Classic Posters Interview With Eric King by Michael Erlewine

8/8/2019 Classic Posters Interview With Eric King by Michael Erlewine

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/classic-posters-interview-with-eric-king-by-michael-erlewine 1/21

Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Classic Posters Interview with EricKing by Michael Erlewine

[Note: I want to personally thank Eric King for being kind and generous

enough to act as my guide to the poster world and as a friend. Eric patiently answered endless questions by phone and email. When I visited the Bay Area,he personally took me around and introduced me to the players and the places. Thanks so much Eric!]

Vicor Moscoso and Eric King

(right) Eric King: Anyway, one of the things Iwant to do is honor the people who havetreated this thing as a science, asarchivists. So I'm interviewing JacaeberKastor, he's agreed, and Phil Cushwayand Dennis King and others, like PaulGetchell.

I am going to have a section on thepeople who know about posters. Youare going to have a little area in it,where I talk about you and tell themabout your book. You work isindispensable for serious collectors ofthe Family Dog, Bill Graham, NeonRose, and Grande Ballroom.

Eric King: It's not that this makes a lot ofmoney for me. What it does, is that it

makes information available to peoplewho want to buy posters, who then areable to buy posters more confidentlyand that's the whole purpose of thisthing.

GOT INTO POSTERS

Michael Erlewine: What I need to knowis how you got into posters?

Eric King: Well, I was into rock and rollfrom 1954 or 1955, right at thebeginning. I was listening to the radio inNew York and I was in love with thestuff.

I was getting my Masters at Cal. in

English Literature. I was walking downTelegraph Avenue sometime in themid/late winter of 1966 and a kidhanded me a handbill for one of theFamily Dog events. It was either the"Love" or the "Paul Butterfield".

Paul Butterfield Blues Band

And I am looking at this thing, going"What the hell is this?," and it was neat!I just stuffed it in a book. I managed togo to one of the early events.

Michael Erlewine: You don't rememberwhich one it was.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Eric King: No, I was stoned. I wasworking very, very intensely, and it wasbefore acid was made illegal and I did it,you know once or twice.

Michael Erlewine: And this is what year?Eric King: Early 1966.

Michael Erlewine: Okay.

Eric King: And it was so totally differentfrom the Times SquareParamountshows that Alan Freed did inNew York, which were the premiere rockand roll shows in the 1950s. I mean, Iwent to see Little Richard and FatsDomino out on Long Island, when I was

about 15, I think.

Michael Erlewine: What month and yeardid you come to California?

Eric King: I came here in late August of1965. I was in the PhD program inEnglish Lit at Cal., Berkeley.

Michael Erlewine: So we must havepassed each other in the dark, becauseI had, I was there for the whole year of'64, into '65. I lived on Haste Street,near Telegraph.

Eric King: That's where I lived. I livedtwo blocks off of Telegraph.

Michael Erlewine: So did I, but in 1964.

Eric King: We may have walked pasteach other in the street.

Michael Erlewine: I worked at the CaféMediterranean, at Lucas Books, andwas the assistant manager for Discount

Records on Telegraph.Eric King: I still go into the Med everynow and then. It's crazy as it ever was.Still inhabited by old beatnik types, onlynow I'm old and one of them (laughs).

Michael Erlewine: So you came out inAugust of 1965 and you were pursuing,you were studying what?

Eric King: English Lit. I was gonna' be

an English professor.Michael Erlewine: Did you ever write adissertation?

Eric King: Sure.

Michael Erlewine: What was it on?

Eric King: Lawrence Durrell. He wrote"The Alexandria Quartet," a major pieceof Twentieth Century literature.

He wrote a lot about the creation of art.

Durrell said: in order to create art, youhave to begin with the notion thateverything that was ever created beforeyou, was created with the expresspurpose of you borrowing from it. Theonly problem is, you have to pay backthe artistic debt, by creating somethingnew. And in that, what he's saying isthere is nothing completely new.

And the thing is, if you look at thepsychedelic poster art, despite the factthat it is radically different than anythingthat comes before it, they're taking oldimages. They're taking old stuff, they'recreating from things that are...

Michael Erlewine: Some of them aren't,people like Bob Fried weren't in general.Well Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelleyborrowed all kinds of stuff, which did notdetract from the power of many of theirposters.

Eric King: The only one that reallywasn't was Wes Wilson. Wilson didthese drawings, that really did come outof his head. But a lot of Fried isborrowed.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Michael Erlewine: Well, a lot of hispaintings and some of his posters areabstract.

Eric King: No, his paintings are not; his

paintings are geometric.Michael Erlewine: I'm thinkingparticularly of the Euphoria poster,which is not geometric.

Bob Fried Euphoria

Eric King: Sure, those are things thatare his own, that are out of his own

head. But, if you look at, for example,the dolphins pulling, that is collage. Hecut that out of something else and justdid the lettering in the middle of thesunburst.

Bob Fried FD-D 14

Michael Erlewine: And he did thesunburst. I just finished transcribing theKelley interview. He and Mouse justwent to the Library and made copies.That's the stuff they traced and took itfrom there.

Eric King: Right.

Eric King: One thing, and I think that thisis very important, and I make this pointin lots of emails, when people ask me

questions; my area of expertise isextremely narrow. I'm limited to the fourvenues that I have in my guide. Everynow and then I have to pull rank and saythis is what happened in 1966, I wasthere, and I did interviews with theprinters in 1968.

Michael Erlewine: Right.

Eric King: I went and talked to FrankWestlake, no later than 1968 and Italked to him a number of times. He wasBindweed Press.

Michael Erlewine: Let's talk about someof these things. I think we should goback and pick up your story about howyou got into this.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Waiting for Posters

Eric King: I got the handbill. I gotanother one the following week andstarted saving these. I do have a

collecting mentality and seem to enjoyputting things in pages and albums orsomething.

There was something electric whenthese things started clicking. When WesWilson started getting the rhythm ofmore than just lettering, when StanleyMouse and Alton Kelley started to clickwith the imagery that they were finding,and when Victor Moscoso started to hitthe thing with color.

Every week, you would walk up, onFriday around Noon, on Telegraph andBancroft and you would wait in a littleline. There weren't a lot of people --maybe twenty or thirty -- and the posterpeople would pull up in a car, hop outwith a pile of posters and hand you one,and then go, you know, someplace else.

Now I don't know where else they werehanding them out, but this was more

than just sticking them in the windows ofstores. They would stop, and if you werethere at the right time, they would handyou a poster. It's like you're standingaround, and Toulouse-Lautrec ishopping out of a coach and handing youa poster.

Michael Erlewine: But logistically, therewere many different venues. Was oneperson bringing posters for all of them?

Eric King: No, each venue had it's ownposter deliverer. They tended, I forgetexactly the time, but there was someregularity about the time they wouldshow up. And one of the places theywould show up, was Bancroft andTelegraph.

Michael Erlewine: Do you know of anyother places?

Eric King: No, it never occurred to me towonder about it, because that is where I

got them.Michael Erlewine: So there would bemore than one that came that day?

Eric King: Oh yeah.

Michael Erlewine: What other placeswere they put.

Eric King: Store windows, I mean, I don'tremember a lot of them being ontelephone poles, but they didn't try to

cover Telegraph Avenue, the way theydid the Haight-Ashbury. But VictorMoscoso's descriptions of, and I canreally understand why people did this,Victor would stand on the other side ofthe street after he had put a poster upand watch people walk over to it, standthere and go wow.

And these had an electric effect onpeople. It's very hard to communicate inan environment where this just doesn't

happen. There's nothing like this goingon. People walked down the street, andthey would cross the street to look atthese posters.

I mean, as soon as something newshowed up, because I didn't geteverything, you know, handed to me onthe street. I mean I wasn't there everytime. This was hippie time, you know,twelve o clock could mean one thirty.And if you waited around, you know,

maybe you got it, or maybe you didn't.I'm just saying, I got a lot of posters thatway. I'm not saying that this wasscheduled.

Michael Erlewine: They would giveeveryone one? They wouldn't just give a



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine pile and let you take as many as youwant, or something?

Eric King: With postcards you could geta couple, sometimes, and they would

put a stack of them in a store and youcould take a couple. I mean, some ofthe little kids would take a bunch ofthem, but most people did not.

I can remember being handed "TheSound," the postcard by a little kid -- hewas like twelve or thirteen years old --and looking at that thing and going "MyGod this is incredible art!" I canremember being handed "The Eyeball". Iremember waiting in line, somebody

handed me this and I'm just going "whatthe hell".

Michael Erlewine: The poster or thecard.

Eric King: This was the poster. I wenthome and taped this up on the wall ofmy living room. I didn't do that with verymany of them.

Michael Erlewine: And how did you savethem?

Eric King: I just put them in a flat,between sheets of cardboard.

Power of the Art

Eric King: The electricity of beinghanded this thing, and looking at it andgoing "wow"; and realizing intuitively,there's a tremendous amount going onin this. This moves on a multiplicity oflevels. This is not something that is

simply saying Jimi Hendrix is going tobe playing at the Fillmore on Fridaynight. This is saying somethingtremendously profound and spiritualabout the thought process of the guywhose name is at the bottom, RickGriffin.

Unlike most of the people who werelooking at these things, who weresixteen years old and hippies, I wastwenty-seven years old and anacademically trained critic of art. I wasalready working on a PhD at this pointand it was immediately apparentsomething was going on here. Youknow it didn't come to me, right away,that this is 'God the Father' and he isdealing with his crisis, you know Jesusetc.

I didn't know Rick Griffin until somewhatlater. I mean I knew Victor Moscosovery early, and I'd met the others. I'd

met them, but I hadn't sat around andtalked to them. It was only like, in theseventies that I did interviews with them.I started out mainly interested inacquiring information, so that my owncollection of posters would be complete.If there were variations, I would knowabout them. I wasn't seeking to discussart with them, except that's whathappened.

I mean, you sit down with Victor and you

ask him a couple of technical questionsabout printing, he'll answer them, butthen, if you let the conversation flow,he'll start talking about art. He also is avery highly trained academic. He knowswhere he comes from, knows art history,and these are the conversations that Ihad that proved to be, you know, reallymeaningful and profound.

I started hanging around with DavidSinger. I mean it's hard to make, youknow, comparisons between Singer andRick Griffin from the art; but the thing is,they're both tremendously spiritualpeople. Singer did not focus it withinfundamentalist Christianity. Heobviously had a different focus, but hewas a profoundly spiritual seeker of



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine knowledge and he would spend hours,you know, talking with me aboutMesoamerica, of what he saw in thearchitecture, in the petroglyphs. I meanhe had spent an enormous amount oftime studying, and he continues to do soto this day, studying and searching for.

Michael Erlewine: El Dorado.

Eric King: Yeah, he was into El Doradothirty years ago. He was getting into thatwhen he was getting into Mesoamerica.As far as I understand it, he had aninterest in the Mayas.

I did an embroidery of the Aztec

calendar. It took me 400 hours and itwas on the back of a jeans jacket andsomebody I know who does EBay and isinto folk art has said to me, of all thethings you own the one I want that inyour will. I want that 'cause it will makeme rich.

The thing is I discussed it a lot withDavid Singer before I did it. What'sfascinating is that they later discoveredthat the stone was painted. It was all

gray, because the paint had worn, butthey were able to determine later whatcolors were on it, and I had gotten a lotof the colors right. It was interesting.

The Dancehalls by Michael Erlewine

Michael. So you started collectingposters, but what about going to thedances. Let's talk about some of theevents you went to.

Eric King: I went to some of the events,

and they were spectacular events. Theywere drastically different from rock androll shows in the fifties, in that in thefifties, I mean Little Richard was themost, you know, with the possibleexception of Mick Jagger or maybe TinaTurner, the most electric performer. Imean he has.

Michael Erlewine: No definitely, to methey are not even in the same category.I think Little Richard was a genius.

Eric King: Yeah, well Little Richard

would, as a live on-stage performer… tohave to sit in a chair and not get up anddance was one of the horrible parts ofthe fifties. Well, to walk into the Fillmoreor the Avalon Ballroom.

Michael Erlewine: Which one did you goto first? I don't mean to interrupt, I'm justtrying to get.

Eric King: I think I went first to theFillmore. Well, this wall is jumping all

over the place and there's all thesepeople hopping up and down. And was just incredible.

Michael Erlewine: Because of the lightshows?

Eric King: Yeah, it was like the wall was jumping back and forth. I'd heard peopletell me about them. It was hard todescribe these things, even tosomebody who'd been to rock and rollshows; and it's very hard tocommunicate now, to anybody, whatthese things were like, because theyreally were something like nothing else.It really was the greatest party since thefall of the Roman Empire.

Michael Erlewine: Do you rememberwhat bands you heard?

Eric King: Most of them, I do rememberone thing, one night, Frank Zapparented a thunder machine from a

Hollywood studio and used it as arhythm instrument. I mean it was noise.One night I saw Herbie Hancock and itwas pain threshold, I actually couldn'tbear to be in the room. I can see whysome of these people went deaf. Imean, they have hearing loss as a result



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine of how loud this stuff was. People werestoned.

People would shake hands, dance acouple of times and leave and (chuckle)

go screw; there was a lot of sex goingon. This was an intensely sexualizedenvironment. All these people had livedthrough the incredibly uptight fifties. Itwas like -- in the words of a cousin --like letting a lion out of a cage, meaningthe sexuality of a large segment of thepopulation was literally released.Remember there was this doorwaybetween the coming of the pill and thecoming of aids. People did a lot of

screwing.There wasn't a lot of conversation. Youdanced, you danced with people. It waslike watching whooping cranes dance upand down and mate.

Michael Erlewine: What about drugs?

Eric King: Oh well, there was a lot ofdrugs. In the beginning acid and pot, butit evolved into smack and speed, andthat was when the thing fell apart,

because a junkie is just a junkie.You could meet people who werewandering around the country, andwould say "Oh man can I crash with youtonight," you'd say "sure." You'd wakeup in the morning, they'd be there, you'dhave breakfast then they'd leave for SanDiego or wherever they were going next.When smack and speed came in, you'dwake up, they'd be gone and so wasyour stereo. And it didn't have to happenmore than once or twice, before youstopped having people, who you met inthe street, home. I mean, you know, itended one aspect of it, certainly by1968.

How the scene Ended

Michael Erlewine: Yeah, talk about that.One of the things that is mostinteresting, is how did the whole scene

die? I mean how did it just end? Howcome it didn't just keep on going?

Eric King: Well, the concerts endedbecause the acts wanted more money.They didn't want to play three shows anight. They wanted to play one big showat the Oakland Coliseum and make 20times as much money.

Michael Erlewine: Weren't there newacts coming along that would be willing

to do that.Eric King: Oh sure.

Michael Erlewine: But they still died out?

Eric King: Yes, because of the money.

Michael Erlewine: But that doesn't totallymake sense.

Eric King: Well, it doesn't totally makesense, but everybody got greedy andthere really was, among other things,

the neighbors of the Avalon Ballroombecame very hostile to the noise and topeople urinating in doorways. It reallydid get irresponsible.

Michael Erlewine: So you'd say itpeaked in 1967.

Eric King: It peaked from late 1966through well into 1968. Exactly whenand how it died, I don't know. I lived inBerkeley, and Telegraph Avenue

continued to be flaky, crazy and fun intothe Seventies. I mean a lot of it wasgoing on, well after the ballrooms wereclosed. People, you know, there werestill kids you know, who were 16 yearsold, run away from home, and come toBerkeley.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Michael Erlewine: I was in Berkeley for ayear in 1964, and I saw it recently, whenI came out to visit you and so forth. Butin 1964 and 1965 it was really beautifulin terms of the street. You know, Itwasn't like a ghetto zone. It was veryclean.

Eric King: Well, they are spending agreat deal of money trying to clean it up.It's different now, but even the one blockbetween Haste and Dwight Way, whereyou find a whole bunch of people whoare, you know, kind of scrungy, you arenot in any danger walking up the street.

Michael Erlewine: It has a different kind

of feeling.

Eric King: It's not like East Oakland.You're not in danger walking up thatstreet. You are right on the edge of acampus of one of the world's majoruniversities, and you have a studentbody that walks up that street every day.The local government is not going topermit this to become some kind of warzone. Plus, according to several people

that I know who hang out there morethan I do now, if somebody did assaultthem and they screamed, there'd be awhole lot of people all over whomeverwas the bad guy right away.

Michael Erlewine: I used to live onHaste Street.

Collecting Posters

Eric King: That's where I got the nucleusof my collection.

I got my Masters in early June of 1966. Ileft for Florida for the summer, to spendtime with the people I had lived with inFlorida when I was an undergraduate atthe University of Miami. I came back inlate August of 1966 to go back to schoolin the PhD program, and realized I hadmissed a whole lot of posters. I put up a

sign, on a number of the telephonepoles on Telegraph Avenue, saying "ifyou've got a pile of these posters, I'd liketo buy them." A guy called me; he wasliving in one of the houses on People'sPark. He had systematically saved,about thirty to thirty-five of the posters. Ipaid him a dollar a piece for everything.He didn't have a "Tribal Stomp". I paid alaw student, who had gone to the "TribalStomp" six dollars for her "TribalStomp."

As far as I know, I was the first personto collect them. Now this guy savedposters, and I had saved posters as

well. I was now systematically trying tofind out what posters existed; whatevents had posters done for them; whatdid they look like … what were thevariations. I was looking around for thisinformation. And, as far as I know, I wasthe first. By 1967 -- no later than thewinter of 1967 or early in the spring -- Iwas in San Francisco trading withseveral people who were also collecting.

Michael Erlewine: Any still around that

we might know? How about DennisKing. When did he start collecting?

Eric King: Dennis was a little bit later. Ididn't know Dennis until the earlySeventies.

Michael Erlewine: And how did you keeptrack of this information? How did yourecord it?

Eric King: In my head.

Michael Erlewine: Did you even havenotes?

Eric King: No, it was all in my head.

Michael Erlewine: And how did youorganize the materials themselves?

Eric King: Chronologically.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Michael Erlewine: In a flat file?

Eric King: Mostly, a flat file.

Michael Erlewine: By venue, or alltogether?

Eric King: By venue: Bill Graham,Family Dog and miscellaneous.

Michael Erlewine: So you had them inmany different files?

Eric King: I had three or four.

Michael Erlewine: And did youinterleave them at all or just on top ofeach other?

Eric King: Just shoved in there.

Michael Erlewine: Handbills separatefrom posters?

Eric King: Handbills and postcards werein awful little black paper acetate. Getrid of those things, they'll eat the back.

But the thing is, I was on the mailing listvery early 'cause I went to the events,

just signed up and they started mailingthem to me. When they came, I taped

them to cardboard backers and stuckthem on my wall. I mean, I hadhundreds of the postcards on the wall.

It never occurred to me that these wouldbe valuable. I used to pontificate: "youknow these posters, they are a dollar,two bucks, some day they're going to beten dollars apiece."

I mean I thought I was profound when Isaid that. The notion that the poster, Ipaid a dollar for -- "The King Kong" --might be twenty dollars; I thought thatwas really something. The notion thatthat would be three or four thousanddollars, if you had said that to me Iwould have said, "You're crazy."

King Kong FD-002

Writing It Down and Other Collectors Michael Erlewine: How did youtransform into actually collating andcataloguing; how did that happen?

Eric King: Well, that's my nature. Istudied archiving.

Michael Erlewine: You were keeping it inyour head, I want to know when youwent to writing things down on paperand how that went.

Eric King: Oh, when I went to paper.What happened was, that in the lateSeventies, the poster reprints were stillreadily available in little print shops andthey were three dollars. People, whowere not particularly scrupulous andsome deliberately malicious, startedselling reprints claiming they wereoriginals.

At this point the artists came after me.

They said, listen, if this goes uncheckedno one will collect this stuff, and we willloose out. It is not as though our art willdie, but there will be much less interestin it, we will make less money and ourreputations will be besmirched. You arethe only person who has all thisinformation and we gave it to you. We



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine gave you hours and hours and hours;we put up with you and tolerated you,because we liked you, but you botheredthe hell out of us. You owe us. Write abook. I said "Ah man, I don't want to."And they said, "Don't give us any shit.Our reputation for the future is going torest on whether there is, or is not." Theyall had the foresight at this point torecognize that there had to be a guide.

Michael Erlewine: And what year wasthis?

Eric King: This was 1977.

Michael Erlewine: Ok, a long time. You

were interviewing them?Eric King: Oh, I was interviewing them. Iinterviewed Victor Moscoso in 1967.

Michael Erlewine: But you weren't takingnotes?

Eric King: I was confident of my memoryat that point. I mean I really had a goodmemory. I never bothered writing any ofit down, because I never forgot it.

Michael Erlewine: So you were awalking encyclopedia of this information.

Eric King: Yeah, it was not written down.And there were two other people whowere systematically accumulatinginformation.

Michael Erlewine: Who were they.

Eric King: Randy was one of hem.

Michael Erlewine: Randy Tuten?

Eric King: Yeah. And the other was afellow who is out of it, and has nothingto do with it anymore.

Michael Erlewine: Do you remember hisname?

Eric King: No, I remember his name. Hedoesn't, doesn't want to be involved, hedoesn't want to have anything to do with

it. But he also accumulated a massiveamount of information, and whathappened was that I took my entirecollection over to this fellow's house. Hehad sold at the Marin Flea Market foryears. … People would come up to himand say "I've got twenty posters." andhe'd buy them. He'd take anything thatwas different and put them in his ownlittle pile. He tended to have the samementality as Jacaeber, and I. He had agood eye and he would remember whathe had seen. If he saw something new,he did not have to have the old one nextto him.

Michael Erlewine: He didn't keep noteseither?

Eric King: No, never wrote anythingdown.

Michael Erlewine: Fantastic.

Eric King: And we sat down and wespent more than a day. I mean it wasback and forth. It was several daysgoing through: "What do you think is theoriginal? Why do you think this is the

original?" We went through everything.Michael Erlewine: What about JacaeberKastor? When did he click in?

Eric King: Jacaeber was one of the littlekids -- who was I don't knowtwelve/thirteen/fourteen years old -- onTelegraph Avenue with a cigar box fullof postcards.

Michael Erlewine: When did you meethim?

Eric King: In that time frame.

Michael Erlewine: Oh, you did. So youremember him from then?.

Eric King: Oh sure, I knew him all along.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Michael Erlewine: So, he must havetaken a very methodical approach to thewhole thing.

Eric King: He did, but don't you know the

story of the rats.Michael Erlewine: I'm not sure.

Eric King: He had one of the mostomnivorous and complete collections ofthe material in existence. Because he,and a couple of the other kids whocollected this stuff really did well. Theyreally had collected systematically andaccumulated a lot of informationthemselves.

Well Jacaeber moved to New York, andhe had this enormous collection underhis bed, and either mice or rats cameout of the wall and ate the collection. Hesimply didn't know they were under hisbed, and this collection was destroyed, Imean completely destroyed.

Some time, around 1986 or 1987 ormaybe 1988, I'm not sure exactly when,he got in touch with me, and said: "Doyou know where I can get a collection ofposters? My posters have beendestroyed." Over a period of severalyears, I put him in touch with people. Hefell in love with the stuff again, anddecided to do something with thegallery.

Michael Erlewine: When did you meetDennis King?

Eric King: When he opened the littlebaseball card place next to the Post

Office on Durant Street. He rented athing that was like, maybe eight feetdeep and the width of a door.

Michael Erlewine: Right, he told meabout this.

Eric King: It was like nothing. You couldstand in it. He was into posters, and he

had obviously been saving them for awhile. He obviously has an archivingand collecting mentality. I started goingin there. He would turn up odd thingsand I'd buy one.

And at this point, my attorney, who ispart of the scene in the Sixties, he hadbeen to a lot of the concerts, was agraduate student at Cal., and lived in theHaight-Ashbury. About 1973 he said tome, you know those posters, I'd reallylike a collection of them. He said "BenFriedman offered me such and such forsuch and such." I said "That's too muchmoney. I can get it cheaper." I went

through another collecting process forhim, rounding all these things up. Someof the business involved Dennis King.That's how we did business togetherand over time we began to socialize.

Michael Erlewine: Can you saysomething about how readily availablewere these posters? You talk about BenFriedman's shop. How many other kindsof shops carried these?

Eric King: Common.Michael Erlewine: Very common?

Eric King: Common.

Michael Erlewine: In Berkeley and SanFrancisco?

Eric King: Yeah. Right across the streetfrom the Med was the old Reprint Mint.It was called the Print Mint and then forsome reason or other they had tochange the name to the Reprint Mint. I

can remember walking in there andgoing through the bins and seeing the"Toronto Poster", in the bin for threedollars. I didn't buy it. I had one. Thenotion I could have bought eight copiesof the "Toronto Poster" for three dollars,put them in a portfolio and thirty yearslater, sell them for six thousand dollars



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine apiece, never occurred to me. I meanthis is 20/20 hindsight, but there theywere. And this was right across thestreet from the Med.

Michael Erlewine: Interesting.Eric King: And they had all the posters.And they had a little rack of postcards. Iremember when I realized I wanted aset of postcards that was neat and notall taped up on my wall. I walked inthere and bought the ones that are thenucleus of what's in my notebooks, youknow the little binders from LightImpressions, for ten cents apiece.

Michael Erlewine: Wow, interesting,that's cool. Say a little bit more abouthow you put your book together.

Eric King: Well, I had all this informationand I had to figure out what to do with it.I had a lot of training as a professionalarchivist. At this point, the originals weretwenty or thirty dollars, with theexception of the "Tribal Stomp," whichhad sold for two hundred dollars. TheToronto poster was already something

you could get maybe one hundred andfifty or two hundred dollars for. All theother stuff, say a number eight -- youknow the Andy Warhol -- a really niceclean copy of that would be $20. Butyou could get a reprint for three bucks.

Well, I sat down and figured out that.We first of all -- this other fellow and I --agreed upon everything that was goinginto "The Guide". He didn't want to write,but he was willing to spend the time, toshow me what he owned.

Michael Erlewine: Did he know morethan you did from that time?

Eric King: No, he didn't know more, andI didn't know more.

Michael Erlewine: So you each knewdifferent stuff?

Eric King: We each knew different stuff,but what was interesting, we came to.

It's like one of the things about this stuffthat makes the judgments that we'vemade valid, is that the people who didthis did all their own research and cameto the same conclusions. That's why it'svalid. It's like science. It depends onindependently verifiable, repeatabletesting. Well, if, four people who aresystematically studying this materialcame to almost entirely the sameconclusions, then it's pretty clear. What

we didn't have, I mean for example, wedidn't have access to the invoices thatindicate that Capitol Records bought100,000 posters, we didn't know that.

Michael Erlewine: They did, eh?

Eric King: Yeah, Capitol Records, thereis an invoice, Jacaeber Kastor, I hadthem at one point and I sold them toJacaeber because he likes that stuff. Imean, I liked it, but he likes it more than

I do.Michael Erlewine: But you were the firstto precipitate this on to paper.

Eric King: Oh yes, I was definitely thefirst.

Michael Erlewine: Before Jacaeber?

Eric King: Oh, Jacaeber's catalog datesfrom the 1990s.

Michael Erlewine: Yeah.

Eric King: This was 1978.

Michael Erlewine: Well, what was yourfirst edition like and do you still have oneanywhere?

Eric King: No.

Michael Erlewine: You have the Master.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Eric King: I have the Master.

Michael Erlewine: That's too bad,because that's an historic document.You might want to run off a couple of

them, just so there's more than one inexistence. What year was that?

Eric King: In 1978, I spent six monthstyping all the information without anumbering system. I just said first,second, third printing. This one's got anumber here; this one doesn't.

It was very slovenly in the sense that Iknew that all the Family Dogs from forty-four to eighty-six had been reprinted. I

didn't attempt to distinguish them,because Chet Helms had put "-1" at thebottom, and I wasn't going to call Chet aliar. And nobody cared. They were threedollars, whether they were this or thatvariant. .

I knew people knew that I was workingon this thing. What happened was I saidto everybody -- and I mean there's liketwo hundred people -- "I'm not going tolose money on this. You send me a

check for twenty dollars. I will not cashthe check until the book is done. And it'lltake me six months." Over the period ofabout a month, I got a lot of support.People said: "Yeah, we really want this."

I sat down at that point and typed it -- ittook me six months --went to aphotocopy place and printed it up, thencashed all the checks and mailed all thebooks. There are probably some people,who still have it but I don't. What I haveis the manuscript.

Michael Erlewine: The annotated one.

Eric King: Right after I did it, peoplestarted saying "Oh I've got this; I've gotthat" and they'd show it to me. Well, I'dwrite in the margin, I would write in hereI would write in there. You know I'd

scribble in hand in between lines; it's amess.

Michael; Well some day, if you arefeeling kind towards me, you can make

a copy, send It so I can put it in thearchive. You know how I build libraries;you've done it.

Eric King: Yeah.

Eric King: No, I think if you look aroundyou'll find one of these.

Michael Erlewine: How many editionshave there been? .

Eric King: I'm on the 5th edition, now.

There were two editions of the originalone. It's a little thin thing; it's only likeone hundred pages long.

Michael Erlewine: Yeah, that's howthings start.

Eric King: Yeah, there were noillustrations in it and when I ran out ofthem, I'd go with the manuscript to aXerox place and run off another hundredcopies.

Michael Erlewine: Let me ask you this,why do you still call it "Volume One".

Eric King: Oh, that's a joke.

Michael Erlewine: Okay.

Eric King: The joke is there are all theseother venues, that's "Volume Two".Somebody else can do "Volume two".

Michael Erlewine: Right, we'll do it onthe web.

Eric King: I know my limitations. There'sall this stuff from Santa Barbara. There'sthe Carousel Ballroom, there's.

Michael Erlewine: Everything. but yourbook.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Eric King: Yeah, and I have reached thepoint where I'm not interested indevoting the massive amount of time to.

Michael Erlewine: You've paid your

dues, and you did pioneer work. I'mgoing to try and document what you anda few other people have done.

Eric King: Well, I.

Michael Erlewine: I mean you've made itavailable to others.

Eric King: I was the first one who did it.But -- I say this, and I say thisdefinitively -- the person who knowsmore about psychedelic posters around

the world, than anybody else isJacaeber Kastor. He knows as much asI do, about the Fillmore, Avalon, GrandeBallroom and Neon Rose, but he knowsthe rest of this material.

Michael Erlewine: But the difference isthat you've actually published somethingthat and shared it with masses ofpeople.

Eric King: You are doing something very

similar to what I think you're doing,academic research.

Michael Erlewine: I have for all my life,right?

Eric King: Yeah and this is who andwhat you are and this is why I'mcomfortable speaking with you.

Michael Erlewine: Instead of academia,because I never got out of high school, Ilike popular culture. I was bored with

high school and just left. Never finished.I was accepted at the University ofMichigan, without a high-schooldiploma, went for a short time, andfound it just as boring. No, I am not anacademic.

Eric King: Yeah, but you got the smarts.My father, God rest his soul, had theequivalent of an engineering degree,despite the fact he never went past thetenth grade.

Michael Erlewine: I have a vision oftrying to raise the bar for everybodyinterested in these posters, and if I canmake it break even, I'll be happy.

Eric King: When I did the Guide, I saidI'm not going to lose money on it. I amnot going to make myself rich off this,but I don't want to lose money. And Ithink that's a reasonable statement.

Michael Erlewine: Oh, yeah I think that'sfair.

Eric King: I mean, in the same way that Ispent thousands of hours, I'm dealingwith this FD-42 thing now, I've got five,or six, hours in this. I've got seven, oreight, hours in something to do with FD-101 within the last two weeks.

This is ongoing. The thing is: I don'tneed to make my sixty-five dollars anhour doing this, but I do not want to layout lots of money. When I go to theprinter, to print my guide, I'm laying outfour thousand some odd dollars. And Ido this every time I print the damnedthing.

Michael Erlewine: But, it comes backright?

Eric King: That's my point. I'm not goingto lay out five grand without somereasonable expectation that the money's

coming back in.

Michael Erlewine: Cool, that's what yousaid.

Eric King: You bought all theseexpensive cameras, and you bought allthis, you know.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine Michael Erlewine: Yeah, well I have awhole studio now.

Eric King: Your time, I assume was alabor of love. Your money is something

else, you want to get your money back.Michael Erlewine: Full time on this, right,for a long time now. I'm trying to get -- todo what you did -- almost the level ofdetail that you did, but for the wholefield.

Eric King: Right.

Michael Erlewine: And it's very difficult.

Eric King: Believe me I am glad that

someone else is doing it.Michael Erlewine: If anyone canappreciate what I am doing, it'll be you.

Eric; Oh God, do I appreciate. WellJacaeber Kaster will appreciate it. He'sgonna' look at this thing and he's gonna'say "Oh my god there's another nut likeus.".

SHIPPING POSTERS

Michael Erlewine: Let me ask you some

questions.

Eric King: Sure.

Michael Erlewine: Let's talk aboutshipping posters. What if somebodywants to ship an expensive poster?

Eric King: I think that what you do, isyou give the customer the choice andcharge them accordingly.

If somebody has a poster of lower or

even middle level value, a large 4 inchdiameter, or larger, mailing cylinder isadequate to the purpose; and you wrapstandard brown paper around theposter.

Michael Erlewine: What does that do?

Eric King: If the poster moves around inthe mailing cylinder, it keeps the posterfrom damaging the edges.

Michael Erlewine: Sometimes I notice,

that people put tissue in both ends.Eric King: Yeah, that keeps the posterfrom moving. If it is hit at one end, or theother, dropped and the poster slides andhits the end of the cylinder, it willdamage the poster.

Michael Erlewine: What about flats?

Eric King: With flats, I go by what -- howexpensive -- the thing is. I likerefrigerator cartons; I've used bicycle

cartons, I cut them so that thecorrugations are at right angles.

I'll use four or six layers depending onhow heavy the stuff is, and I'll make it atleast an inch, or an inch and a half,larger than the poster. You put theposter in a plastic bag, tape the plasticbag so it snuggly fitted length and widthto the poster. Then you put each of thefour corners in the corner of anenvelope [that you have cut from anstandard mailing envelope] and youtape that down so that the poster can'tmove. Then you tape the outside withseveral layers of that plastic tape.

Michael Erlewine: You're talking aboutwhen you close the corrugatedcardboard together to make a package.

Eric King: Yeah, you seal it all aroundthe edges. For a long time I usedRegistered Mail.

Michael Erlewine: US Registered Mail.

Eric King: Now the thing about that, isyou have to use the brown tape that youmoisten. There's a nuisance factor withthis, but Registered Mail can be insuredup to $25,000.



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine [Editors note: you no longer have to usebrown tape]

Michael Erlewine: I see.

Eric King: I now use Express Mail on

expensive posters.

Michael Erlewine: US Express Mail.

Eric King: And I ask the client to pay forthat.

Michael Erlewine: Can you insure them?

Eric King: Five thousand dollars.

Michael Erlewine: Up to five thousand?

Eric King: But it's a dollar a hundred. So

if you ship $4,500 worth of posters,that's $44 in insurance. You're talkingabout $75 worth of shipping costs. But itgets there the next day and the theorythat I go by, is that the faster it moves,the fewer hands that touch it, the lesslikely it's getting stolen.


Eric King: And I tend to believe that themost expensive items, under five

thousand dollars go by Express Mail.Between five and twenty-five thousanddollars, I believe in Registered Mail.More than that, I'd rather hand deliver it.

Michael Erlewine: Hand deliver it, right?

Eric King: I mean I really didn't knowwho you are, until I met you. I felt one ofthe vulnerabilities of shipping, was notthe loss or the damage, but thepossibility -- please do not take this as

any mean statement about any person -- that someone would say there was nonumber seven in this pile; this was areprint.

Michael Erlewine: I see.

Eric King: And, you know, I couldn'treplace it.

Eric King: You might want to considersomething like feedback, so that if therewere disputes and somebody didbehave badly, over time, if either abuyer or a vendor proves to be a pain inthe ass repeatedly.

Michael Erlewine: No, they would beasked to leave.

Eric King: They're out, but the wayyou're going to know this is feedback.Let's say Joe Jones in Philadelphiasells, you know, puts up on your site anoriginal number twenty-eight and whatshows up is a reprint.

Michael Erlewine: Well then, he's out.Eric King: How do you know. You seethe thing is you don't know if the guy inCleveland who bought the thing is lying,or the guy in Philadelphia is lying. Youdon't know.

All you know is that the guy in Clevelandcomplained about the guy inPhiladelphia.

Michael Erlewine: So what do you

suggest? I mean I see the problem.Eric King: That's why you should keeptrack of the feedback.

I have a little number after my name oneBay, its one hundred and fifty nine.That means one hundred and fifty nineseparate individuals have said nicethings about me, 'cause they are allpositives.

Michael Erlewine: Yeah, I'm, I'm not

going to invite anyone to be a vendorwho cannot produce references. Onereference that I will accept, is a verygood auction record.

Eric King: I get dozens of emails frompeople saying "I just found eight postersin my attic. I want to sell them;" and "I'm



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine really broke, I lost my job I'm in deepcrap, I've had these posters since 1968,can you help me?"

Michael Erlewine: I may not be helping

them myself, but I will send the tosomeone who wants to do that.

Eric King: No, but the thing is, if theywant, they want to sell their posters:there's a lot of nice, decent people, whoare in trouble. The economy is not ingood shape, and I think one of yourmain markets for what you want to do, isthese people who have eight posters. Iwant to be able to say "Why don't youcheck out "ClassicPosters.com."

Michael Erlewine: I am not sure howmuch I want to inventory anything. Butwhat I will do is find someone who hasmore time and who wants to gamble alittle bit and take over the responsibility.I'll make a deal with them that I sendthese people to them and they worksomething out.

They will become the broker and decideif they want to work with these people or

not. And his agreement will be that hewill put them for sale through this site,so I still get my commission. But I don'twant to handle too much. I will be prettybusy, as it is.

Eric King: This strike[s] me as a veryintelligent way to do this. It would haveto be somebody who really knows all thematerial and who would, if you'reoffering a number twenty-eight original,be able to look at a scan, and say, ohyeah, that's right.

Michael Erlewine: I may go to peoplelike Phil Cushway and Jacaeber Kastorand say: are there any venues that youwant to be the gatekeeper for, and theymay say, yeah I want to be thegatekeeper for The Grande Ballroom, or

something. Also, I will keep a thing thatas these things come through; I'm ableto look at what it is, so I can see if it issomething that I want.

Eric King: I'm still interested in lookingfor a small number (Laughs) of Grandethings. I'm wondering whether it wouldcontaminate my status acting as thegatekeeper on this.

Michael Erlewine: Well you might wantto be Grande gatekeeper, or somethinglike that. After all, you know the stuffbetter than anyone.

Eric King: No, I think that it's tempting,

but it would be bad judgment on mypart. I do think you ought to askJacaeber Kastor to be some sort ofreferee of disputes over authenticity.Because, if the guy in Cleveland claimsit is not an original, he should berequired to ship it to somebody, who willsay this is an original, this is a pirate;this is a reprint. This is what the sellerhas claimed it is or it's not. Whoever iswrong pays the expense.

I think you ought to have that as part ofthe site, and personally, if Jacaeber iswilling to do this, he's pretty much theonly person competent to.

Michael Erlewine: Right, well we'll workup to that. I think that I'm going to startwith vendors that have lots of materialand are on the money. If someone saysit's not their thing, they have no right todestroy the poster; they'd have to returnthe poster. I'd figured out I may have toeat the costs of some disputes, justbecause I don't want to cause trouble.

Eric King: Okay, this is your judgment.

Michael Erlewine: I think I will delegate.There must be people who are lean andmean and hungry, who want to havepeople bringing them posters to buy and



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine can go on this site and identify theposter very clearly.

Eric King: I believe that this is true, and Ibelieve, from the nature of e-mail that I

get, that you are going to get peoplewho want to put eight posters up. Whenthey're done with their eight posters,they're gone. I believe this will be aconsiderable source of your income.

Michael Erlewine: Here's one thing Iwant to do. Anyone can come and usethe site. No problem. If someone wantsto buy a poster then we have a securesocket, credit card information likeanything else.

Eric King: Yeah.

Michael Erlewine: Now, there's oneother little caveat. One of the featureson the site, is going to be that you cango to a poster, like the Cincinnati PopFestival, and turn on a flag that saysbuyer waiting, "I want this poster, ifanyone has it please know that you'vegot a buyer."

Eric King: Yeah.

Michael Erlewine: Now, I'm not going tolet just anyone do that, because nutswould go in there and turn on a hundredof them. So in order to do that, theyhave to register as a buyer in some way.

Eric King: You'd have to be really carefulabout this. What I can tell you, is thenumber of people who want to buy goodstuff, without paying for it much, islegion. You are going to find legions of

tire kickers, who are going to want to dothis and even if they have to put up acredit card number, they are going to dothat. And you are going to have twentypeople waiting for this poster.

Michael Erlewine: That's good,.

Eric King: Yeah, but the thing is.

Michael Erlewine: It'll be first come, firstserved.

Eric King: If you've got multiple copies,maybe you want to consider the

possibility of auction.Michael Erlewine: No, I don't know if Iwant to get into auction, unless perhapswith runs or sets of posters, or specialposters.

Eric King: That's your choice.

Michael Erlewine: Let's just say "TheCincinnati Pop Festival." You've alreadygot it; I don't have it. Let's say that tenpeople, who are registered as buyers,

come in and they say they want thatposter. And it comes up for sale; it popsup on the site. The moment it is up,those ten people get sent an e-mail, thatsays that poster is available. It's up tothem to go to the site and be the firstperson that buys it, gets it.

Eric King: Oh, that's interesting.

Michael Erlewine: I think that that's a fairway of doing it.

Eric King: I will tell you, that in the worldof postcard collecting, there is one who'sidentifier is Postcard Man France. Whathe does, is he has a large mailing list,and he sends out, maybe two or threetimes a year, a little notice that says Ihave new material that may be ofinterest to you on my site. And he sendsthis to what must be thousands ofpeople, and it's first come first served.And it works.

Michael Erlewine: It's all going to beautomated. So that as something comesup, if somebody signaled that theywanted to know about it, they wouldimmediately get an email and dependswho's vigilant enough on their email, as



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine to who gets in and whether they want topay the price.

Eric King: I really think this is a greatidea.

Eric King: But I've said, you've heard mesay this to Gary Grimshaw, if Garycreated this art in San Francisco, it'd bethe big six.


Eric King: It's as simple as that. He is onthat level, and entitled to that kind ofrecognition, and an art book of theGrande would be nice. I have to be verycareful because I have a great deal of

personal loyalty to Jacaeber Kastor. Iwill not do anything.

Michael Erlewine: I am not suggesting abook.

Eric King: Okay. The thing is what Iwrite, you know; I don't want to give up.

Michael Erlewine: If you write somethingfor the site, you can do whatever youwant with it elsewhere.

Eric King: Oh, I wasn't clear on that.Michael Erlewine: Oh no, totally. I amtalking about something on the Grandefor the site, written by someone whoknows something. I am not talking aboutexclusivity or any kind.

Eric King: Okay.

Michael Erlewine: The ideas where youand I don't see the same way and havedifferent visions, is that to me this kind

of website is what has replaced mostbooks.

Eric King: I'm not sure that I like that, butI agree.

Michael Erlewine: It is not an opinion;It's just a fact, and I'm not sure I like iteither. I would much rather have a six

foot shelf of books, each on a postervenue, but it's not going to happen, atleast not soon enough for me to use it,which is now.

Eric King: No, that's not going tohappen, but I do believe that it is entirelypossible that there be a book, a seriouscoffee table book, on the GrandeBallroom.

Michael Erlewine: Jack Bodnar isworking on a book, with Gary Grimshawand with Leni sinclair. But it is not goingto be a Grande book.

Eric King: The best of Gary's art is what

he did for the Grande. No actually, whathe was doing later -- for some of theother venues -- that is great work.

Michael Erlewine: You know that DennisKing and Paul Grushkin are making thesecond edition of "The Art of Rock".

Eric King: Yeah, I've been told that.

Eric King: I am at your disposal, and Iwas not aware that you wanted me towrite something about collecting of the

Grande.Michael Erlewine: I think it would be awonderful thing and it would inspirepeople.

Eric King: I will go with the notion of howI encountered the stuff and how itsuddenly jumped for me and said wow!

Michael Erlewine: And talk a bit aboutwhat's hard to find and what's easy tofind.

Eric King: I am more interested in writingabout it as art.

Michael Erlewine: Well do it. I think Ihave to let people know what collectingis. What are the dreams of the collector?How do they think? What do they do?People want to learn how to collect,



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine catalogue, and do all this stuff. You see,I'm a facilitator, that's how I see my role.

Eric King: Well, you certainly are, andone of the things is that, from what I

gather, you are arranging some kind ofnumbering system.

Michael Erlewine: I think that it will haveto be a date; but for shorthand you needsomething more, 'cause people can'tremember dates.

Eric King: I agree with that.

Michael Erlewine: I still am confusedabout it, but not totally.

Eric King: Use your own judgment.Michael Erlewine: I am.

Eric King: If anybody knows how to setsomething like this up, it's you. I trustyou. You're going to do a good job.

Michael Erlewine: Oh, I hope I'm goingto do a good job. There's going to be alot of errors in it because there areerrors in everything. Data is not cleanedin a linear fashion, starting at "A" and

going to "Z." It is cleaned iteratively, apass at a time, the way you would focusa telescope to bring it into perfectresolution. It will start rough andgradually be refined, as peoplecomment and contribute.

Eric King: Don't worry about it.

Michael Erlewine: In fact I just foundsome errors in your book.

Eric King: Yeah I was going to say, you

found eight pages of errors in my bookafter somebody else had already gonethrough it.

Michael Erlewine: I just found one theother day. I think what I am going to dois go through your book one last time

and when I do, I'm going to make a newlist of things.

Eric King: Please, I'd appreciate it.

Michael Erlewine: I may not get it done,

but if I can as I go through it, I will try.

Eric King: Do it if you do it. If you don't,you don't.

Michael Erlewine: Well one of the thingsI've been working on is breaking out allof the light shows. I think the light showpeople have really been given a bumdeal.

Eric King: I agree.

Michael Erlewine: I'm going to break outthe light shows, the promoters, andpresenters, you know. Plus each poster,if it has twenty events, I'm breakingthem all out with each date, each groupfor each date. Some of them have, asyou know, multiple venues.

Eric King: Yeah.

Michael Erlewine: So anyway, all that'sgoing to be broken out.

Eric King: I do know that a large numberof The Grande Ballroom items simplydidn't have the right bills, because theywere changed at the last minute.

Michael Erlewine: Oh that's possible.

Eric King: Although I don't know if that'ssomething you ought to be addressing.

Michael Erlewine: Well, I will do mybest.

Eric King: This is what the handbill says.Michael Erlewine: I start out with what'son the handbill.

Eric King: At the entrance to certainparts of the site, you could put a note"there is the other site that deals withthis particular situation." Because there



Classic Posters Interview with Eric King by Michael Erlewine are a lot of people who seem to beinterested in "who played, where, when."What are the, you know, such and sucha group. What's a complete list ofeverything they played?.

Michael Erlewine: Just like the time Iplayed at the Fillmore West, opened forCream, I substituted for the Electric Flag-- BG-84.

Eric King: Right.

Michael Erlewine: So, of course, it'simportant -- to me -- that I was the onewho played that night with Cream. Ithink it was their second date in this

country. But for most, this is [email protected]

Classic Posters Interview With Eric King by Michael Erlewine

Documents

Transcript of Classic Posters Interview With Eric King by Michael Erlewine