One of the biggest influences on my earliest work as a graphic design/poster geek was the stuff produced by the psychedelic poster artists out of San Francisco in the mid-’60s. Granted, just about every decent-sized city in America had a psychedelic scene and produced cool posters—Seattle’s were rather amazing; they even predate San Francisco, believe it or not. It was definitely the San Francisco scene that had the media spotlight and as a result became the famous (infamous) hub of the wheel. Frankly, their posters and their poster artists were by far the best of the lot. The rest of the world seemed to follow their lead and copy their ideas and styles.
One of the real greats (and a personal hero and inspiration) started his career as a geeky little kid from Detroit named Stanley Miller (b. 1940), nicknamed “Mouse.” He began airbrushing pictures of monsters driving hot rods on T-shirts and selling the shirts at Detroit-area auto shows. In time, he developed quite a following nationally and began to travel the car show circuit peddling his wares, airbrushing his shirts and monsters and assorted cartoony car images on the spot.
Mouse developed several characters that became hugely popular as mascots in the custom car world. One was a fella he named Freddy Flypogger. He would airbrush images of Freddy hanging out, doing whatever he was asked to do—driving hot rods, surfing, laughing, eating, whatever. Freddy became an icon.
The other little character was an image of a Mouse—almost more of a rat.
This little ad I reproduce here is from an old car customizer magazine. Mouse began to place these ads and started a mail-order biz, selling his images on T-shirts and sweatshirts and decals. He was quite the entrepreneur, it seems. He was doing a smack-up business for himself. Just a kid, too. Eventually the model kit companies hired him to execute his ideas in plastic, and the kits were best sellers.
Of course a lot of you guys out there may notice the similarity between the work of Stanley “Mouse” Miller and the work of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. No accident. As the story goes, it was Roth who decided to go into business against Mouse. There was supposedly a distinct rivalry/competition between the two, and it was mostly Roth trying to cop Mouse’s work and ideas. Basically Mouse originated something at a show and within hours, Roth would be cranking out the same ideas. However, Mouse was the better artist. Even Roth admitted his own drawings were bad and freely hired others (like Robert Williams and Ed “Newt” Newton) to draw and ink his images as he began to market in the same back pages as Mouse.
Now, this brings us to the sticky question of “Rat Fink.” Exactly what happened here? As the story goes, Roth saw Freddy Flypogger and immediately made him into “Mr. Gasser.” As a mean little dig at Mouse’s name and “trademark”—the mouse icon—Roth simply took Freddy Flypogger and drew a snout on the guy and some ears and a tail and christened him “Rat Fink.” I’ve seen demonstrations where one image is simply placed on top of the other and the thing is identical to the point of tracing. Embarrassing.
Another story claims that Roth hired yet another (better) competing artist to create the Rat Fink character based on Mouse’s drawings of Freddy Flypogger. That other artist (“Monte”) did what he was paid to do and created the traced image of Rat Fink and began to apply the character to other activities—like driving hot rods. Thus, an American icon (and fad) was born. Roth was a great art director (he ran a studio with artists cranking inside under his name) and a stupendous hustler and promoter. He would stop at nothing to promote his products. Mouse, on the other hand, was extremely shy and just did his own thing. Rat Fink stomped Mouse. End of American capitalist story. The salesman always wins. Right?
Well, maybe not quite. Mouse was still a young, adventurous kid and Roth was a cranky old stick-in-the-mud. Mouse had youth and the future and Roth was a product of an older generation. Mouse simply decided to move on. He packed up his pinstriped hearse and drove to San Francisco, where he heard stuff was happening. Change was in the air and Mouse followed his nose. Roth didn’t, and faded away.
Mouse ended up in San Francisco at the height of the hippie/Haight-Ashbury scene. He was immediately hired to do a few posters (after all, he was an experienced pro by this time, right?) and became one of the biggest artists in town. He took work away from the guys who had started the poster scene (George Hunter, Wes Wilson and others) and became part of the “second wave” of poster guys (along with Surfer magazine cartoonist Rick Griffin and the crazy Spaniard Victor Moscoso).
Mouse ran into a fellow biker/car aficionado, Alton Kelley, and began a partnership, creating “Posters by Mouse/Kelley.” The rest is history.
They became virtually THE psychedelic poster artists of note, being profiled along with their art whenever the major media did an article about the “art of the hippies.” They immediately took the fancy of a young band called the Grateful Dead, and began to do all of their images and even lived with them for a time. Both Mouse and Kelley produced work together, but they would also work alone. It was a loose arrangement, but a good one of mutual respect.
One of the peculiar things that happened was how both artists influenced each other’s styles. Almost immediately, Alton Kelley was doing florid lettering echoing the efforts of Mouse’s airbrush work. Even sooner, Mouse was collaging together found imagery to create designs in other antique styles (particularly Art Nouveau). He began to use images of circus freaks and famous photos by Stieglitz from the 1920s flapper era. He made drawings almost identical to Aubrey Beardsley and then tripped across a copy of a particular book.
500 Years of Art in Illustration by Howard Simon (World Press, 1942) was a very common book found in most college libraries and home collections. It’s a wonderful scholarly collection of b&w line art (hard-edged) images that tell the story chronologically of the crossover between “art” and “illustration” (there is a difference) as it evolved over the history of civilization. It covers all the eras and ‘isms’ and styles and regions and cultures. It is a must-have—and Mouse MUST have had one laying around. Too many of the images covered and discussed are reflected in his work. It must have been where he encountered Beardsley. He saw the work and in his (assumedly stoned) thinking, said to himself, “This is cool.” As a result, he ran with it. Such is the way of design language. It’s how everybody thinks, no matter what they claim.
Of particular note is an image reproduced on page 348, a woodcut by Edmund Sullivan, originally done for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I’ll reproduce it separately, so you can see what I mean.
As the story goes, the image was either presented to him by a member of the Grateful Dead, or he tripped across it when he was high. At any rate, he lifted it directly (an old time-honored technique) and juxtaposed it into a new environment, a totally new arena of ideas. It stuck like glue. It became the legendary “Skull and Roses” image that is virtually THE icon (the “logo,” the “brand”) of the Grateful Dead. It has been reproduced over and over and incorporated into actual trademarks.
I understand Mouse got paid something like $75 by the promoter to do the poster and in the process signed away all his copyrights to the poster. All that money that should have come his way through sales and reprints over the years never showed up (the copyright to his psych work is now owned by Wolfgang’s Vault). Such is the story of all those psych poster dudes. At least the Grateful Dead had the integrity to repeatedly hire Mouse to work for them, creating dozens of record covers and T-shirts and the band logo (his logo is NOT to be confused the “lighting bolt” logo, which was designed by Bob Thomas and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, who also did the “Deady-Bear” logo) and T-shirts over the years.
He did OK, not great… but, he survived.
As the 1970s rolled in, Mouse and Kelley formed a new business called Monster. They produced T-shirts that were iron-on transfers (new tech at the time) that they sold through catalogs and magazine ads. Mouse had traveled back to his familiar airbrush and never strayed far away again. The T-shirts became iconic, but not much emerged in sales.
Mouse continued to do record covers for other famous rock bands of the ’70s, and tour posters for the likes of Paul McCartney’s Wings. Despite this, his art was forever linked to the Grateful Dead. Luckily, the Dead continued to survive and prosper and become a cult.
The recent resurgence of the rock poster (thanks to gigposters.com) has allowed Mouse to re-emerge as a viable poster artist again, even doing new posters for bands like Audioslave. He now sells his paintings and signs old posters, which generates an income for him.
I finally got a chance to meet him and shake his hand in gratitude for his inspiring career. He could barely look me in the eye. He’s still the same old shy nerdy kid from Detroit. So charming.
