The Fillmore in San Francisco is a historic music venue, named after its original location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard. Known as the Fillmore Auditorium in the mid-1960s, concert promoter Bill Graham began a series of concerts featuring bands from the counterculture of the time. In 1968, due to his spiralling success, he moved to a larger venue which he named Fillmore West. Having closed in 1971, and after extensive repair work to fix earthquake damage, Graham's venue was revived when Live Nation reopened the original Fillmore venue in 1994.

San Francisco in the mid-1960s was the hub of the LSD and Hippie scene and the cultural and political rebellion of 1967's Summer of Love. The resulting influence of these factors on the artists of the area created the fantastic psychedelic posters of the Fillmore. Art dealer Jacaeber Kastor said of the posters, "They couldn't just tell you the information about the show. They had to tell you what kind of people you might meet, what kind of far out trip you might have or perhaps even reveal the mysteries of the universe. Wow. Quantum mechanics, visual mudwrestling, Acid test pop quiz on a phone pole!"

The creator of this poster, David Singer, was an untrained artist doing odd jobs for graphic design companies around San Francisco. He had been interested in collage from an early age, taking inspiration from the surrealism of Max Ernst and Magritte, combining this with the counter-culture of the 1960s. After showing several pieces to Bill Graham, he was hired to produce 12 posters, which Graham liked instantly, as the lettering was legible, a departure from the previous poster art of the Fillmore. Singer worked for Graham right up until the closure of the Fillmore in 1971, for which he created the final design; he was reaching his zenith, adapting Art Deco and Art Nouveau lettering, using collage and freehand drawing to create distinctive graphics when the venue shut in the summer of 1971.

This poster advertised two sets of gigs. The first was headlined by Chuck Berry, a pioneer of rock and roll music since the mid 1950s. The second featured Chicago Transit Authority (later just Chicago), an American band from 1967 that started with an experimental sound and attitude but found greatest success with a more middle-of-the-road (MOR) sound. Their biggest hit in the US and UK was 1976's If You Leave Me Now.