It is probably no big surprise that I am a huge Ed Roth fan. Growing up Ratfink defined cool and custom and car culture. There is a pretty big love/hate divide in the hotrod world toward the custom cars he created but nobody, and I mean NOBODY, hates on Ed Roth for his iconic influence on hot rod culture.
Just knowing about Ed Roth from the grotesque caricatures he created on shirts and hats of the 60s and 70s only gives a very slight insight into the man. So I set out to learn more about the almighty Roth the old fashioned way... reading. For you younger folks looking at this post "reading" is a thing that people used to do before movies, youtubes and vine clips. As I read and learned more and more about the wild ride that was Ed Roth's life one thing really struck me as insane... his hot rod shop was only in existence for 11 years. Yup, 1959 - 1970 was the run of his shop at 4616 Slauson Avenue in Maywood, California.
Imagine being a genre defining icon that changed what future generations considered possible in custom car culture closing your shop and becoming a sign painter for a berry farm. How is that even possible? To me it is mind bending how fragile success can be. I always imagined that when an artist or musician "makes it big" they are set for life and that my friends could not be farther from the truth. As I learned more and more about Ed Roth it seems that his life was really broken into disjointed segments, each completely separate from the others.
I realize that a book is one persons interpretation of a person or event so it cannot be taken as gospel but there must be some truth to the accounts as they often overlap. All I know is for one person to shake up the custom car world so completely I wish his time in the spotlight would have been longer. I also wish I could have met the man and thanked him for his contributions. But as my late great father would have said... "Shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which builds up fastest."
