Hell's Angels - It's Party Time Again! - 1967

[NOTE: Shown here framed is the Second printing - we also have a First printing available]

A near mint second printing concert poster advertising a February, 1967 concert presented by the Hells Angels and featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin) and Blue Cheer at the California Hall in San Francisco. The central image is a photo taken on December 17, 1966 during a “Death of Money” March. It is a photo of “Hairy Henry” Kot, and Phyllis Willner, a member of the Diggers. Henry was arrested shortly thereafter for letting Phyllis stand up on his bike. When Chocolate George—another Angel—intervened, he was also arrested and the pair was carted off to jail.

The Diggers and SF Mime troupe then rallied the paraders to the local police precinct house where the Sargent said bail was $2,500 but if someone could come up with 10% then they would be out. The hat was passed and - like the final scene of "It's A Wonderful Life," -- even the policemen donated and the two were released. Frisco Hells Angels chapter President Pete Knell never forgot this generosity and on New Years Day the Angels hired the Grateful Dead, a flatbed truck and beer and threw a big party for everyone!

The Hells Angels were formed in California after World War II. The club became prominent within, and established its notoriety as part of the 1960s counterculture movement in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene, playing a part at many of the movement's seminal events. Members were directly connected to many of the counterculture's primary leaders, such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Timothy Leary, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson. More infamously, the Hells Angels will always be linked with Altamont.

This poster, for the annual party of the Hell's Angels San Francisco chapter, was done by Allen Terk, a member of the motorcycle club. Allen could put away prodigious amounts of food and yet was still quite skinny and so his nickname was, "Gut." Terk was sort of a rennaissance man, certainly by Hell's Angels standards, and he wound up creating at least 7 posters from the era and also managed one of the local bands, Blue Cheer, who played at this event.

“The Bindweed Press” was the business name of Frank Westbrook, who was one of the leading printers of psychedelic rock posters in San Francisco. The posters were printed in the garage of a two-flat apartment building at 141 Noe Street, and Westlake lived upstairs. The building was around the corner from the Mouse Studios operation of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley.

Bindweed’s work for Chet Helms and The Family Dog ended with Helms having failed to pay for some of the print jobs.  At some point in the early 1970s, Westlake left San Francisco for England, taking with him many of the original plates for the rock posters he had printed earlier. In the 1970s he began reprinting unauthorized copies of the Avalon posters under the trade name “San Francisco Poster Company,” perhaps feeling that he could do so in light of Helm’s unpaid bills.

This is one of those reprints, made from the original plates, but after the concert.