Greg Irons was one of the original pioneers of American underground comix. He was born in Philadelphia in 1947, and became interested in art at a very early age. A self-taught artist, his early influences were the MAD pocket book reprints featuring the works of the usual gang of idiots, Kurtzman, Elder, Wood, and Davis. At the age of twenty, in the winter of 1967, he moved to the hippy capital of the world, San Francisco, where he created a rock poster for a band playing at the Ballroom, a band called The Western Front. With this poster, he looked up local concert promoter Bill Graham and got a commission to draw a poster for an upcoming concert at the famous Fillmore Auditorium, the first in a glorious series of swirly, psychedelic concert posters for Bill Graham Productions. Many of these posters have been reprinted in the coffee-table book, “The Art of Rock”.
In 1968 he went to London to work on the Beatles’ animated feature, “Yellow Submarine”. Upon his return to San Francisco in 1969, he continued his work for Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium and branched out to Chet Helm’s The Family Dog, and even designed album covers for Mercury Records and Bill Graham’s Fillmore label. All this psychedelic poster work eventually led to Irons being published in Bob Rita’s Print Mint underground comic, “Yellow Dog”, with the stories “Heavy” and “Light” in 1969.
Below is a selection of Irons’ legendary concert posters. See how many acts you recognize. Even I don’t know them all, and I pride myself in knowing music!