The Grandmother With a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart : Pat Solomon’s Posters Sell Records--and Help the Needy

On any weekday at Solbrook Display Co. in North Hollywood, Pat Solomon fields calls about rock’s biggest stars: Madonna, Van Halen, Michael Jackson, George Michael, U2. “You have to check day to day, but chances are they’ll be here,” she tells a customer.

Musicians may indeed be browsing around--most likely between sessions at recording and rehearsal studios, such as Devonshire or Evergreen, near the Solbrook offices on Magnolia Boulevard--but when Solomon drops the names of rock’s superstars, she is in fact referring to her stock in trade: the billboards and posters (hand-painted oil portraits or reproductions of album covers) you see displayed on the Sunset Strip or on the outside walls of stores such as Tower Records.

Solomon is a leader in the music art-board field. Stix Hooper, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the organization that awards the Grammys, estimates that as many as 90% of the music art boards seen around Southern California are produced by Solbrook.

Hooper credited Pat and her late husband, Henry, with getting in when “rock was coming up in the world.”

“Pat identified a real need in our industry,” Hooper said. “In fact, I would like to see a NARAS scholarship created in Pat’s name for students specializing in graphic arts for the recording industry. I consider her the pioneer.”

Solomon, Hooper said, has a “great affinity for the record business, young people and young people’s music,” but she is hardly an ambitious young go-getter in the multibillion-dollar business of rock. She is a soft-voiced, 74-year-old grandmother. When Solomon’s husband died in 1970, she took over his billboard business, which has been on Magnolia for 32 years, and began specializing in rock promotions.

Solomon also specializes in charity. Through the sales of rock memorabilia, records and commissioned portraits, she donates 10% to 20% of her proceeds to a variety of good causes.

“United Negro College Fund, Braille Institute, Scouts, Sickle Cell Anemia, Pride House in Van Nuys, the Valley Shelter in North Hollywood, Job Corps, Cri-Help, United Way, AIDS Project/L.A., the Lupus Foundation, the Junior Blind, the San Fernando Valley Assn. for the Retarded. I can’t even name them all. I try to find out about all of them,” Solomon said with an accent that recalled her New York roots.

A small percentage of her contributions comes indirectly from supplying promotional displays to the record industry. Usually a rock display--such as those seen outside Tower Records--will be commissioned by a record company and placed in one location for about a month. From there, the boards might be rotated to other record stores. Indoor displays, such as the one Solbrook designed for a “Les Miserables” sound-track promotion (which was seen all over town at Tower, Sam Goody and Wherehouse stores), may travel to other states. After the promotion ends, most boards are returned to Solbrook. Huge Masonite billboards are painted over, but the larger posters are displayed in front of her shop.

Clients such as Cher Marie, a rock ‘n’ roll costume designer and devoted music fan who lives in Montebello, will then buy a board for personal collections. (Marie’s recent acquisition was a $150, 4x4-foot board of Van Halen.) Between $25 and $50 of the price will go to a charity of the client’s choice.

“If they want the money to go to some cause I never heard of, that’s fine,” said Solomon, who lives in North Hollywood and is sole owner of Solbrook. “Otherwise, I just try to figure out who needs it the most.”

Individual fans might also commission a portrait, painted by one of Solomon’s artists, of such favorites as Bruce Springsteen, Cher, Madonna or Stevie Nicks. Staff artist Samantha Wendell, who has been with Solbrook since 1981, thinks her job is “perfect for someone who loves art and rock music.” Wendell is a UCLA fine arts graduate and former member of a band that she calls a “sort of punked-out Fleetwood Mac.” She said the first drawings she did as a child were doodles of the Beatles. “The billboard business is a livelihood for me,” she said, “but my passion is art, and I’ve always been drawn to music.”

Wendell takes original photographs of such stars as David Lee Roth and uses them to do paintings that she hopes will ultimately be shown in galleries and collected by connoisseurs of rock art. So far, she said, her work has been acquired by Julian Lennon, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan and Pat Benatar.

Wendell added that each Solbrook artist has a specialty: “Michael Labelle is a graphics expert; C. Burden is a billboard painter; Anna Belle Bonds is a muralist whose expertise is in semi-sculptural art and 3-D special effects; Paul Bedard is a fine artist whose work has been shown in exhibits.”

None of the artists sign their work for Solbrook. “The anonymity is a little frustrating, but Pat is very supportive of our outside artistic pursuits,” Wendell said. In turn, the artists support Solomon’s passion for giving to the needy by donating as much as 30% of their fees for commissioned work to charity.

But most of Solomon’s contributions come from the sale of items that are donated anonymously by a record company: 100% of the proceeds from the sale of records, cassettes, compact disks, posters, T-shirts, caps, pins and other promotional items go to charity. She keeps track of the donations on a homemade clipboard fashioned from cardboard and paper clips. “If a little kid wants, say, a poster, I’ll just sell it to him for whatever he can afford. I save it up in a kitty until I have enough to write a decent check.” Solomon added, “Other companies, plus NARAS, send me things also. And I’m very grateful.”

Solomon also donates albums, sent to her after they are reviewed for Grammy consideration by local NARAS craft committees, directly to shelters, AIDS hospices or to facilities such as New Horizons Workshop in Sepulveda, which houses about 42 mentally retarded adults. “People don’t always think about giving these people music, but I think music is almost as important as any of the basics of life. Let them enjoy,” Solomon said.

“If there’s a way to get an extra dollar to give to the needy, she finds it,” said Hooper, who had his likeness painted for a Solbrook creation years ago when he was a drummer with the Crusaders.

Solomon is quick to dismiss the praise. “Nothing costs me a penny. I’m just lucky I can put the merchandise out there where it can do some good.”

She’s equally reticent to take credit for her success in the art-board field. “I have no talent, I’ve never been a musician, I can’t draw a straight line, but I take great pride in good workmanship.”

If any one factor is responsible for her success in the art-board industry, it is her lifelong love of music and dance. “Some of the stuff today I don’t understand,” she said, looking around the large reproductions of album covers on the walls in her shop. “George Michael, I don’t really understand. I don’t care for heavy metal or anything sadistic or demonic. Forget it. But I do like U2 and the Cure very much. And the Eagles. I have their records and I still play them at home.”

A special place in her heart belongs to Michael Jackson, who hugs Solomon in a snapshot that doesn’t look out of place amid a jumble of family photos tacked behind her desk. “I go back with him to the days of the Jackson 5, when Michael’s sister, Janet, was just a little tiny girl who sat on my lap,” she said. “Michael probably has the biggest collection of Solbrook art at his house here in the Valley.”

Wendell remembers when Jackson came into the Magnolia Boulevard shop feeling low because he wanted his record company to put up a billboard for his “Thriller” album. “We didn’t know if they would do it for him because sales of ‘Off the Wall’ weren’t that great,” Wendell said. “He felt so bad about it that Pat said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do a painting of it for you to make you feel better.’ Who knew that ‘Thriller’ would sell more than 38 million?”

One of the rewards of having a close relationship to artists like Jackson and their record companies is a lifetime supply of highly sought-after concert tickets and invitations to backstage parties. But those kinds of things aren’t for Solomon. “I prefer my own parties with my own friends. Then I really go wild with the dancing. But again, what I can do with the tickets is have the joy of putting the money where it will help.”