David Edward Byrd, Whose Posters Captured Rock’s Energy, Dies at 83

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Art & Design|David Edward Byrd, Whose Posters Captured Rock’s Energy, Dies at 83

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/arts/design/david-edward-byrd-dead.html

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David Edward Byrd, who captured the swirl and energy of the 1960s and early ’70s by conjuring pinwheels of color with indelible posters for concerts by Jimi Hendrix, the Who and the Rolling Stones as well as for hit stage musicals like “Follies” and “Godspell,” died on Feb. 3 in Albuquerque. He was 83.

His husband and only immediate survivor, Jolino Beserra, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was pneumonia brought on by lung damage from Covid.

Mr. Byrd made his name, starting in 1968, with striking posters for the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly and Traffic at the Fillmore East, the Lower Manhattan Valhalla of rock operated by the powerhouse promoter Bill Graham.

For a concert there that year by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mr. Byrd rendered the guitar wizard’s hair in a field of circles, which blended with the explosive hairstyles of his bandmates, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.

A black-and-white sketch of a poster for the Jimi Hendrix Experience next to the final color poster. Both feature Hendrix’s face in the center.

Mr. Byrd also put his visual stamp on the Who’s landmark rock opera, “Tommy,” producing posters for it when it was performed at the Fillmore East in October 1969 and again, triumphantly, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York a few months later. In 1973, he shared a Grammy Award for his illustration work on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s rendition of “Tommy.”