Fillmore East Poster and Handbill Art

Bill Graham had east coast poster artists who he commissioned to design posters and handbills for The Fillmore East concerts. The most notable poster artists were Helen Hersh and David Byrd.

 

The poster and handbill for the  first concert at The Fillmore East, March 8, 1968, Big Brother with Janis Joplin, Tim Buckley and Albert King.

Helen Hersh

David Byrd

I was living on a multi-media commune outside Manhattan when several of my schoolmates from Carnegie-Mellon were opening the Fillmore East at the old 2nd Avenue Theatre in the East Village with Bill Graham from San Francisco. Manager Kip Cohen called to say they needed a poster artist and they all thought to call me, as I was the one visual artist amongst a group of theater graduates. At the time I was interested in crystal matrices and used a hex grid to create the hair as a mass of psychedelic photons in orange, yellow-green, magenta and black. Unlike the San Francisco Fillmore, we did not do a poster every week, but only for major stars like Hendrix. Film positive painted from behind in acrylic.