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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Music Posters
Volume Nine - 1973 - Page Seven
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May 12, 1973, was a Saturday night and I had the choice of either attending my high school Senior Prom, or going to Cobo Arena to see Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The theme of the Prom was “Color My World”, as if I even needed another reason.
Poster/ad for Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention with tour dates that end just six days short of their appearance at Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan on May 12, 1973.
A poster that might be described on eBay as “mint condition” for Alice Cooper at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino, California on May 12, 1973, and for a concert at the Forum in Inglewood the night before. The newspaper ad has a neat little drawing by an unknown artist, “Freaky Alice” as a rattlesnake.
A "tour blank" for the West Coast shows also shown above.
A full-page concert ad for Alice Cooper, with special guests Flo & Eddie, sold out at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino, California on May 12, 1973, but tickets still available for the larger Forum in Inglewood the night before.
Newspaper ad for Aretha Franklin at the Forum in Inglewood, California, May 13, 1973.
A Globe Poster for “Soul Festival ‘73” in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 12, 1973, featuring the Detroit Emeralds.
Record company ad/poster for Andrae Crouch, with tour dates, including two Michigan shows, in Grand Rapids on May 14, 1973, and in Lansing the following day.
Another expert poster from the campus of the Grand Valley State Colleges in Allendale, Michigan, for a rare appearance by folk-singer/songwriter Rosalie Sorrels on May 14, 1973.
Dennis Preston’s high voltage lettering for the band High Voltage at The Stables in East Lansing, Michigan, May 14-19, 1973.
And yet, a third bar with a mascot opened in East Lansing, Michigan in early 1973, the Alle-Eye, with its cat, joined The Stables with its cow and The Brewery with its bird, presumably all three were created by Terry O’Connor, but that’s uncertain.
The Alle-Eye had opened in February with a rousing show by Wayne Cochran, then settled into a format that featured movie showings and dance bands. The program for May 15-17, 1973 included the film “Man With the X-Ray Eyes” and music by the band Riot, a Detroit band that is difficult to google, you can imagine the results, but seem to have had longevity and been good enough to open for Isaac Hayes at the Olympia Stadium in 1975.
On a website devoted to the Jethro Tull opus “A Passion Play”, there is much discussion as to when the world premiere of the live performance actually took place. The premier was intended to be performed at the Empire Pool, Wembly, London on April 28, 1973, but the band decided, despite two sold-out shows, that it wasn’t quite ready and the shows were cancelled.
The production still was not complete when Tull began their US tour. At the tour opener in Evansville, Indiana on May 4, the band reverted to their Thick As A Brick set, although some of the films were used out of context. At the tour’s second stop, the next night in Clemson, South Carolina, the band’s massive equipment was late in arrival and despite cancelling the opening act, Tull did not appear on stage until 10 pm, again reverting to the TAAB set.
Further equipment failures plagued the next few shows, a May 6 show at the University of Maryland was cancelled because the truck broke down, a May 9 show in Dayton, Ohio was relocated to Oxford, Ohio, and a May 10 show at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio was cancelled because the venue could not accommodate Tull’s “electrically heavy” equipment.
Finally, on May 13, two days before the East Lansing, Michigan show on May 15, 1973, “A Passion Play” was performed for the first time, without hitch, at the Civic Coliseum in Knoxville, Tennessee, the audience was reportedly “spellbound”.
We know from the newspaper review of the East Lansing show, writer John Lindstrom, who was quite blown away by the show, calling it “Unquestionably, the best rock show to hit campus in ages”, that the complete Passion Play was performed. His review described in detail the opening video of the ballerina (not knowing the album cover image, as the album was not yet released), the “Hare Who Lost His Spectacles” video, and a nearly two-and-a-half hour long set.
Another newspaper article had a discussion with Hugh Surratt, whom we know from his poster work, turns out he was also the Pop Entertainment chairman. Surratt claimed “Tull was very, very tough to work with”, describing an over-long sound check that kept the crowd outside waiting until a half-hour past the scheduled start of the show. Surratt also explained how the show came about, which clears up a few of the mysteries that persist on the aforementioned website.
The show was offered to MSU because of the cancellation at OSU in Columbus, so Surratt only had six days to organize and promote it. He still waited another two days before announcing because he did not want to kill the attendance for the two-day Sunspark show the coming weekend. When the show sold out, the band insisted that another 1,000 be put on sale the day of the show, which explains the reports that the show was a “surprise announcement” the day of.
Jethro Tull – A Passion Play (live performance video opening) (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK99ryO2LJw
Jethro Tull – The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles (concert video) (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wT6fkDg8k
Nice full-page poster ad for Jethro Tull at the Jenison Fieldhouse in East Lansing, Michigan, May 15, 1973.
Poster for Alice Cooper in Wichita, Kansas on May 16, 1973.
One of the still surviving Grande Ballroom bands, Virgin Dawn, at the Side Door Saloon in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, May 16-19, 1973. Once one of Jeep Holland’s A-Squared stable of artists, unfortunately no known (to us) recordings exist. Not exactly a “Nationally Known Rock Group”, but the Side Door tended to put those four words under all of the acts that appeared there.
The franchised “1950’s Rock & Roll Revival” that in one form or other were now a near-annual event, brought the 1973 version to Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan on May 18, 1973. It may have seemed to be the only way the “oldies” rockers came to town anymore, but that wasn’t necessarily the case.
Our long-time readers have seen the beginnings and the ascendancies of these early rock and rollers throughout this story, performing in small clubs, sometimes relatively unknown at the time, sometimes riding on the popularity of a newly hit record.
Bill Haley & the Comets may have been the ones most closely associated with Michigan and Detroit, with Haley having been born and raised in Highland Park, and, as our most astute readers can recall, with our suggestion that the band’s appearance at the Club Gay Haven in Dearborn, on November 8, 1954, was the state’s first rock concert.
Next, or perhaps equal, would be Chuck Berry, who immediately upon his release from prison in 1963, headed to the Walled Lake Casino to revive his source of income, and who, of course, also adopted the Lansing band, The Woolies, as his Midwest touring band, and recorded his 1971 album “San Francisco Dues” at their Lansing studio.
Chubby Checker, as we recounted, scored his career-making hit with his cover version of Detroit’s Hank Ballard & the Midnighters’ song “The Twist”.
This version of the Rock & Roll Revival at Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, on May 18, 1973, is the apex for some of these stars, meaning that it draws the line between their frequent club headlining appearances and their later “oldies” circuit only shows. Little Richard is one, up until this show he had performed fifty times in Michigan, from Phelps Lounge and Vertigo West in Detroit, to Punch Andrews’ Birmingham Palladium. Since this 1973 show, he only returned nine times over all the years, although one of those shows will be opening for David Bowie at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1987.
Bill Haley & the Comets only returned two more times after this show, on the other hand, Chubby Checker will perform more shows in the state after the 1973 Rock & Roll Revival than he had prior to it. Bo Diddley will also perform more than half of his Michigan appearances after this show, including a tour with Rolling Stones Ron Wood as part of the band, with a stop at Harpo’s in Detroit in 1987.
This was the fourth year of Richard Nader’s “Rock & Roll Revival”, which was launched at the October 18, 1969 show at Madison Square Garden in NYC, and, as our readers may recall the story, it took Nader four years of hard work trying to find a producer to back the concept, eventually just taking it upon himself. So the consideration of 1950’s rock and roll as “nostalgia” was in conception merely five years after that decade had ended, and by the end of the 1960’s, had become marketable. The years 1972-74, however, were when it really took hold, due to two main events.
The first, was on the radio. The “Top 40” format which had taken over AM radio in the mid-sixties rarely played anything more than a couple years old, a few of the FM stations with the Top 40 format began mixing older records with the current hits to keep from playing the same songs over and over, and with the vast catalog of past hits, new songs were only played a few times an hour, these stations became known as “Golden” or “Solid Gold”.
Syndicated programming became more prevalent as operators who owned both an AM station and an FM station, and were required by the FCC to differentiate the two, could avoid having to pay two staffs. One of the most popular syndicated program was Drake-Cheault’s all-oldies “Solid Gold”. In July 1973, the Detroit station WHFI-FM, which subscribed to a syndicated program from Draper-Blore called “Olde Golde”, changed owners, adopted the all-oldies format and changed their name to WHNE “Honey Radio”. Meanwhile, on television, commercials for a series of record albums called the “Golden Oldies” began to air in 1972.
The second event was the August 1973 release of the movie American Graffiti which was enormously successful, launching the concept of the “summer blockbuster” and making director George Lucas an instant millionaire. The success of American Graffiti also led to the creation of the TV show Happy Days, starring Graffiti cast member Ron Howard, which debuted in January 1974.
A United Artists Records ad with tour dates for singer Shirley Bassey, with a show at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan (bottom of third row from left) on May 18, 1973. Here is a live performance from 2011 of her signature song that shows that she, with a kick-ass orchestra, still has it.
Shirley Bassey – Goldfinger (live performance) (5/12/2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-orFtcORyuM
A full-page United Artists Records ad celebrating Shirley Bassey’s successful 1973 US tour, the tour that included her show at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan on May 18, 1973.
We previously posted her spine-chilling 2011 performance of her 1964 hit “Goldfinger”. The video linked below has the amazing Ms. Bassey in the seemingly unlikely combination with the UK Wall of Sound artists the Propellerheads in 1997 with the song “History Repeating”. It was a perfect match, and #1 on the UK Dance singles chart.
Propellerheads feat: Miss Shirley Bassey - History Repeating (1997)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzLT6_TQmq8
Ad by an unknown artist for Brain Festival III at Plewa Hall in Hamtramck, Michigan, May 18-19, 1973, with music by David & Roslyn, Shadow People, and East Side Paint.
Volume Nine - 1973 - continues - HERE
Poster/flyer by Gary Grimshaw for J.B. Hutto & the Hawks at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 15-17, 1973.
Poster/flyer by Gary Grimshaw for a party at the American Legion Hall in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 18, 1973, featuring Lightnin’.
A full-page Columbia Records ad for Paul Simon’s third solo album, released in May 1973, coinciding with his Michigan debut as a solo artist, at Masonic Auditorium in Detroit on May 13, 1973.
Newspaper ads for Paul Simon’s first Michigan appearance as a solo artist (with one ad calling him Phil) at Masonic Auditorium in Detroit on May 13, 1973.
Poster by Hugh Surratt for the two-day event called Sunspark at the MSU Auditorium in East Lansing, Michigan, May 11-12, 1973. The first night featured the Eagles, in their third Michigan appearance, Gram Parsons, and Lester Flatt. The second night featured Quicksilver, Canned Heat, and REO Speedwagon.
Record company ad for Canned Heat at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan May 11, 1973, and the following night in East Lansing (as part of the two-day “Sunspark” event). Brownsville Station opened the Masonic show.
Doug Huston illustration for Humphrey Bogart movie nights in Lansing, Michigan, May 11-13, 1973.
The May 12, 1973 issue of the Fifth Estate newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, featured a small story about three local artists, Gary Grimshaw, Tom Sincavitch, and “BP”.
The new masthead for the Fifth Estate newspaper, designed by Tom Sincavitch.
A Globe Poster for Grand Funk Railroad at the University of Maryland, May 12, 1973. It’s a bit odd that after seven gold albums at this point, the “hit songs” portion of the poster picks two tracks from their first two albums.
Poster by David Fair for Azteca, a band formed by the percussionists Escovedo brothers who had been in Santana for three-years, at the Grand Valley State Colleges near Grand Rapids, Michigan, May 12, 1973. Despite the cool poster, the show was cancelled, for some reason.
Full-page A&M Records company ad for the first album by the newly reformed Spooky Tooth, that appeared around the same time as the band’s appearance at the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit, Michigan, opening for King Crimson on May 8, 1973.
Spooky Tooth had performed at the Grande Ballroom seven times, and at the Grande-Riviera twice, during 1968 and 1969, before disbanding in 1970. The new band line-up featured guitarist Mick Jones who would later form the band Foreigner.
The artwork in this ad was created by Klaus Voormann, early friend of the Beatles from their Hamburg, Germany club days, who also designed the cover for their “Revolver” album, for which he won a Grammy award.
To complete the circle, here is Spooky Tooth's version of the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus".
Spooky Tooth - I Am the Walrus (1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6lUiphOTVY
Another excellent poster by Terry O’Connor, for the first Michigan appearance by the band Styx from Chicago, Illinois, at The Brewery in East Lansing, May 9, 1973, and it was a free show to boot!
An ad and headline in The Scene magazine for Rare Earth and Catfish at the Akron Civic Theatre in Akron, Ohio on May 9, 1973. The paper frequently referred to the “Detroit Boogie Sound” with admiration. The ad has the wrong day of the week as May 9 was on a Wednesday. The two groups performed together again three days later at the Allen Theatre in Cleveland on May 12th.
Alice Cooper on the cover of the May 10, 1973 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, the sixth time a Michigan-related artist made the cover, with Alice becoming the first to have two, his previous cover being in March 1972.
The feature story included the well-known photograph by Annie Leibovitz of Dali and Alice.
A series of ads for a two-day event called Sunspark at the MSU Auditorium in East Lansing, Michigan, May 11-12, 1973. The first night featured the Eagles, in their third Michigan appearance, Gram Parsons, and Lester Flatt. The second night featured Quicksilver, Canned Heat, and REO Speedwagon. Although it had taken five years before REO performed in Michigan at the Cinderella Ballroom in Detroit in February 1972, their only appearance that year, they were making up for it in 1973, this was the second of nine times that they would be here in 1973.
The Eagles had just released their second album a month prior to this show. Although “Desperado” was not a commercial success initially, the record displayed the budding song writing team of band members Don Henley and Glenn Frey.
An ad for Bob Seger at Kaskaskia College in Centralia, Illinois on May 11, 1973.
Excellent poster by Terry O’Connor for Earl Scruggs at The Brewery in East Lansing, Michigan, May 6, 1973.
A full-page Paramount Records ad for Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen touring in support of their third album “Country Casanova”. The tour kicked off in Boston, Massachusetts on May 6, 1973 and included sixteen shows in fourteen cities in the US and Canada, followed by a three-week European tour.
The album included one of the band’s best known songs, “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)”
Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen - Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyYLrVNKE68
Dennis Preston poster for Josh White Jr. at The Stables in East Lansing, Michigan, May 7-12, 1973. The folk singer continued to rack up the shows in Michigan, he would perform at The Stables at least 35 times in 1973, after which, he would be back at the Raven Gallery in Southfield again for another two dozen shows around the year end.
The British band King Crimson performed their 12th Michigan show, at Masonic Auditorium in Detroit, May 8, 1973. As with many Crimson shows, this was recorded and most, if not all, of their set can be found, starting here (click “show more” on the lead comment):
King Crimson – Doctor Diamond (Live in Detroit, Michigan) (05/08/73)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuLPCLqjPCQ
Record company ad with tour dates for King Crimson, with the show at Masonic Auditorium in Detroit, Michigan, May 8, 1973.
A full-page Motown Records ad for the single “Touch Me in the Morning” by Diana Ross, released on May 3, 1973. It became her second #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.
The song reached #1 on the week of August 18, 1973, but someone goofed up and listed it as “The Morning After”, which was the title of a single by Maureen McGovern that had been #1 the week before and was currently sitting at #4. Bob Babbitt played bass on “Touch Me in the Morning”.
Diana Ross – Touch Me in the Morning (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rQ-p0WnGd8
Sold-out notice for John Lee Hooker at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, May 3-4, 1973.
Movie ad by Doug Huston for a Midnight Horror Spectacular in East Lansing, Michigan, May 4-5, 1973.
Dennis Preston poster for Josh White Jr. at The Stables in East Lansing, Michigan, May 4-5, 1973. The folk singer/guitarist had made his Michigan debut performing with his father, Josh White, at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1959. Since then, he had performed in the state well over 100 times, the bulk of those shows at the Raven Gallery in Southfield.
Dennis Preston poster for the Owosso Armory in Owasso, Michigan, located between Lansing and Flint, with the band Whipeye, May 5, 1973, which as the poster notes, a band comprised of Danny Watson from the Bob Seger System, Gordy Garris from Frost, and Tom Taylor, Ronny and Danny Hernandez from The Ones.
Ad by an unknown, but well-intentioned, artist for a show by REO Speedwagon, Detroit with Rusty Day, and Jonathon Round at the Warriner Auditorium in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, May 5, 1973.
An ad for Bob Seger at the Lion’s Den in Akron, Ohio on May 5, 1973. There is also a note about a Seger concert on WMMS radio which indicates that the concert, linked below, was recorded sooner than the July date. The other link is an excerpt from the same session, but the commentators include Marcella Detroit, aka Marcy Levy, Shaun Murphy, and even the late great Tom Cartmell, aka Alto Reed, himself.
Bob Seger & the Borneo Band – Live in Cleveland (concert) (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vd3CZr_IXk
Bob Seger & the Borneo Band – Higher & Higher Live in Cleveland (concert) (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnu1OoYz4Co
In March/April 1973, mutual admirers Alice Cooper and Salvador Dali met for the first time in New York City, resulting in a collaboration called “First Cylindric Chrono-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain”. The result was unveiled at the Knoedler Galleries in NYC on May 3, 1973.
The story is better told at the following links, along with a video of their meeting and of the hologram.
https://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/10269/alice-cooper-remembers-his-encounter-with-salvador-dali
https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/when-salvador-dali-met-alice-cooper-turned-him-into-a-hologram.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlSxjr869Bo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVhi7gi7_OA
Poster by an unknown artist for Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show with Bob Seger at the London Gardens in London, Ontario, Canada, May 2, 1973.
This appears to be the first Michigan appearances by all three of the bands on this bill at the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit, Michigan, May 2, 1973. All of them from England; Slade, Peter Frampton (as a solo artist) and the Strawbs.
Slade, the band that was hated by spelling teachers throughout the UK, was at the peak of their career, their newest single “Cum On Feel the Noize” entered the UK charts at Number One, the first of three of their singles to achieve the feat, overall they are the most successful British group of the 1970’s based on the sales of singles.
Slade – Cum On Feel the Noize (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_ozjAu_vM
Record company ad for Slade at the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit, Michigan, May 2, 1973, with the wrong day of the week, the 2nd was a Wednesday.
Record company ad for Peter Frampton’s new band, published a few weeks after he made his first Michigan appearance as a solo artist on May 2, 1973 at the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit. He had performed earlier in Michigan at least nine times as a member of Humble Pie.
