The Lost Shows: Buffalo Springfield, Filmore West & Winterland, May-June 1968

The Lost Shows: Buffalo Springfield, Filmore West & Winterland, May-June 1968

This 1968 original poster by famed artist Lee Conklin, known for his counterculture poster work promoting some of the most important and influential rock bands in the 1960s, advertises a series of shows put on by rock impresario Bill Graham at his ballrooms the Winterland and the Filmore over Memorial Day weekend in 1968. The Buffalo Springfield was scheduled to headlined the shows and were supported by Richie Havens and the Chambers Brothers. However, Neil Young and Stephen Stills decided to split up the band following a show in Long Beach on May 5, 1968, just a few weeks before the Memorial Day Weekend shows Graham was heavily promoting in the Bay Area. Despite pleas from the rock promoter to finish the shows the band had booked—Neil Young reportedly agreed, but Stills declined—the band bowed out and blues rocker Albert King replaced them on the bill. A few months later, The Chambers Brothers would be playing in front of 120,000 people at the The Newport Pop Festival 69 at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California, which is considered the first concert to draw more than 100,000 people at once. The following year, King would be opening for The Doors and Richie Havens would be opening Woodstock in front of 500,000 people. It was at Woodstock that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young debuted their new supergroup. The poster also notes that a lightshow would be provided by The Holy See, which was an important distinction in the mid-to-late 1960s rock shows as they often featured separate groups of visual artists that staged very intricate light shows in tandem and separately from the concerts.

Dimensions: Fourteen inches horizontally, Twenty-one inches vertically (14 x 21”)

Condition: Excellent