Bob Dylan by Joe Roberts Jr.

This is a wild blacklight poster of Bob Dylan created in 1968 by Joe Roberts Jr., a well-known headshop poster artist who did similar psychedelic posters of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison of The Doors and John & Yoko. We haven’t been able to pinpoint the photo used to make this poster yet but it is a 1966-era picture of Bob Dylan, around the time of his “Don’t Look Back” tour. Roberts Jr. took a little license with the body portion of this series of posters and here Bob is outfitted in what looks like some finery fitting for Henry the 8th!

The poster is a silkscreen done with dayglo inks that fluoresce when you shine a black light on them. Making silkscreens involved a more painstaking process than the typical concert poster which was a machine lithograph but it let you lay down much more ink on the paper and create vibrant colors. After 55 years, these silkscreens tend to show bits of cracking but this one retains its brilliant color. This poster also features Joe Roberts Jr’s trademark psychedelic doodle background. Lots of fun to look at!

The original runs of this poster were yellow, orange and red like this one. Later versions added a blue aura around Dylan. Silkscreen headshop posters were done is relatively small runs and then reprinted again and again (still using the hand-silkscreening process) and so you might also see this poster with a magenta border.