As per WIKI, some of the other famous images associated with the band include: Skull and Rosesĭesigned by Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, the Skull and Roses logo draws it inspiration from the black and white drawing by Edmund Joseph Sullivan that appears in the 1913 edition of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. ‘Steal Your Face’ might be the image most of us best associate with the Dead, but it’s far from the only logo in their cannon. Or maybe he just likes to keep us guessing. Maybe he can’t remember the reason (recreational drug use has its consequences). Owsley himself has stayed out of the discussion. Some think it’s a reference to the Sumerian Zodiac, while still others think it’s a nod to the 13th Tarot card: ‘Death’. Others think it’s a reference to the 13-step process that goes into making LSD (probably the more likely explanation of the two, considering its creator). Why, for example, did Owsley choose 13 points for the lightning bolt? Some have posited that the 13 points represent the original American colonies. And the debate surrounding it are far from over. The inspiration behind the lightning bolt logo may have been something as banal as a street sign, but the myth around it is far from mundane. Bear had his marking for the band’s equipment, and the band had an image that over 50 years later, is as ingrained in their DNA as Jerry Garcia’s beard. During a brainstorming session with Thomas, the pair came up with the idea of adding a skull. What if he swapped the orange for red? What if he binned the white bar for a 13-point lightning bolt? After discussing the idea with Bob Thomas, a close friend and graphic design artist, Bear set about committing the idea to paper. Unable to make out the name of the firm it was advertising, all of Bear’s attentions were given to the visuals… and that’s when he had an idea. The top of the circle was orange, the bottom was blue. The sign was a circle with a white bar running through it. After glancing to the side, his eyes were drawn to a particular sign. In Bear’s case, the light bulb moment came as he was driving along the freeway one night in the rain. Sometimes, inspiration strikes you in the most unlikely of places. I decided that we needed some sort of marking we could identify from a distance,” he’s since recalled on his blog. We would spend a fair amount of time moving the pieces around so we could read the name on the boxes. Since every band used the same type of gear it all looked alike.
“The Dead in those days had to play a lot of festivals where the equipment would all wind up in a muddle bacstage. In 1969, the Dead were doing the festival rounds – great for raising their fan numbers, maybe, but a nightmare for Bear and the other members of crew who had to sort out their gear from the other bands. Along with being the first known private individual to manufacture mass amounts of LSD, Bear was the Dead’s very first soundman. It all started with a man called Augustus Owsley Stanley III, or ‘Bear’ for short. Weirdly enough, it was created less from intent and more by necessity. As intrinsically linked to the band as psychedelia, it’s been a part of the Dead’s history for more years than most of us have been alive. If you’ve heard of the Grateful Dead, you’ll know their ‘Steal Your Face’ lightning skull logo. And why would they need to when they had such a fabulous array of images to choose from? But for most people, there’s one design in particular that screams ‘Grateful Dead’ – the “Steal Your Face” lightning skull. With so much visual iconography to draw from, it’s little wonder they struggled to put their name behind just one emblem. As the Dallas News notes, they were one of the first bands to use psychedelic light shows and among the first of their peers to realize the pulling power of a well-designed gig poster. As anyone who knows their music history will tell you, the Grateful Dead has a long, proud association with the visual arts. When it comes to band emblems, though, few are quite so legendary (or quite so many) as the Grateful Dead’s. The Roling Stones’ “Hot Lips”, Social Distortion’s dancing “Skelly”, Led Zeppelin’s “Zoso”… all iconic bands, all made that little bit more iconic thanks to their excellent choice in logos. It’s not fair to say a band lives and dies by the quality of its logo, but a good one doesn’t exactly hurt.
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