The genesis of Anthem, in Bill Walker’s own words:

In his self-penned, 30-plus page, Anthem Guide (click to view) Bill Walker tells the story of the Anthem painting by deeply delving into the process and personal experience of how it was conceived. Read an excerpt from the Guide below:

“In January ’68, while living in the Haight-Ashbury, Phil Lesh asked me if I would do a cover for the Grateful Dead’s second album. I was living in a house on Shrader Street, two blocks above Haight Street that had canvas window shades. I removed one, stapled it to a 34-inch diameter piece of plywood and drew out the basic image in a week or so.

The drawing unfolded intuitively and spontaneously...I had the sense that my eyes were merely transferring, out of a boundless and radiant space, the image onto the canvas, and all I had to do was effortlessly delineate or play the patterns I was seeing. This sense of 'seeing' was not just a visual experience, but synaesthetic. Not that I saw the whole thing all at once all the time, but a dynamic sense of rhythmic unity and symmetry imposed itself and the patterns and color evolved out of that sense of resonant harmony and symmetry...The drawing took a little over a week of very intense participation. Most often I had no awareness of day or night and recall eating only a few times. The symmetrical structures were drawn with both my right and left hands. The right hand drawing the right side and the left hand the left side. No instruments for measurement were used – nor an eraser. 

…[I showed the drawing] to the concerned members of the band, they said, “OK,” so I began painting. I painted until May when Warner Brothers needed it for the summer release of Anthem of the Sun. Although the background was not done and much of the details were not painted to my satisfaction, we decided it would be fine, since the image would be reduced from 34 inches in diameter to about 11 inches on the album cover. After Warner Brothers had done what they needed to do with the painting, I gave it to a friend (Richard Kane), with the intention of finishing it “whenever,” and began a trip that would not bring me back to the painting until some 20 years later. I finished the background during a three month session in 1989. Then after two more six month painting sessions, Anthem was completed in ’96.”

— Bill Walker