Pubdate: Wed, 4 Jun 2008
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: B - 5
Copyright: 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

ALTON KELLEY, PSYCHEDELIC POSTER CREATOR, DIES

Alton Kelley, one of the founding members of the '60s San Francisco 
rock scene, died Sunday at his home in Petaluma after a long illness. 
He was 67.

Mr. Kelley will be remembered as the creator (with his artistic 
partner, Stanley Mouse) of hundreds of classic psychedelic rock 
posters, such as the famed "skull and roses" poster for a Grateful 
Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. Mr. Kelley and Mouse created 26 
posters for just the first year of the Avalon's operation.

But Mr. Kelley was also one of four people who called themselves the 
Family Dog and decided to throw the world's first psychedelic 
dance-concerts at Longshoreman's Hall in September 1965, essentially 
starting the San Francisco scene. The quartet had just returned to 
the Bay Area after spending an LSD-drenched summer restoring a silver 
rush dancehall in Virginia City, Nev., called the Red Dog Saloon.

Mr. Kelley, a motorcycle enthusiast since his New England youth who 
painted pinstripes on bike gas tanks, designed the flyers advertising 
the original Family Dog shows, but lacked drafting ability. When he 
met Stanley Mouse, who had recently relocated from Detroit where he 
made a name for himself doing hot rod art, Mr. Kelley found the 
draftsman he needed. The two formed Mouse Studios and cranked out art 
together, Mr. Kelley's drawing skills eventually improving to the 
point where left-handed Mr. Kelley would be working on one side of 
the easel, right-handed Mouse on the other.

"He had the most impeccable taste of anybody I knew," said Mouse, "He 
would do the layouts, and I would do the drawing."

They worked together steadily for 15 years and on and off thereafter. 
Their Mouse Studios was located in a converted Lower Haight firehouse 
where Janis Joplin first rehearsed with Big Brother and the Holding 
Company. They also opened a store called Pacific Ocean Trading 
Company (POT Co.), one of the first head shops in Haight-Ashbury. 
Recently, the two collaborated on the cover to the program for this 
year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner.

Mouse said they could work for hours in silence. "We knew what to 
do," he said. "We didn't have to talk."

During the heyday of the Avalon Ballroom, the pair would frequent the 
public library looking for images they could employ in their 
poster-making; Edward Curtis photographs of American Indians, 
illustrations from 19th century novels (the skull and roses was 
adapted from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"), often laughing so loud 
at what they found the librarians would ask them to leave.

"They thought it was the funniest stuff in town," said Paul Grushkin, 
author of "The Art Of Rock.

"The twinkle in Kelley's eye - he knew it was all a giggle."

"Stanley and I had no idea what we were doing," Mr. Kelley told The 
Chronicle last year. "But we went ahead and looked at American Indian 
stuff, Chinese stuff, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern, Bauhaus, 
whatever. We were stunned by what we found and what we were able to 
do. We had free rein to just go graphically crazy. Where before that, 
all advertising was pretty much just typeset with a photograph of something."

The work of Mr. Kelley and Mouse has come to be recognized as a 20th 
century American counterpart to the French poster art of Henri de 
Toulouse Lautrec during the Belle Epoque, although the two 
psychedelic artists never imagined at the time they were creating 
anything of enduring value, anything more than another crazy poster 
for this week's Avalon show.

"We were just having fun making posters," said Mouse. "There was no 
time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I 
think most great art is created in a furious moment."

Mr. Kelley continued to make posters all his life, although his 
artwork in the recent past concentrated on his air-brushed paintings 
of hot rods and custom cars that was both sold as fine art and 
reproduced on T-shirts.

He is survived by his wife, Marguerite Trousdale Kelley, and their 
children: Patty of San Diego, Yosarian of Seattle and China of 
Sacramento; two grandchildren; and his mother and sister.

Memorial plans are pending.

Contributions can be made to the Washington Mutual Western Street 
branch in Petaluma for a memorial bench in Sonoma County Park.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake