mystery pic

[realthog]

A query arrived this morning from a UK publisher concerning this:

I'll put a bigger version of it behind the cut (see below). The publisher wants to reproduce the image (for obvious reasons), but has no knowledge of the artist or copyright-holder beyond that the image once appeared in a Paper Tiger book -- hence his tracking down of me. What he didn't know until I told him was that I left PT several years ago and that, more recently, the imprint's owners have told me that it's now essentially defunct. (Yes, okay, I have had occasional maniacal fantasies about reviving it, but . . .)

At first glance, I thought it might be very early Ron Walotsky (he went through a "psychedelic phase" where he did some rock posters), but the fact that it's a UK concert makes this unlikely, and besides the style isn't quite right. (Alas, Ron's no longer with us to be asked.) Nor does it look like, say, a Roger Dean piece.

Anyway, if you recognize it, please let me know. 

 

Comments

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Totally cool, great flashback -- is the artist Peter Blake, by any chance? Similar style (and Blake is British), as evidenced in Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

That's a possibility, although I'm pretty certain Blake never did anything with PT. I'll suggest it to the publisher.

The "All Seats 75p" made me grin. By direct translation at today's rates, that'd be $1.50. Obviously there's been lots of inflation since c1971, when the poster was done. Even so, at a guess it'd be equivalent to about $20 or $25 at today's prices, possibly more like $15. I think you could probably buy the program at a Zep concert for that these days!

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

A quick google suggests this is Steve Hardstaff's work. There's a recent article about him which mentions the poster from the Liverpool Echo. (Mention of the poster's on page 2.) Incidentally, there's a copy of the poster up on eBay at the moment for two hundred bucks.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

COLOSSAL thanks! How in the heck did you manage to track this down? I googled all over the place myself, as you can imagine, but didn't come across this (nor, indeed, the eBay auction -- although I did come across *another*, but long-defunct, auction of it).

Anyway, I've passed the URL of the article along to the publisher and suggested they e-mail their thanks to you directly.

And my thanks again! I may even buy you two pints the next time I see you.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Googled led zeppelin+empire pool wembley+poster, found a couple of auctions of the poster, the description on one said it had been signed by the designer, Steve Hardstaff, googled led zeppelin+steve hardstaff, the article was halfway down the first results page. Job done.
I do this stuff all the time at work, with varying degrees of success. It's fortunate this poster is quite sought-after. You'll note the article says Hardstaff lectures at John Moores University, so I suppose the publisher can contact him through the Arts Faculty.
Incidentally, one of the other auctions mentioned it being a `Paper Tiger poster.' Does that sound right?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Googled led zeppelin+empire pool wembley+poster"

That's more or less exactly what I googled, but, where you say "halfway down the first results page", I don't think I got even a full page of results. This must be the effing "user friendly" google feature whereby, unless you keep an eagle eye out, their software gives a geographical weighting to the results it reports. Since I'm in the US, I obviously wouldn't be interested in the UK results, so . . .

"a `Paper Tiger poster.' Does that sound right?"

If you look very closely at the bottom right of the pic, you can see what seem to be the words "PAPER TIGER". My guess is there was another company with that name (the phrase was on eveeryone's lips at the time, thanks to interest in Mao), though it's perfectly possible Dean started Paper Tiger as a parallel poster company to his publishing company Dragon's Dream, then eventually moved PT into books.

Anyway, again thanks for sterling detective work! You should have heard from Dan Thing, too.

Best wishes --

John Watson MD

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

No, I did what you did initially, but I think where we part company is that I read all the poster-auction descriptions and found the artist's name mentioned. It's easy to miss stuff like that on some of these sites. When I googled that, that's when I got the `halfway down the results page' thing.

Also, I will admit, the geographical weighting probably had some bearing.

I'm off to the Sussex Downs to raise bees now. Ping me if you need me or the Realm is in peril, whichever comes first.

H****s.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"No, I did what you did initially, but I think where we part company is that I read all the poster-auction descriptions and found the artist's name mentioned."

As partially noted earlier, I got just one auction result, it wasn't on eBay, and it was long defunct -- even the "Cached" result wouldn't show more than a few words and a bunch of those little red crosses indicating that JPGs won't open/have been removed.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably due to the geographical weighting. So, Google has a weakness...hmm.

I dunno; I've had people at work whining to me that they've looked for something and couldn't find it, and I've googled it and found it in a couple of steps and they've said, `But I did that.' I think there's an element of pot-luck at work in Google that people don't appreciate.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"there's an element of pot-luck at work in Google that people don't appreciate"

I'm not so sure about that. I only discovered the regional weighting thingie when I wanted to tell Google not to restrict its results to the Engliah language, which it tends to do unless shouted at.

I must refind the Google control in question and tamper with it -- I'm not sure I've done so since getting this computer.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I have to say the geographical weighting is, actually, new to me - and of course I haven't had to futz around with it, because thus far it's given me all the answers I need.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

When I pluck up my courage and go fiddle with my Google settings (one of those jobs I tend to put off, because I know it's going to take me longer than I expect, and because I get very angry with myself for not being able to remember how I did this the last time), I'll try to remember to let you know where to look. I came across it through my long-term passion for French chanson/pop; loads of the sites weren't appearing because they were in French and, besides, people in the US aren't interested in French pop, stands to reason, more than me job's worth to think otherwise, ain't it, squire?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I try not to mess with my Google settings at all, unless I'm looking for something with a specific date-range, or in a specific language or something, and that doesn't happen very often, so I never came across this before.