Jefferson Airplane Poster
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Egypt meets 1920's Deco in the entwining figures of BG039, superimposed on an oddly beach-blanket-striped background. The mood of this poster is less mysterious than many of Wilson's designs.
The 1st printing was produced using the "color wheel technique" so every poster displays different colors. It can be identified as a pre-concert original by the 2" distance from the "P" to the "F" in "Printing by West Coast Lithograph Co., SF". This 1st printing is on stock that has horizontal lines in its surface, and it measures 13 7/16" x 22 1/4".
The post-concert 2nd printing also utilized the "color wheel technique", so again every poster is different in its display of color. In this reprint, fine white horizontal lines run through the ink which are not visible on the original, and here the distance from the "P" to the "F" in "Printing by West Coast Lithograph Co., SF" measures 2 7/8". The 2nd printing is 13 1/2" x 22 3/16".
The 3rd printing did not use the "color wheel technique" so the rainbow ink is uniform throughout the entire run, and the "dividers" in the middle of "James Cotton Chicago Blues Band" are now brown. There are no fine white horizontal lines in this reprint. The printers credit also measures 2 7/8" from the "P" to the "F", and this poster is 13 9/16" x 22 1/8". It was printed after the concert.
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.