By 1966, artists Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, two San Francisco-based artists, had formed a partnership and were already tapped into the Dead world. For inspiration, the two would sometimes drop into the San Francisco Public Library to peruse rare art and poster books.
That year, the duo was recruited to make a poster for the Dead’s September 1966 show at the Avalon Ballroom. Back to the library they went, and in the stacks, they found The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a collection of 11th century poems by the Persian writer. This particular edition, from 1913, featured illustrations by British artist Edmund Joseph (sometimes E.J.) Sullivan, and one in particular spoke to them: a black-and-white drawing of a skeleton surrounded by roses, with a crown of them atop its head. “We saw that skeleton and said, ‘This says Grateful Dead all over it — we have to use this,’” Mouse recalls. Given how old the illo was by then, Mouse adds, “It seemed pretty copyright-free.”
The problem, as Mouse admits, is that the book was so valuable that it couldn’t be checked out of the library. So Kelley cut it out of the tome with a pen knife, sneaked the page out of the library and brought it to the studio they were using. Using a pre-Xerox Photostat machine, they made a copy of the drawing, and Mouse colored it in and added the now-iconic lettering.
After it was used in the poster for the show, the Dead cropped it to the skull for the cover of their 1971 live album Grateful Dead (also known as “Skull and Roses,” or sometimes by the name the band preferred, “Skullfuck”). The image also became the band’s mascot and logo, used on stationery and business cards.
01 - Detail of the 1966 poster by Mouse and Kelley.
02 - Poster for Grateful Dead exhibition at Avalon Ballroom, september 1966, by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley.
03 - Original illustration by British artist Edmund Joseph Sullivan, in 1913.
04 - Cover of 1971 album “Grateful Dead”.
05 - Poster for 1971 album “Grateful Dead”.
