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Prolific designer Bob Masse, who worked with musicians in the likes of the Grateful Dead, Neil Young and U2, died on Sept. 21 from Parkinson-plus syndrome.Vicki Frith/Supplied
Bob Masse tuned in to the 1960s California scene, turned on to copious mind-altering substances, and dropped some of the grooviest psychedelic posters of the era.
The British Columbia graphic artist befriended band members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, partied with Janis Joplin and hung out with musicians living in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, including a fellow Canadian by the name of Joni Mitchell, whom he described as a “skinny little girl with buckteeth.”
Mr. Masse, who has died at 81, created far-out concert posters for such bands as the Dead, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Steve Miller Band, and Country Joe and the Fish.
Mr. Masse was a rare poster artist from the 1960s to continue working well into the next century.
Years after his initial success, he was rediscovered and his career revived, a flashback of sorts, as he enjoyed a long, fruitful span crafting glorious posters for such performers as Tori Amos, Pearl Jam, Alanis Morissette, Smashing Pumpkins and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Youthful looking throughout his life, he was often asked to reminisce about the events and characters of the Sixties, though it must be said the chaotic nature of those times and his own indulgences left his memories somewhat foggy.
As he once said, “I got my mind blown in San Francisco.”
It was while he was in California hanging out with hippie bands that he came across a 50-year-old graphic design manual that changed his life.
Robert Joseph Masse was born in Vancouver on April 5, 1945, the first of four children for the former Lillian Mae Sharp and Joseph Frank Masse. Joe was serving with an artillery unit of the Canadian Army during the Second World War when he went on a blind date with Lill, a packer for a wholesale grocery firm. They married in 1944. After leaving the armed services, the elder Mr. Masse worked as a furniture polisher and refinisher with Woodward’s department store.
Young Bob liked to draw in the basement of the family’s home in Burnaby, a community adjacent to Vancouver. He got a formal education in design at the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University of Art + Design).
A practicum sent him across the street to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, where he offered to create for free a concert poster for a folk singer from Minnesota via Greenwich Village who was about to make his debut in the city. The poster featured six candid black-and-white photographs of the tousled, unkempt, smoking, guitar-strumming poet-singer in two vertical rows, with the date and place in all lower case, sans-serif letters. Dozens of the posters were placed around town before anyone realized Mr. Masse had rendered Bob Dylan’s surname as “Dylon.”
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Bob Masse’s poster artwork for U2.Courtesy of family
Mr. Masse created posters for coffeehouses featuring folk music such as the Inquisition and the Bunkhouse before doing the same for teenaged promotor Jerry Kruz, whose Afterthought promotions included light shows and the new sounds coming from California bands, as well as local talent. He was paid $10 per poster.
A trip to San Francisco introduced Mr. Masse to concert posters – by the likes of Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse and others – featuring ornate Art Nouveau lines and distorted, hand-drawn, barely legible lettering.
“I went through a structured system [at art school], and all of a sudden people were coming out with totally bizarre designs,” he said. “It was a total breakdown in the rules.”
At the same time, he came across a copy of Strong’s Book of Designs, a 1917 manual by Charles Jay Strong featuring a phantasmagoria of ribbons, borders, show cards, airbrush designs and illustrations of such objects as butterflies, as well as fanciful typography, much of it reproduced in glorious colour.
He crashed for free in an old Victorian house at 710 Ashbury St., the communal home and headquarters of the Grateful Dead. When the band came to British Columbia, Mr. Masse agreed to meet them at the border.
“They were driving this psychedelic-painted bus, like a Ken Kesey bus, and the border officials almost fainted when they saw these guys,” he told Neal Hall of the Vancouver Sun in 2007.
Mr. Masse produced several memorable posters for the band’s shows in Vancouver, as well as for the Trips Festival, an 11-hour concert held at a hockey rink in suburban Richmond in 1967 featuring such acts as the Jefferson Airplane, Magic Fern, the Collectors and Painted Ship (the latter two both from Vancouver), as well as the Cougar and Darks Pandemonium Light Show Company (the latter being a whimsical name for the lighting crew). He also made posters for shows at Dante’s Inferno and the Retinal Circus, nightclubs at the same address on Davie Street in downtown Vancouver.
Mr. Masse returned to California where he designed posters and newspaper advertisements for the Whiskey A Go Go while living in an apartment above the Los Angeles nightclub. He later lived in a garage in Laurel Canyon, an area that was home to many of the city’s rock musicians.
He hung out backstage with the Doors and Ms. Joplin, who once complained to him about a lack of male groupies. “Nobody chases me,” she told him. “I’m not getting any action here.” Mr. Masse later confessed regret at not having taken the hint.
On his return to British Columbia in the 1970s, Mr. Masse adopted a softer, more pastoral style with more pastel colours, influenced by the imagery of Alphonse Mucha, the Mitteleuropean artist who became known for his theatrical posters for Sarah Bernhardt in the 1890s.
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The book cover for Lawrence Aronsen’s City of Love & Revolution, designed by Bob Masse.Courtesy of family
Mr. Masse abandoned poster making for years, as clients demanded edgier designs than he cared to create, supporting himself through commercial and advertising work.
One day, he called friend Rob Frith, a poster collector and record store owner, about a cache of old posters his parents had kept in their basement. When Mr. Frith visited the artist’s apartment, he discovered to his horror that Mr. Masse was using his old work to light fires in his fireplace. He bought the entire stack.
In 1992, Mr. Frith offered to pay for the printing if Mr. Masse made a poster for a forthcoming show by the Scottish musician Donovan on his Mellow Yellow Tour. With the deadline looming, the artist recycled an old image he had used years earlier for Honey’s Creative Sandwiches, a lunch spot next to his studio in Vancouver’s Gastown. In the original, a bare-chested nymph in a flowing, diaphanous robe with flowers in her hair is depicted holding a sandwich. For the concert poster, the food was replaced by a crystal ball.
He once again became an in-demand poster designer with his signature style called on by such artists as U2, Neil Young and the Tragically Hip. He also designed covers for the front page of the Georgia Straight newspaper on its 30th and 50th anniversaries, homages to the publication’s underground roots.
As well, his earlier work was rediscovered. One of his posters was included in The Art of Rock, a 1987 coffee-table book considered a vital reference for collectors of such rock ’n’ roll ephemera as posters, tickets, handbills and backstage passes.
When Mr. Frith sought to get approval for a reissue of a Grateful Dead poster, he called the band for permission. They well knew the poster; an original was hanging in their office. For Mr. Masse, this was the beginning of a profitable period of selling reproductions.
Among his many other notable works were album covers, including for the Collectors, which became the band Chilliwack. He also did the cover art for two albums issued by Mr. Frith featuring the sounds of Vancouver, including one released in August.
For all his psychedelic and pastoral works, his most ubiquitous design was likely an orange cartoon fox with heavy-lidded eyes drawn for CFOX, a Vancouver rock radio station.
“He’s everywhere, that little bugger,” he once lamented.
Mr. Masse, a resident of Salt Spring Island, where he maintained a studio, died in hospital there on Sept. 21 from Parkinson-plus syndrome, a group of neurodegenerative diseases. He had earlier suffered a minor stroke and was recuperating from the lingering effects of a motorcycle accident. He leaves Claire Norris, his partner of 33 years. He also leaves a sister, Bonnie, and brothers Ray and Len, the latter who drew a DoodleArt poster titled Ecology that sold more than a million copies. An earlier marriage for Mr. Masse ended in divorce. He had no children.
The artist’s career spanned a time when the government went from prosecuting possession of weed to selling it. As well, the posters for which he was once paid a pittance have become valuable collectibles. One of Mr. Masse’s original Grateful Dead posters, for which he believed he had been paid $100 in 1967, sold at auction in the United States five years ago for more than $15,000. As the Grateful Dead sing on Truckin’, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
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