A lot of attention has been paid to our great selection of psychedelic concert posters coming up in Saturday’s big auction, including the amazingly high-graded Bindweed Press Collection. But today I wanted to call attention to the Beatles and the Stones, especially fresh off the experience of watching the Beatles’ new Get Back lengthy documentary on Disney+… for the second time. (Rather than thinking, “That’s 15 hours I’ll never get back” – wordplay intended – my reaction was, “Wow, there was so much I didn’t pick up the first time through!”)
Well, on Saturday in Concert Posters we have four straight Fab Four items from 1966, all total winners that everyone’s familiar with but it’s so great to see them all in one place like this. The granddaddy of them all is the ’66 Shea Stadium concert poster, still a complete rarity with less than 10 known to exist and in brilliant unrestored condition. Why, oh, why there weren’t more Beatles concert posters made in 1966 I’ll never know, since so many of those shows didn’t sell out. But at least we have this one, and…
Their Candlestick Park poster is an evergreen that everyone loves and is very easily creased and damaged with all that black cardboard. So to find one graded in the 9’s is a major plus (ours is 9.2). And then the dean of San Francisco concert-poster artists, Wes Wilson, passed away a couple of years ago, so he’s not signing any more posters and this one is thankfully blessed with his sig.
The Beatles’ 1966 Washington D.C. handbill is possibly their best-looking concert flyer ever, either side of the pond, and recent prices have supported that… would you believe $6,875 for one here at Heritage last summer? We don’t expect others to necessarily go for that much, but you never know. And then there’s the famous “Incredible!” butcher-cover promo poster from ’66… that poster simply never gets old, and it’s desired and collected on all four corners of the planet, so probably never will.
On the Rolling Stones tip, how about that fully autographed 1972 American tour poster… just terrific provenance behind that one.
AUCTON PREVIEW: The Rolling Stones 1972 American Tour Poster Signed, Inscribed & Framed by the band.
I was lucky enough to sit front-row-center for the June ’72 show on this tour at the Los Angeles Forum, camera in hand. And in discussing it with our consignor, Joe DeLoro, it turns out that he & I were probably 50 feet apart at certain times, 50 years ago! Wow, talk about synchronicity… imagine how much fun I had taking this consignment in and writing it up.
And don’t forget, that combination of Jagger-Richards-Taylor-Wyman-Watts autographs is the rarest combo in Stones history. They signed a ton of sets in their early days with Brian Jones; and they’ve had Ron Wood in the band forever now and done a few limited-edition things, so the current sets also border on the ‘common’ side. But Mick Taylor? Joined them in 1969, played that killer lead guitar on “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’” on Sticky Fingers, left them in ’74 and during that time the group was always an inaccessible stadium band. So although a little faded, these sigs are stellar and from the Stones’ all-time touring apex! I wonder if two “Joe’s” will be the final bidders slugging it out? LOL.
Looking forward to all the fun on Saturday!