FEATURED ARTIST: Ed "Big Daddy" Roth

Previously featured: Rick Griffin
William Weege

Ed Roth was born on March 4th 1932 in Beverly Hills California. Ed began as a young schoolboy to obsessively draw hot rods and monsters. Ed's interest in cars grew through the years and in 1958 he built his first custom car called " Little Jewel ". A college dropout, Ed believed that anyone could build a car that had imagination and gumption. He soon became famous for his creative "Kustom Kars" and was known as "big daddy" Roth at fairs and art shows where he would airbrush cartoons of crazy monsters and cars. Ed's most popular monster was "Rat Fink", who became a rock art anti-hero of teenagers. Originally he was seen on album covers of surf musicians and even today there exists a band call Rat Fink.

In the mid 1960's Roth joined the Hells Angels and made a series of biker posters depicting their notorious antics. Lead Pipe Posters carries 6 posters from this series. Click here to view them. I apoligize for the fuzzy pics! They do these amazingly detailed posters no justice but the posters are small and were hard to shoot.

Roth died of a heart attack on April 4th, 2001 but his creative genius lives on forever in his poster art, cars and icons.