron, with limited posters designed by AJ Masthay and Dennis Larkins. “I enjoy seeing other people’s work as much as I enjoy seeing my own,” Walker said. “There are new artists who have developed their techniques. I feel primitive.”

The show is presented in collaboration with Pact: Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust, a non-profit organization that operates in a philanthropic and museum-like manner. The organization will host ancillary displays in the coming months featuring art forms that branched out from the Grateful Dead’s six decades such as T-shirts, jewelry and glassware.

All of this art – new and old – helps tell the story of this incredibly influential band, even as the years pass by. “The Grateful Dead is the greatest band that ever lived,” Chambers said. “They will be around forever.”