Classic Posters - Interview With Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine

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Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine Interview with Poster Expert DennisKing by Michael Erlewine

Saturday, May 12, 2001 at D. KingGallery

Birth Data

Dennis King: September 24th, 1952

Dennis King: Yeah, it was 7:16 PMOakland, California. And that's DaylightSavings Time.

Michael Erlewine: What was your givenname?

Dennis King: Dennis Michael King.

And I grew up in the Bay Area. Here'ssome little groups of collectors anddealers that came out of the Bay Area,and it's really interesting to see thedifferent generations that got into this.And it's kind of funny, because I'm in akind of a limbo-age bracket.

There's a number of people who areolder than me. There's a number ofpeople that are younger than me by twoor three years, like Jacaeber Kastor, but

I kind of came out of the beatnik thingmore than anything, because I livedaround here. And I was a real big kidand I was real precocious. And youknow, I got kicked out of junior highschool for wearing Roman sandals andall this kind of stuff. It was like 1963 orsomething like that. So I used to cometo Telegraph Avenue, because it's in theneighborhood, and it was the Telegraphscene. If you talk to Country Joe or any

of those guys … we talk about itsometimes. But very interesting,because there's a real international andintellectual atmosphere around Berkeley…

Michael Erlewine: What year is this?

Dennis King: Well, this is early '60s

Michael Erlewine: Early?

Dennis King: Late '50s early '60s

Dennis King: And I didn't realize it at thetime, but there was a very Japanese

influence, because I have come back tolook at that, to figure out where it allcame from. It wasn't really obvious tome, but you look at, you know, thewhole Alan Watts, Zen Buddhism….

But there was something veryJapanese, in retrospect, about theBerkeley experience. And I can't quiteput my finger on it. That's why I go backand I try to pick up pieces of history, to

see where it came from… Michael Erlewine: The Beat experiencein general, I was here in 1960…

Dennis King: So, at any rate, I basicallycame out of the whole Berkeley thing,more than San Francisco. I think the firsttime… Well, interesting recollection isFD-14, the 'Zig Zag' poster, was a bigdeal. I remember walking downTelegraph Avenue. It's sitting up in thewindow of Shakespeare & Co. Books,and you're looking at this thing sittin'here, saying, "My god! How the fuck didthey have the balls to put this thing upthere?," because everybody knew whatit was. And that was kind of my wholeperception of, well, what the hell's goin'on in the city?



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine

The Zig-Zag Poster

I don't remember when I first got over tothe Haight, but at some point I went overto it with somebody and went to one ofthe things in the Pan Handle. It was oneof the early things and I just don't…1966 sometime. But then I startedheading over to the city a bit more, but Iwas still pretty young at that time. I was14 and a half or 15. I was out and about,all over the place. And that's when Istarted picking up posters.

And you know, if you go to the posterstore, they used to be a buck. And itwas like, Ok, I gotta' scrape together acouple a bucks to buy a couple postersevery once in a while. It's like, you know,at that age, it was kind of … if therewere things going on, it was a big deal.

So, at any rate, that's kind of how I gotinvolved in the poster scene. And it kindof went on from there. What really

touched it off, I think, was early '70s …around 1970. I used to be into comicbooks when I was a kid. I startedreading comics in 1956, and I kept abunch of the stuff, and I went to a fleamarket and I realized somebody wastrafficking used comic books. So I took abox of mine out there and sold them all

off, and then, you know, started to getinto that whole paper scene. Andrealized, "Hey, there's a couple of guysout here." This guy who's doing comicbooks, he's got a couple posters. So Ipicked up a poster or two, and then onething led to another and I realized, waita minute… It's kind of like the way a lotof people collect or the way I see a lot ofpeople collecting over the years. It's like:These are the ones I really want. Youknow, get the ones I really want.

And then you see some other ones andyou say, hey, this one's pretty good too;let's pick this one up. And by the time

you realize where you are, you say god,you know, I've already got half of thesethings. These other ones aren't so bad.You start pickin' these up. You startworking on a set. So by the time 1971 or1972 rolled around it …1971 I guess, Iwas out looking for collections. I wasbuying them and keeping a set formyself and selling some other ones offto pay for my collections, which is alsosomething I did with comic books and

later I did too with baseball cards, whichI made a lot of money off of andsurvived off of, for a very long time.

So I kind of started out in flea markets.And I never reacted really well to beingin a dirty, dusty flea market, bakin' in thesun all day. It didn't last very long forme. That lasted less than a year. I said,"To hell with that." I did posters on theside for a really long time. I starteddoing comic books for my first papered

collectables library, I put myself mostlythrough college doing that.

Michael Erlewine: Just right here intown?

Dennis King: Yep, I graduated fromBerkeley here.



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine And I ended up in… I used to go and docomic book shows a lot. There was bigcomic book show down in San Diego. Itwas the big deal once a year, andStanley Mouse used to come downthere, came down a couple of times. Hewould air brush t-shirts. And Rick Griffinwas down there with GordonMcClelland, who was representing himat the time. Rick would come downevery year and he'd be at the show.There was actually a little fringe posterthing going on down at the comic bookshow. And so I did a little bit of comicbook stuff down there. And then when Igot out of college in 1976, I actually gota teaching credential too, and I taughtfor 3 months and I said, "Fuck this."

You know, it's like nobody cares. Itaught high school. Nobody cared. Theydidn't give a damn. There was a wholebig political thing in the administrationand I said this is not why I'm here. I'mout.

I wasn't really interested in doingbusiness. I had always been pretty anti-

business, even though I was doing akind of flea market business on the side,anyway. But I had a friend, whograduated business from Berkeley, andhe'd always wanted to have a retailestablishment. And we were going to dokind of a comic books, sportscollectables, posters -- all papercollectables. And he was going to run it,and I was going to travel around andbuy things to bring back and sell. He

had all these ideas, like we were goingto pipe laughing gas into place, sopeople would be happy when they buythings.

And anyway, we spent about 2 or 3months, basically putting everythingtogether, finding a location, figuring out

how to do the financing. And he had likea girlfriend, who just turned 18. He gothooked on her and was gonna' getmarried. She said, "I'm not going to getmarried to a guy who runs a store doingthis kind of stuff." And so he ended uppitching the whole thing and became acommodities worker, which he still is.

And after my spending all this time Isaid, "You know, fuck it! I put all thistime into this, I'm just going to do itmyself." And just intuitively I thought,you know, maybe there's a place here.Maybe there's a place in Berkeley. Icould see this place. There's a little, kind

of alcove where they have like somelittle tiny stores, off Telegraph Avenue.And I saw it in my mind. And I went overand I looked around and there wasnothing. But there was a door that hadsome plants and a couple of broomsand things sitting there. It was really acloset with a glass door.

So I went to the guy at the place nextdoor and said, "Hey, what do they dowith that closet over there?" "Oh, go talk

to Willie." So I went down to talk to Willieand I said, "Hey, you know, what aboutthis place here. Can you rent me thisplace?" And he was a really funny guy.He's a Chinese guy. He was probablypushing 70 years old, and he used towear a Chairman Mao cap, and he usedto go around… He hated everybody. Hewas like, "I hate niggers, I hate whites, Ihate chinks" -- all this stuff. He said, "Butyou know kid. You're all right. I like you!"

[Laughs].

And he said, "You got guts man. I'll tellyou what. I'll rent you that place for $50a month." And so I rented this 4 foot by12 foot closet for $50 a month and put acouple portfolios of posters there, putsome comics on the wall, put some



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine sports cards in there. And then I wentaround and started calling all the TVstations and all the newspapers andsaid, "Hey, I've got some stuff here thatyour viewers and your readers are reallygoing to love. They've never seen thisstuff before. They'll never see it again.You come out. We're gonna' have athing for the media here and we'll havesome wine for you to drink. And you cantake a look at these things and dowhatever you want."

A lot of them didn't really respond. Butthe guy at the Daily Californian, who'sthe U.C. Berkeley newspaper editor,

was just real into this for some reason,and he wrote up … he talked to me for awhile, I guess, and then he said, "Well,we'll send somebody over." So, thephotographer shows up and he wastotally not into it. He said, "Oh, this guycan't be in the paper. I don't know whyhe sent me over here." Next thing youknow, the next day, when I'm openingfor my 'Grand Opening', I'm on the frontpage of the Daily Cal, my picture, "THE

KING OF THE CARDS!," and I show upto work at like noon, when I'm supposedto open the place… I've got like 25people waiting to get to my place.

Then I start getting the other localnewspapers… they picked it up, andsuch. But then I got Channel 4, NBC,and they said, "We're sorry, we couldn'tcome, but I'm really interested in this,"and they came out to tape something,and they were so into it that they ran a

three-part segment, three days in a row,on the 6 and 11 o'clock news.

Michael Erlewine: Wow!

Dennis King: I got all this publicity whenI first started. So I sat in this little closetgoing claustrophobic, put some mirrorson the walls so it wouldn't drive me too

batty, for about 3 or 4 months, and thensomehow or another, the synchronicitykicks in, and across the way the travelagency went out of business and I gotinto their spot. So I really quickly got intoa bigger spot and started off. So I been,basically, you know, from 1976 on, I'vebeen doing this full time.

And the posters were … it was a three-part business, really. It was all three ofthose kinds of collectables, and Icouldn't have done it without any one ofthem at the time. There was no way. Butbetween the three of them, it wasenough to carry the whole thing. And

I've been doing it ever since.Michael Erlewine: What stuff do you likefor yourself? I mean what do you like tocollect? What do you think is beautifulfrom the whole poster scene, justpersonally?

Dennis King: Well, the thing that I'mmost interested in collecting is originalartwork.

And that may have something to do with

the art gallery kind of sensibility. A lot ofart collectors are really interested indrawings and sketches, because yousee the stylistic elements and how thethings built up. I don't know if that's whatit is or not. It's really hard to say. It's soexclusive.

You know, there's one made and it'ssittin' here. Owning that one piece. Itssomething that I've really kind ofpursued, and I pursue it with some ofthe more modern artists as well.

Michael Erlewine: Putting originals asideand just talking about the art itself, whatkind of things do you think are beautiful?If you can even think of it that way.Maybe you don't.



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine Dennis King: No, I do. But, you see, Istarted collecting so long ago. I mean, Ireally started collecting in 1967. I wentthrough phases of this … that I'vecollected. I wouldn't say I'm omnivorous,but there's so many different types ofposters, handbills, postcards -- all thatkind of stuff -- that I've collected, that itis kind of hard to look at it that way,because most of what I've had, I've hadfor quite a while. I don't add much to mycollection these days. There's certainlythings that stand out among the work.Some of Wes Wilson's at the end of theFillmore run, the last 20 or 30 postersthat he did in there in 1967, are justreally one of the pinnacles of that wholeera. There's some peripheral things thathe did, like that "Open Up and See"poster for J. Walter Thomson that hedid. A beautiful piece. The Levi's piece.There is a lot of that stuff that's reallygreat. That's really one of the highpoints. Bob Fried, the really psychedelicBob Fried stuff, because cause Bobwas… his whole point was to try andcapture the psychedelic experience on a

two dimensional surface. And it's reallyobvious, when you look at things like theFD-115, the guy with the green handscoming out of the head. That's one themost psychedelic posters ever made.I'm sorry. You look at that and you say"L.S.D." There's nothing else you canreally say.

FD-115

Michael Erlewine: I feel that way aboutthe Euphoria poster.

The Youngbloods at EUphoria

Dennis King: Yeah.

Michael Erlewine: And I saw the originalacetate poster of the man walkingacross the books on stilts. That says a

lot to me, intellectually -- a beautifulconcept.

Dennis King: Well, I believe, and I'm notsure that that, I don't know if it's a Dore,or who it is… I don't know how much of that is really his work.



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine Michael Erlewine: I think it might bepretty much his work, but who cares, theposter is fantastic.

Dennis King: I'd be very surprised. And

then the Rick Griffin stuff, obviously.Michael Erlewine: Do you have afavorite Griffin?

Dennis King: Yeah.

Michael Erlewine: What sort of things?

Dennis King: My favorite Griffin stuff isthe "Man from Utopia," the big,oversized comic book. That's myfavorite Griffin stuff. The really

psychedelic stuff grabs you because theimagery's so strong. It captures theexperience

Man from Utopia

It was interesting, because one of theother things that, really, I haven'tthought about it too much, but I thoughtabout it a lot at one point, was growing

up and living in the Bay Area. There wasa whole kind of consciousness that a lotof people that I was around had, but itwas very hard to relate to other people,who were not from the area, becausethere was something for whatever kindof words you want to throw up around,you know, the '60s were a special time

or whatever you want to say. There wasa very special feeling in the area in1966-1967 that goes beyond thetrappings. This very profoundlyinfluenced who I am and how I relate topeople.

You know I think it's interesting whenyou look at the group of poster dealers,and I don't know that I wanna' go intothis too far, but it's interesting, becauseJacaeber Kastor grew up in Berkeley,but most of the poster dealers really arenot from the Bay Area. It's kind ofinteresting. Most people are eithertransplants… and, I don't know how to

put it, it's probably… Let's not go there. Michael Erlewine: Yeah, one question Ihave is: Posters as memorabilia,posters as art. There seems to be, in myview, a shifting now. We've kind ofexhausted the memorabilia aspect of it.

Dennis King: I don't think so.

Michael Erlewine: Not to stop it, but Idon't know what else one can do toaccent it that hasn't been done. I'm

thinking that the fine art part of it isstarting to come into its own. I wonderwhat your thoughts on it are?

Dennis King: Well, I think there are threecategories: One is memorabilia, one ishistorical documents, and the other isart. And I think the historical documentaspect has not been hit, has hardlybeen scratched, and I think that's one ofthe …. I mean certainly a lot of theposters and such don't fall into the art-world realm, as much as they fall intothe historical documents realm.

Michael Erlewine: Well, I mean Lautrecand stuff like that are, I think, verycollectible and very much consideredart. It is a fact that ALL posters are



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine historical documents of one type oranother.

Dennis King: Well, because they're both.For example, you pick something like

this. This is not art.Michael Erlewine: No, but somethinglike Rick Griffin's Oxomoxoa.

Dennis King: Oh no, I understand, butI'm just saying that within the realm ofposter collecting, there are these threecategories. And one of the things thatmakes posters so attractive to collectorsis they do cross these differentboundaries. You get into the best

pieces, they represent memorabilia,nostalgic memorabilia; they representhistorical documents that are extremelyimportant because the documentation ofa turning point in our history; and theyrepresent art. So whenever you havethings that have these three crossoversor four crossovers then …

Michael Erlewine: As we grow older anddie, the memorabilia probably doesn'twork. It won't be other peoples'

memorabilia.Dennis King: That's true, but thehistorical document aspect will be evenmore important and I think that's beenoverlooked.

Michael Erlewine: I think you're right. Agood point.

Dennis King: And I think that's why yousee things like the acid test poster.Nobody's ever going to look at that as

art. I mean, you know, basically theartist Gut took Captain Marvel and threwin a big "Shazammm!" Here we areguys. You know it's like part of thatwhole comic book thing that washappening. In fact, it's very interestingbecause the whole comic book thingunderflows all that late 1965, early 1966.

You start seeing "Tribute to Dr. Strange"and that was a big deal. I don't know ifyou know about "Dr. Strange." He was amarvel comic book, the master of mysticarts. It'd be interesting at some point toexplore really what the roots are, thecomic book roots of the poster artists,because Rick Griffin obviously was veryinfluenced. He did a lot of undergroundcomic book work. Victor Moscoso didunderground comic book work, sothere's a lot of that happening, as well. Ithink there's a tendency of a lot ofcollectors to think that they're the centerof the universe and to mistakenly thinkthat, because myself and my generationare going to be gone, no one's gonna'want this stuff anymore. I think that'svery egotistical on the one hand andvery misguided on the other, because Ithink the historic implications of thesepieces are much greater that mostpeople really recognize. We are still soclose to that time period, that we're notreally… we don't have the distance totake a look at it and see how significantthey really are.

I'm not real into, you know, touting allthat, but I understand what you'resaying. The interesting type of feedbackthat I get from customers is that I'll seecustomers that I haven't seen in 10years or 15 years, and they'll come backto me because they say, "Well, I trustyou. You'll tell me the truth," and myphilosophy, not only in this business, butin my other businesses as well, is that

I'm in for the long run. I've been doingthis for however long this is. I mean youthink about posters … 30 years, and I'vealways felt like I'm not doing this for thisyear and for next year. I'm gonna' bedoing this in ten years. I'm gonna' bedoing this in 20 years, and if I'm going tocontinue to make this my livelihood, I



Interview with Poster Expert Dennis King by Michael Erlewine have to be honest with my customers,tell them the truth, help them when theyneed some guidance, for where theywanna' go, help them find what theywanna' do rather that what I wanna' do.Because then they remember me, andthey come back to me. And I think thatkind of sums up my business in anutshell.

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