Sopwith Camel, The Matrix
February, 1967
Artwork and commentary by Victor Moscoso

“By this time, I had created, or established, my own poster company, called Neon Rose, so that I would not be dependent upon any of the promoters—like Chet Helms or Bill Graham—to do what I wanted to do anyway, which was dancehall posters—dancehalls or dance clubs. So after having done a series of a couple of successful posters, I approached the Matrix (which is still there, by the way, on Fillmore Street, down in the Marina, and it features my posters on the wall, interestingly enough—a lounge is what it is) and I approached the Matrix, and I said to them, ‘How would you guys like me to design posters to advertise the Matrix?’

“I went to the Matrix because Big Brother would play there and the Doors had played there; the same bands that were playing at the Avalon and the Fillmore were playing there. And they said, ‘Sure, but we can’t afford it.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s okay. I’ll pay for it,’ I said. ‘And I’ll give you 200 free posters, and I’ll print up as many posters as I can afford to or want to and sell them.’ And they said, ‘Cool.’

“So, the Sopwith Camel is one of the posters in the series that I did for the Matrix (and a couple of other people, but mainly for the Matrix), to create inventory for my own poster company. Now that’s really full freedom, because I commissioned the poster; I created the poster; I produced the poster; and then I sold the poster. And at that time, the climate was such that anything I did, the poster would sell. It was like a surfer down at Mavericks, catching these perfect, monster waves and riding them—and riding them well. See, you can’t make those waves all of the sudden get big. You have to wait till the waves get big, you know? And what all the artists and all the people at that time were doing was riding this cultural wave that we refer to as the psychedelic Sixties. We didn’t call them that; nobody called themselves ‘hippies’—that came from Herb Caen and his column in the Chronicle. I don’t like the word ‘hippie’; it’s pejorative; it means you’re not hip, you know? Gee, thanks Herb. So this is one of those posters where I’m the boss, and I’m the artist, and I can do what I want.

“So what did I want to do with the Sopwith Camel? Well, I knew the Sopwith Camel was a WWI airplane, a combat airplane, and since I’m fooling around with the lettering, I figured, ‘Okay, how can I integrate the lettering into the name, into the image?’ So, ‘Sopwith Camel,’ as you can see here, is drawn to look like wings. And I stick the camel in there; there are the wings, there’s the camel—and that’s the Sopwith Camel. I did that in just a couple of nights, and the band liked it so much they used it as their logo. It was used on a record cover, and they kept it on as their logo—too bad they weren’t the Grateful Dead! You know, Alton Kelley did a lot better with the skull and roses and the Grateful Dead than I did with the Sopwith Camel, which lasted quite a while, but not at the level that the Grateful Dead did, unfortunately for me—and the Sopwith Camel. But yeah, that’s the story on that one.”

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