| Obsessive
artist, counter-culture icon, compassionate father, sage - Tony
Price (1937-2000) was a complex man who touched the lives of countless
individuals and deeply affected everyone who knew him. His life
and career was a journey of self-discovery and a quest for objectivity.
| Tony
and his fraternal twin brother Ted, were born in Brooklyn,
New York where they would spend their early childhood with
father, Thomas Edward Price, a stockbroker, mother Katherine,
and sister Carolyn. The family then moved to Pelham Manor,
NY where Tony went to grade school and to junior high. “Our
father died when we were 12. (Mother) went back to work when
our father died, first at Fortune Magazine and subsequently
as a bond broker and later a banker as well as homemaker.
Two or three years after |
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father died, Mother married Frederick Henry Allen, a partner
in the architectural firm of Harrison, Ballard and Allen in NY,
and we moved to 49 East 86th Street” recalled Tony’s
brother Ted. At this time, along with stepbrother Sandy Allen, the
three boys went away to school; Tony to South Kent, Ted to The Hill
School, and Sandy, to the Kent School. From very early in his life
Tony’s skills as an artist and musician were recognized by
his family and peers. His drawings were published in the school
newspaper and sought after by his fellow students and his skills
as a musician continued to develop.
Author
and cartoonist Jonathan Richards, who was at South Kent with Tony
around 1952, recalled Tony as “sort of a legendary figure,
even in his middle teens. He had kind of an aura about him. I remember
what captivated me most about Tony was that he was a cartoonist
and that was something I had designs on. I remember finding some
drawings on poster board that he had discarded in the wastebasket.
I’m not sure now what they were but I can just remember that
they were a lot better than anything I could do. The
thing, of
course, that
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attracts you more than anything else at that age is somebody
who seems to really be able to give the finger to authority
and not care what happens to them. And that’s what happened
to Tony”.
After high school, Tony’s
cantankerous spirit led his mother and stepfather to suggest
he consider joining the Marines. Fred Allen had served in
the Marines and subsequently both brothers became Marines
as well. Tony later joked that his induction papers were the
last piece of paper he ever signed. During his stint in the
service, which |
included a tour of duty in Lebanon, his talents as an artist were
quickly discovered by military brass and he spent much of his enlistment
painting their portraits and large murals for Marine Corps facilities
and events.
| After
his discharge in 1960, Price lived at various times in New
York, Mexico City and San Miguel de Allende. He used his graphic
skills to illustrate the novels, poetry and periodicals of
the just-awakening underground culture and exhibited his work
at numerous avant-garde galleries in New York City and Woodstock.
Hugh Romney (aka Wavy Gravy) was serving at the time, along
with Tony’s childhood friend John Brent (of Second City
and The Committee fame), as a poetry director for the famous
Gaslight Café |
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in New York. He remembers those days as a “teenage beatnik”
and seeing Tony’s art of that time: “We
were all skipping around on MacDougal Street in the West Village.
(Tony) would sit in the coffee house and he would draw these amazingly
complicated and beautiful drawings of children with all eternity
in their eyes and hair flowing like rivers. And they’d be
sitting on the grass and there’d be tiny little people peeking
out and doing things. All these wonders lurking in the background
- It wasn’t just the foreground object”.
Price
w/Morty Breier in Rome,
c. 1965 |
Tony
was elected a member of the Woodstock Artist Association in
1962 and became friends with many important figures on the
scene including Woodstock promoters Albert Grossman and John
Court and a young musician named Bob Dylan. Price left for
Europe in 1963 to discover his own artistic motivations and
from 1963 to 1965 he lived at various times in Madrid, Paris,
Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Rome, Tangier, Naples and Barcelona.
Longtime friend, Morty Breier, remembers Tony as “the
quintessential hipster. (Tony) didn’t seem to have any
concerns for his own future or what was happening next …he
lived completely in the moment. He showed me what it was to
be an enlightened soul.” |
Tony sold or bartered his
work to keep him going while befriending, learning from and teaching
the hundreds of spiritual seekers who were wandering the European
cityscapes during that period. With his hypnotic opened-tuned rhythmic
guitar, magical stories of “hipsters” on the road and
his elaborate drawings, he became a legend.
In
the mid-1960’s Tony’s travels lead him to the
vibrant hippie scene in the Bay Area. It was there that he
reconnected with his childhood friend John Brent who was at
the time, along with people like Lenny Bruce, part of the
early stand-up comedy craze in San Francisco clubs such as
the Purple Onion. In 1966, outside of an art show at the Psychedelic
Shop on Haight Street, Tony met Reno Meyerson, a member of
the musical commune The Jook Savages. He
remembers Tony as “one of those brilliant individuals
who had it all figured out – deeply insightful and compassionate.
He had an ability to make people feel as if they were his
best friend in life.” In 1967 Tony visited Reno
in a little town called El Rancho, New Mexico just down the
hill from Los Alamos, birthplace of the Atomic bomb. The following
year Tony moved into a friend’s house there, where his
first child, Maya (aka Roseanna), was born. “Everybody’s
probably drawn to every spot and they have no idea how it
happens to them. And it took me years to kind of settle down
out here and see what was really going on.” Price
said. |
Price
w/Shel Silverstein & unidentified saw-player, San Franicisco,
c. 1967 |
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