Chuck Berry, Nov. 17, 1969
Artwork and commentary by Victor Moscoso

“This is a poster for Chuck Berry, ostensibly; but you can see, by how big Chuck Berry’s name is, that the Family Dog logo is speaking. This is the story of that poster. Rick Griffin comes over to my house with this piece of illustration board… and in it he had the border penciled—that’s all. And he says, ‘Maybe you can help me, Victor.’ I said, ‘sure.’ And he showed me the board. He says, ‘I got this idea. And it’s the psychedelic lettering that doesn’t say anything.’ I said, ‘Wow. That’s far out.’ We were trying to make it as difficult to read as possible; but he’s taking it over the edge; he’s going over the top; it ain’t going to say anything. I said, ‘Whoa, cool. That’s a good idea.’ And he said, ‘So, here’s the lettering; I got the lettering all figured out,’ but the inside of the oval is blank. He says, ‘I don’t know what to put inside the frickin’ oval—inside the frame.’

“And so I looked at it, and I said, ‘Well, this is your poster; why don’t I do a portrait of you?’ And he said okay. So I got a piece of picture frame glass, like 5” by 8”—and I held it up steady while looking at him. I traced his face, on the piece of glass that I was holding up while I was looking at him. The grease pencil could draw on glass, and I got his image and his likeness down. And I said, ‘Okay. I’ll take it from here.’

“So I did Rick as a butterfly. There’s his mustache—he had a mustache and a beard—and I turned them into doves or peacocks… when I worked with Rick, we generally tried to work on two boards, at least, so we can both be working at the same time; and in this one it was easy, because this picture gets dropped into what he was doing.

“The first letter in the upper left looks like an ‘M’ that comes down and curves into the frame. So I figured, ‘Okay, I’ll bring that down—that’s Rick’s device—and I’ll make his hair out of those curlicues. Now, I used the scallops—you can see them in other places in my work—so I figure I’d balance his device with my device and make his hair like that. And then, for the rest of the space that was left, I ‘spaced him.’ There’s the stars, you’re looking into outer-space, which is another term for, ‘he’s spaced; he’s stoned; he’s out of it.’ So, from this simple image I created this portrait of Griffin. And it was the first time we’d worked together, and it just clicked… we did it in two nights.”

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