24 Facts About Gary Grimshaw

Gary Grimshaw was an American graphic artist active in Detroit and San Francisco who specialized in designing rock concert posters.

Gary Grimshaw was a radical political activist with the White Panther Party and related organizations.

Gary Grimshaw would drive his friends from the working class, mostly white Polish Catholic suburb of Lincoln Park to the more cosmopolitan areas around Wayne State University in Detroit, looking for "beatnik parties" and listening to jazz performers like John Coltrane on the car radio.

Gary Grimshaw enlisted in the United States Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army.

Gary Grimshaw served on the USS Coral Sea, an aircraft carrier stationed in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War, which sent aircraft on bombing raids over Vietnam.

Gary Grimshaw was first exposed to psychedelic concert art when his ship was being repaired in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Gary Grimshaw was discharged from the Navy in 1966, and returned to Detroit.

Gary Grimshaw designed the first poster for the Grande Ballroom, for a show on October 7,1966, featuring the MC5 and billed as "A Dance Concert in the San Francisco Style".

Soon, Gary Grimshaw was designing posters for other bands performing at the Grande Ballroom and at other Detroit area rock music venues.

Gary Grimshaw was active in the anti-war movement and was a leading figure in the White Panther Party, founded in 1968 by John Sinclair, his wife Leni Sinclair and Pun Plamondon.

Gary Grimshaw was Minister of Art for the White Panther Party which modeled itself after the Black Panther Party.

Gary Grimshaw's work appeared in many newspapers of the underground press, including the San Francisco Oracle, the Berkeley Tribe, the Fifth Estate and the Ann Arbor Sun.

Gary Grimshaw did many posters for the MC5 and worked with the Detroit Artists Workshop, Translove, the Hill House commune in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and later for the Rainbow Peoples Party, successor to the White Panthers.

Gary Grimshaw designed a cover for the MC5's inaugural album Kick Out the Jams, but it was replaced by a collage using photography by Joel Brodsky.

Gary Grimshaw designed the sleeve for the band's second single, "Looking at You", later included on the 1970 album Back in the USA.

Gary Grimshaw surrendered on the marijuana charges in 1970 and beat the charges in court.

Gary Grimshaw had been convicted of displaying a "fifteen cent kite that had a dirty word lettered on it", and was sentenced to 15 days in jail and a $150.00 fine, but the court threw out his conviction and the Detroit ordinance, on the basis that it "unconstitutionally inhibits free speech".

Gary Grimshaw was the art director for the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1972 and 1973, and did posters for the festival in 1992 and 2000.

Gary Grimshaw worked for Creem Magazine as an associate art director from 1976 to 1984.

In 1988, Gary Grimshaw designed the cover for Iggy Pop's album Instinct.

Gary Grimshaw lived in San Francisco and Oakland, California from 1990 to 2004, when he relocated back to Detroit.

In 2008, Gary Grimshaw was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had surgery.

Gary Grimshaw had a stroke at that time, and several other smaller strokes later.

Gary Grimshaw died in Detroit on January 13,2014, at the age of 67.