When I was 14 years old I saw a TV ad for 7-Up. It had stars, bubbles, neon-like animations and glowing human butterflies. I forgot most commercials I saw in the '70's.
But not this one. And now I know origins of that See the Light look. A couple of hippie artists from Utah.
Watch their story here. During the 1960's, two University of Utah students, Kenvin Lyman and Richard Taylor became friends and business partners. Under the name Rainbow Jam, they made concert posters for bands like Santana, Crosby Stills and Nash, the Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin.
(On their way from San Francisco to Denver, bands often stopped in Salt Lake City.) Most of the posters I've seen (courtesy of Ken Sanders of Ken Sanders Rare Books who has a passion for and a collection of local rock posters) have a signature Rainbow Jam visual style: bright rainbow colors, crisp lines and a backlit neon look. Lyman and Taylor adapted their poster techniques for light shows, which were a big part of the music scene of the time.
We ended up projecting lithography with light or painting with light, Taylor said. Then Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead asked for a meeting. Taylor went to Garcia's room at the Hotel Utah.
I remember when he answered the door, it was like meeting God. He was in a robe and he had a big giant illustrated edition of Dante's Inferno that he was reading. Garcia asked Rainbow Jam to go on the road with the Grateful Dead.
Taylor's Air Force Colonel father was hanging by his fingernails from the ceiling and Lyman's cattle rancher dad was asking Grateful what? but the two moved to San Francisco. They were hanging out with the Grateful Dead.
Riding in a limo with the Velvet Underground. And turning into hippies. We both became full-on, full-fledged hippies on every level, Taylor said.
Taylor shows off a psychedelic poster he hung in Utah head shops inviting one and all in hip gear or costume to his wedding. There were miniskirts, body-paint, paisleys, florescent shirts, and dresses, attic remnants, gypsy costumes and salvation arm goodies, the University of Utah Chronicle wrote, -- the most colorful parade of hip gear and costuming of the decade. Eventually the 1960's got too out of control for Lyman and Taylor.
They describe the chaos of trying to run a light show at a post-Woodstock concert gone bad. It's an entertaining story involving a very intoxicated man holding two high-voltage cables. Rainbow Jam broke up.
Lyman returned to Utah and raised a family. Taylor went to Hollywood. But the Rainbow Jam look endured.
There was this ripple effect that Rainbow Jam had, Kenvin said. You can see it in Lyman's post-Rainbow Jam work. Like a glowing backlit CBS eye for the We've Got the Touch campaign.
Taylor joined the now-famous Abel and Associates ad agency and directed that ground-breaking 7-Up commercial. And then he supervised visual effects for a science fiction movie called Tron. Tron is known for its very early use of computer graphics.
But most of what movie-goers saw wasn't CG. It was Rainbow Jam. Characters were dressed in black and white costumes and shot with black and white film.
Each frame of film was blown up onto several 16 by 20 inch high-contrast transparencies and then rephotographed with colored filters. It was a Herculean effort involving hundreds of thousands of transparencies and it produced stunning images not unlike Taylor and Lyman's posters and light shows. That glowing light look, that's Rainbow Jam come to life right there, Taylor said.
That's multi-pass backlit painting with light. Richard Taylor continued to have a successful career directing commercials, such as the series of Duracell toy spots. He now designs videogames.
In recent years, Lyman went back to the family homestead and ran his organic Bohemian Farms. I wanted to explore my roots. Now he's working on an illustrated cookbook related to the farm project.
And he still puts on light shows. In his living room, Lyman lowers a homemade plastic blackout shade, powers up four slide projectors and turns on Miles Davis' Kinda Blue. We (Lyman and his wife) do a combination of things.
Music, poetry, light shows, Lyman says. We'll have people come over and play music sometimes. A soiree kinda thing.
The French salon sort of approach to life. With a metal musical keyboard, Lyman starts to play his projectors. Angular streaks of blue, red and yellow splash across the wall.
Color is another way to play music. Fade in wintergreen. Visual music.
Yeah, I've called it visual music. This, Lyman says, though more technically advanced, is not Rainbow Jam. Rainbow Jam is something special to Lyman and Taylor.
A powerful, vivid combination of color and music. No Rainbow Jam light show was ever recorded. And, no doubt, it couldn't be reproduced.
Taylor says, It stays there in my mind, Taylor says, as a beautiful memory of something that was really intuitive and powerful where two artists found each other and were able to make some magic for a while, let something out of the box.
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