"The first time artist Stanley 'Mouse' Miller and drawing partner Alton Kelley were hired to do a concert poster for the Grateful Dead, they spelled the name wrong."

"They’d never heard of the band, so when they got a second chance, they tried just a little bit harder, creating a bleached skeleton wearing a crown of red roses to reference the name Grateful (not 'Greatful') Dead. 'Kind of life and death together,' says Mouse, who had always liked to draw skeletons. 'I colored it in and did the lettering, and it changed art history.'... It was January 1966, the year before the Summer of Love, and the whole scene unspooled before him as he transitioned from drawing hot rods to drawing posters for the rock dances.... Kelley was an idea man, and Mouse did the drawing and lettering. Their first poster was a knockoff of the reefer-toking Zig-Zag man for a double bill of Big Brother & the Holding Company, and Quicksilver Messenger Service... The Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver, Big Brother, Steve Miller, Captain Beefheart, out-of-town acts like Jimi Hendrix. Everybody went to the shows and dances in Edwardian outfits from thrift shops. 'Every day was like a month, with so much stuff happening,' Mouse says. 'The scene was just crazy. Wild.'... Then it collapsed under the weight of all that importance.... 'This wonderful, colorful scene just kind of died,' says Mouse, who left when Eric Clapton summoned him to put some flames on his Rolls-Royce in London. Clapton had totaled the Rolls by the time Mouse got there..."

From "Book, retrospective give Grateful Dead artist Mouse his due."

The book is: "California Dreams: The Art of Stanley Mouse."