Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk
First edition, second printing (1987) copy of Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk by Paul Grushkin.
When Elvis and the rest rocked the mid 1950s, many predicted (and perhaps even more hoped) that rock 'n' roll would die in the cradle. It has, for a fact, gone beyond its thirtieth birthday now, and a great many people have grown up with it-three decades of the most intensely popular music the world has ever known, thirty years of memories and feelings.
Three decades of sounds. And sights.
Electric, outrageous, erotic, blatant, rebellious, vital.
The adjectives that describe rock music also apply to the artwork created to celebrate and sell it. Originally intended merely as inexpensive promotional devices, rock posters evolved into extraordinary visual equivalents of the music they advertised: from the earliest Elvis Presley-funky bills nailed to telephone poles as if to announce a local boxing match-to the Grateful Dead-multichrome psychedelic hallucinations painstakingly rendered —to the Sex Pistols-deliberately offensive imagery in sardonic black and white....
Elvis • Buddy Holly • Bo Diddley • Bob Dylan • Cream • the Beatles • Big Brother • Jefferson Airplane • Jim Morrison • Jimi Hendrix • Janis Joplin
Jerry Lee Lewis • the Who • the Rolling Stones • Grateful Dead - Funkadelics • Foghat • Foreigner • Iron Butterfly • Iggy Pop • Howlin' Wolf • Elton John • Bruce Springsteen • Devo • the Dils - the Ramones • Blondie • B. B. King • Heart • Wings • the Supremes • Michael Jackson • T-Bone Walker • Talking Heads
...Remember the sounds, the great sounds and the great times-at the Fillmore, the Avalon, the Aragon, the Electric Theater, Candlestick Park, Woodstock, the Grande Ballroom, CBGB, the Whisky A-Go-and imagine them captured visually in more than 1,500 full-color posters from Presley to Punk.
Fifteen hundred images reproduced in their original blazing colors with all the meticulous care a fine art book publisher can command: this is the definitive, all-inclusive rock poster collection.
But it is even more than that. With all styles, periods, and regions amply represented, The Art of Rock is nothing less than a visual history of rock 'n' roll
—from the fifties and Elvis, through the British invasion of the early sixties and into the glorious delirium of the psychedelic years, all the way to the superstar mainstream of today as well as the twisted trails blazed by New Wave and Punk outlaws.
And still more. The hundreds of posters and other art-tickets, backstage passes, buttons, and hand-bills—that tell this tale of rock music, rock graphics, and rock culture are supplemented by historic photographs of the poster artists at work, of the theaters, clubs, and coliseums where the music was (and is) heard, and of the legendary promoters who not only managed the bands but commissioned the posters. Exclusive interviews with all the insiders-artists, musicians, promoters, critics, and collectors-add the firsthand immediacy of oral history to The Art of Rock, and San Francisco's Bill Graham has written a candid preface to it all.
The Art of Rock is the ultimate high for the music fan and required reading for the connoisseur of contemporary graphic design; but most of all, for anyone who has lived any part of the last thirty years, it is a riotous feast of color and a rich harvest of grand memories.
Hardcover with dust jacket
Edition/year: 1st, 1987, Abrams
Condition: Excellent vintage condition
Dimensions: 13.5" x 11.5" x 1.5"