University of Iowa professor moonlights as keyboardist for Grateful Dead cover band

As a teenager, Chris Johnson wanted to be a rock star.

And he succeeded. The Roseburg, Ore., native and his high-school friends in 1963 formed a band — 'The Gas Company' — which later changed its name to 'Hercules and the Chicken Fat People.'

They became the biggest act in town and began touring, opening for the likes of the Grateful Dead, the Chambers Brothers, the Yardbirds and others in the mid-1960s and early 1970s.

Johnson, the group's keyboardist, had a signature move — he could play a blind solo while lying on the ground by reaching over his head with his feet in the air.

One afternoon in 1966 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, a photographer jumped out of a Volkswagen Microbus and snapped a few photos of the band for an advertisement in a new music magazine: Rolling Stone.

That picture ran in the magazine's first edition — the one with John Lennon on the cover — and Johnson said he occasionally challenges friends to pick him out in the photo.

'I didn't look the same,' Johnson said. 'I had longer hair. And bell bottoms.'

At age 65, Johnson wears eyeglasses and collared shirts.

After earning six degrees, including a doctorate from Penn State University and two postdoctoral degrees in ophthalmology research, Johnson moved to Iowa seven years ago and works at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics as a professor of ophthalmology and visual science and director of the UI Visual Field Reading Center.

He's not the only one to go straight: Members of Hercules and the Chicken Fat People went on to become a judge, a marketing manager for an insurance company, a city planner, and an engineer for Hewlett-Packard.

'We all turned out well, in spite of our misspent youth,' Johnson said.

But he hasn't totally ditched his rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Over the summer, Johnson joined a local Grateful Dead tribute band after catching them during a gig on the Pedestrian Mall.

'They were fantastic, and I went up to them during a break and congratulated them,' he said. 'I said, 'You sound really great, but you're missing something.' '

They didn't have a keyboard player. As it turned out, they were looking for one. So Johnson suggested he jam with them, and they liked what they heard.

'I was intrigued'

The band, Winterland, specializes in Grateful Dead music from the '60s and '70s. The six-member group performs around the region.

'I always wanted to be a rock star,' Johnson said. 'Nothing else excited me much.'

That was, until Johnson took a psychology course in college that involved a visual perception lab. During that class, he was presented with unknowns about vision perception.

'I was intrigued,' he said. 'And that become quite an interest.'

After leaving Hercules and the Chicken Fat People, Johnson traveled the country for his education, earning degrees at University of Oregon, Penn State University, State University of New York, University of Florida, and University of California.

While in Iowa, Johnson has done research on the visual field and the relationship between optic disc hemorrhages and visual field loss. Recently, he's become involved in the development of a mobile application that can be used to screen for vision problems in underdeveloped countries. Johnson is coming out with a refined version of the application, which he said will be able to screen for issues such as glaucoma in regions like India, Africa and parts of South America. And the technology could become useful in the United States — even at the UI Hospitals and Clinics — if, for example, patients are given the tablet-based test while in the waiting room and learn the results as soon as they see a doctor

'I'm very excited about this,' he said.

Johnson co-authored several publications in the area of ophthalmology, and he's about to add one more work to his list.

'We are writing a book,' Johnson said, referring to his past with Hercules and the Chicken Fat People.