BOMONSTER Meets Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
I met Ed "Big Daddy" Roth a few times while growing up. In the 1960s, my dad Winston Beaumont had his own Atlantic Blvd commercial art studio called Winston's Drag Art, right around the corner from Ed's Slauson Ave shop in Maywood, CA. Roth was at the height of his fame building custom show cars, selling monster t-shirts and 1/24th scale model kits. While Roth was the creative director, Ed Newton drew most of the t-shirt art and concept illustrations for he and Roth's wild show car ideas.
Most of Roth's famous cars had already been created by 1966. The Tweedy Pie T bucket roadster, the Outlaw, Beatnik Bandit, Surfite, Yellow Fang and Mysterion were well known. In 1967 he was working on his newest creation - the Missing Link - a V-6 Buick powered concept of a future El Camino style custom show rod complete with a Harley chopper on back.
"Roth Studios" was a single-car garage next to a small office space. Girls inside were always opening letters with quarters taped to them ordering t-shirts for $2.50. I had never seen so much cash money stacked on the desktops in all my life! Winston, my dad, scheduled and placed ads in the magazines for Roth and collected a media commission from the publications. So he was back and forth between Ed's and his own office often. And on "Take your kid to work" days he brought me along.
Roth was great to kids. I was too little and shy to have actual conversations, but he was nice. I knew him from the car shows dressed up with his top hat but on this day he was in his garage in large coveralls covered with white Plaster of Paris. He was shaping the body of the Missing Link over a wooden buck on a chassis. Winston did some publicity for Roth and took this picture of the Missing Link in progress. We took the drawing home for a "photostat" and I studied Newton's art admiring the chrome effects on the pipes he achieved with dabs of white paint. The "M" built into the grill was to stand for Missing Link. Somewhere it got changed to Mega Cycle after a name created by Robert Williiams; "Capt Pepi's Motorcycle and Zeppelin Repair" was changed because the name wouldn't fit on the show flyers.
The finished car looked different than Newt's concept drawing - and some would say not as good as the drawing. For that reason Roth didn't like concept drawings. It was easier for him to create on the fly - creating shapes with his hands rather than to deal engineering challenges and the realities of scale. Everyone has a favorite Roth car. I don't hear many people cite the Mega Cycle as their favorite, but it's one of mine. Mostly because of Newt's drawing. The Outlaw and Beatnik Bandit are probably the most recognized examples of 60's show rods built from imagination rather than modifying an existing car.
Friends tell me that today I draw what I was drawing when I was 12. It's true. When designing this new litho print called "Fink Dilemma," I used all my favorite Roth cars driven by Roth monsters but started with Newt's drawing in mind first. It brought back some good memories and hopefully will add to yours.
Order your own 11x17" signed litho print here: FINK DILEMMA