logo
David Edward Byrd, Whose Posters Captured Rock's Energy, Dies at 83

David Edward Byrd, Whose Posters Captured Rock's Energy, Dies at 83

New York Times12-02-2025

David Edward Byrd, who captured the swirl and energy of the 1960s and early '70s by conjuring pinwheels of color with indelible posters for concerts by Jimi Hendrix, the Who and the Rolling Stones as well as for hit stage musicals like 'Follies' and 'Godspell,' died on Feb. 3 in Albuquerque. He was 83.
His husband and only immediate survivor, Jolino Beserra, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pneumonia brought on by lung damage from Covid.
Mr. Byrd made his name, starting in 1968, with striking posters for the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly and Traffic at the Fillmore East, the Lower Manhattan Valhalla of rock operated by the powerhouse promoter Bill Graham.
For a concert there that year by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mr. Byrd rendered the guitar wizard's hair in a field of circles, which blended with the explosive hairstyles of his bandmates, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.
Mr. Byrd also put his visual stamp on the Who's landmark rock opera, 'Tommy,' producing posters for it when it was performed at the Fillmore East in October 1969 and again, triumphantly, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York a few months later. In 1973, he shared a Grammy Award for his illustration work on the London Philharmonic Orchestra's rendition of 'Tommy.'
For his poster for the Rolling Stones' 1969 U.S. tour, which culminated in the violence-marred Altamont festival in Northern California, Mr. Byrd paid no mind to the band's increasingly sinister image. Instead, he opted for an illustration of an elegant female nude twirling billowing fabric, drawing for inspiration on the late-19th-century motion photographs by Eadweard Muybridge.
Mr. Byrd's theater work included a surreal poster for 'Follies,' the bittersweet 1971 Broadway evocation of the Ziegfeld Follies era with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The design featured the cracked face of a somber-looking woman wearing a star-studded headdress that spelled out the show's title.
The poster was enough of a hit that the producer Edgar Lansbury called Mr. Byrd in for a meeting at his office near the Winter Garden theater, where 'Follies' was playing, and asked him to design one for the Off Broadway production that same year of 'Godspell,' the flower-power retelling of the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his 2023 book, 'Poster Child: The Psychedelic Art & Technicolor Life of David Edward Byrd,' written with Robert von Goeben, Mr. Byrd recalled Mr. Lansbury telling him to peer out the window at his 'Follies' image.
'I want that poster,' he said, 'and I want it to be Jesus.'
Mr. Byrd missed out on a brush with history when his original poster for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, featuring a neoclassical image of a nude woman with an urn, was replaced for various logistical reasons by Arnold Skolnick's — the now famous image of a white bird perched on a guitar neck. Mr. Byrd took it in stride.
'I didn't think of it as any kind of 'branding' for the event,' he said of his poster. 'I thought of it as a souvenir of the event.'
Mr. Byrd was impressed by — and to a degree, aligned with — the work of the so-called Big Five psychedelic poster artists of San Francisco: Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson, who were known for using kaleidoscopic patterns, explosions of color and fonts that seemed to bend and ooze like Salvador Dalí clocks.
But, based 3,000 miles from the Haight-Ashbury scene, Mr. Byrd was also influenced by Broadway and advertising, employing standard typefaces and drawing on the Art Nouveau movement of 1890s Europe. His work is 'kind of like Art Nouveau on acid,' said Thomas La Padula, an adjunct professor of illustration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where Mr. Byrd taught in the 1970s.
Throughout, however, Mr. Byrd could enjoy the unfettered freedom afforded by the music world in those days. 'With rock, there was no basic subject matter,' he wrote in 'Poster Child.' 'It was just whatever you wanted to do that was eye-catching.'
David Edward Byrd was born on April 4, 1941, in Cleveland, Tenn., the only child of Willis Byrd, a traveling salesman, and Veda (Mount) Byrd, a part-time model. His parents divorced when he was young, and he spent most of his youth in Miami Beach with his mother and his wealthy stepfather, Al Miller, an executive with the Howard Johnson's restaurant chain.
After receiving a bachelor's degree in fine art and a master's in stone lithography from Andy Warhol's alma mater, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), he settled in an upstate New York commune, where he was painting in the vein of Francis Bacon, the Irish-born artist and master of the macabre, when college friends, including Joshua White, who designed the dazzling light shows for the Fillmore East, hooked him up with Mr. Graham.
Fillmore East closed in 1971, but that did not mark the end of Mr. Byrd's work in music. For a Grateful Dead concert at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island in 1973, he came up with an impish illustration of two clean-cut 1950s teenagers boogieing under the self-consciously corny tagline 'A Swell Dance Concert.'
Mr. Byrd also produced a retro-inflected album cover for Lou Reed's 1974 album, 'Sally Can't Dance,' as well as posters for the band Kiss. He made a foray into Hollywood with his poster for the 1975 film adaptation of 'The Day of the Locust,' Nathanael West's dystopian Hollywood novel.
Mr. Byrd moved to Los Angeles in 1981 and worked there as the art director for Van Halen's 'Fair Warning' tour. Later that decade, he spent four years as the art director for the national gay news publication The Advocate, and in the 1990s he worked as an illustrator for Warner Bros. on its consumer merchandise.
He and Mr. Beserra, a mosaic artist, moved to Albuquerque last year.
Mr. Byrd often said that he found the making of art more fulfilling than the end result. 'The final art product is merely the doo-doo, the refuse, the detritus of the creative experience,' he said in his book. 'The golden moments in my life have always been the personal, magical world of the 'Aha!' moment.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

‘Eddington' Trailer: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Into Standoff With Pedro Pascal In A24's Covid-Era Western From Filmmaker Ari Aster
‘Eddington' Trailer: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Into Standoff With Pedro Pascal In A24's Covid-Era Western From Filmmaker Ari Aster

Yahoo

time10 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

‘Eddington' Trailer: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Into Standoff With Pedro Pascal In A24's Covid-Era Western From Filmmaker Ari Aster

A24 has unveiled the first full-length trailer for Eddington, its latest film from Hereditary helmer Ari Aster, which is slated to hit theaters July 18 after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, the genre-bender is set during the Covid-19 pandemic, watching as a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Phoenix) and mayor (Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, N.M. More from Deadline Everything We Know About Ari Aster's 'Eddington' So Far Pedro Pascal Says That With 'Eddington' Ari Aster Wrote A Movie That's 'All Our Worst Fears' In Post-Covid Political Era Emily Mortimer Taps Alison Oliver & Yura Borisov To Lead 'Dennis,' Her Feature Directorial Debut For A24 & Fruit Tree For Aster, Eddington marked a reunion with Phoenix on the heels of his last film, the dark A24 comedy Beau Is Afraid. He directed from his own script, with Luke Grimes, Deirdre O'Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone rounding out the cast. Eddington drew a nearly seven-minute standing ovation in its launch at Cannes, where Deadline's Damon Wise praised Aster for being 'willing to go there' with his satire of modern-day America and all its challenges — 'a slice of history that we have yet to see properly shown on film, even though it happened only five years ago.' The film is financed and produced by A24. Aster produced alongside Lars Knudsen under their Square Peg Banner. Watch the trailer for Eddington at the link above. [youtube Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films

The Best '70s Ski Outfits From the POWDER Archives
The Best '70s Ski Outfits From the POWDER Archives

Yahoo

time20 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

The Best '70s Ski Outfits From the POWDER Archives

As you might remember (or as your parents might remind you), things were a bit different in the 1970s. Global politics were in upheaval, society was opening its mind to new norms, and ski bumming was entering its first golden age. Those were also the years when this publication, first helmed by founders Jake and Dave Moe, began chronicling the deeper side of ski culture. At the time, ski culture had started to evolve into the free-spirited and expression-driven form it still has today, in part driven by the pages of the first volumes of POWDER Magazine. Powder skiing represented the ultimate freedom, and in true 1970s fashion, the skiers of the time took their expression of it to extreme lengths. Speaking of fashion, this was the era of true drip: from tight-fitting one-piece ski suits to oversized knit sweaters, most everything featured loud colors, patterns, and revealing necklines. Check out the Best 70s Ski Outfits from the POWDER archives below. This piece is part of POWDER's Summer of Ski Nostalgia content series. Stay tuned in daily for more nostalgic articles, and keep an eye out for the upcoming Summer of Ski Nostalgia badge to identify future content. You can also view all of POWDER's summer nostalgia content here. These were the days before Gore-Tex and other waterproof/breathable fabrics, with skiers instead opting for wool sweaters and the odd stretchy ski suit. These things were warm, bordering on sweaty, but they undoubtedly oozed style. A 1977 gear editorial section highlighting the year's finest insulated wares for skiers. Many iconic ski brands really found their stride in the 1970s. Look at how far things have come in these ads from Bogner, Rossignol, and Gerry Clothing. Apparel ads from the 70s were just built different. The wool sweater, still an icon of ski fashion today, provided the vibes during the 70s. Personally, these are WAY too hot for me to wear anywhere but inside a cozy mountain hut, but to each their own, I suppose. Eyewear was also on point, with many skiers still opting for large-framed sunglasses instead of full-on goggles. Fashion over function, especially on sunny days. For anyone who has worn goggles of this era, you'll remember that fogging was a pretty real issue. Marketing copy has always been a hot topic of discussion for brands. How can you make things eye-catching without being too weird? That clearly didn't matter to apparel manufacturers back then. Marlboro jackets? Budweiser sweaters? Nothing was sacred back then. While backcountry skiing really entered its golden age during the COVID pandemic, skiers have been walking up mountains and enjoying soft turns on the way down for many years. Take a look at the style and equipment (or lack thereof) employed during the 1970s from places like Vail to Courchevel. Long before technical outerwear, skiers were enjoying hard-earned turns deep in the backcountry. This piece is part of POWDER's Summer of Ski Nostalgia content series. Stay tuned in daily for more nostalgic articles, and keep an eye out for the upcoming Summer of Ski Nostalgia badge to identify future content. You can also view all of POWDER's summer nostalgia content Best '70s Ski Outfits From the POWDER Archives first appeared on Powder on Jun 4, 2025

Full Trailer for Ari Aster's Pandemic Thriller EDDINGTON with Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal — GeekTyrant
Full Trailer for Ari Aster's Pandemic Thriller EDDINGTON with Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal — GeekTyrant

Geek Tyrant

time29 minutes ago

  • Geek Tyrant

Full Trailer for Ari Aster's Pandemic Thriller EDDINGTON with Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal — GeekTyrant

A24 has released the full trailer for director Ari Aster's new film Eddington , which is set during the COVID pandemic, a moment in time that I really have no desire to revisit. That was just such a weird, crazy, and scary time. Aster is a great filmmaker, though, and it looks like he's made an interesting film. The movie is described as a modern Western and the brief logline reads: 'A standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.' The new trailer pulls takes us back five years, when six-foot-enforced social distancing was a thing, and there were protests sparked by the death of George Floyd and there were tons of online conspiracy theorists. Phoenix and Pascal are joined by Austin Butler, Emma Stone, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O'Connell, Micheal Ward, Amélie Hoeferle, Clifton Collins Jr. and William Belleau. This is Aster's fourth feature film, following Hereditary , Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid , the last of which Phoenix also starred in. When talking about working with Phoenix, Aster said: 'Having now worked with him, I understand why he is so reluctant to jump onto anything — because he really puts all of himself into whatever he's doing. The way that he challenges the material — not in a gratuitous way or in a way that's a pain in the ass. 'The question usually amounts to 'Is there anything we haven't considered here?' I realized that it's something that I was really wanting from an actor, and now I can't imagine making a film without him.' Eddington is set to open in competition at Cannes. It will be released in the US on July 18.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store