Alfred E. Neuman - 1967

This Mouse and Kelley creation was made for San Francisco producers The Family Dog, who also put on shows in Denver from September through December 1967. The Family Dog brought the San Francisco bands and their favorite poster artists to Denver. This piece features Alfred E Neuman, the poster child for the wildly popular MAD Magazine in the 1960s. Neuman is cleverly flanked by a psychotropic mushroom on one side and a nuclear mushroom cloud on the other.

Alfred E Neuman first made his appearance on the cover of the December 1956 MAD Magazine as a write-in candidate for President, and occupied its covers every month thereafter, often with the signature phrase, “What, Me Worry?”

Al Feldstein, Editorial Director at the time, said he didn’t want the boy to, “look like an idiot—I want him to be lovable and have an intelligence behind his eyes. But I want him to have this devil-may-care attitude, someone who can maintain a sense of humor while the world is collapsing around him.”  This era was the Golden Age of magazines before TV began taking over at the end of the decade. Playboy had its bunny, The New Yorker had Eustace Tilley, Esquire had the wide-eyed Mr. Esky, and MAD had Alfred E Neuman.

The Other Half were an obscure San Francisco (by way of Los Angeles) '60s band that gained a degree of notoriety in the '80s when their punk-garage single "Mr. Pharmacist" was included on one of Rhino's Nuggets compilations. Actually, most of the Other Half's material was far less garage than psychedelic, featuring the sustain-laden guitar of Randy Holden, one of the best Jeff Beck-inspired axemen of the '60s. Holden, who had previously played in the L.A. psychedelic garage band Sons of Adam, went on to join Blue Cheer.