Derek Trucks has looked back on his experience playing Jerry Garcia’s Tiger guitar on stage, revealing the iconic six-string beast is a struggle to tame.

Some vintage gems play like butter and are everything their glittering reputations promise. But there are others that either put up a fight – like Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein – or, as Derek Trucks found out, crumble at the first sign of one.

“It’s a very unique instrument,” Trucks tells Guitar World in a new interview. “It’s super heavy and has a lot of different tones in it.”

But, he adds, “It’s not a guitar where you grab the strings and bend them Albert King-style. I tried twice and broke two strings!”

One of several highly customized guitars the late Doug Irwin made for the Grateful Dead pioneer, the hefty slab of tone was part of the recent Jim Irsay auction, where it sold for an eye-watering $11.5m, making it the second most expensive guitar in the world.

Trucks attended the event when Bobby Tseitlin, of Chicago-based collectors, Family Guitars, became its proud new owner. Hours later, Tseitlin loaned the guitar to the slide guitar ace for a run of shows at New York’s Beacon Theater, and Trucks believes his presence might have helped keep the price slightly lower than the $14.5m that David Gilmour’s infamous Black Strat sold for that same day.

“I was sitting with Bobby, [and] you could just tell that everyone in the room thought I was buying it,” he laughs, “Maybe it benefited in that people were not bidding against Bobby the way they were on some of the other guitars.”

Taking the guitar to the stage so soon after, Trucks says, helped him understand “how fans of Jerry and the [Grateful] Dead revered that instrument.”

“Watching the way people reacted to it was pretty special,” he continues. “I remember the first time I got to hold one of Duane Allman’s guitars, and feeling like, ‘This is the reason that I started playing the instrument.’ That guitar changed the way I thought about life and music. So, I understand the allure of it.”

Thankfully, night two of his brief affair with the guitar went far better.

“I found some spots between the different pickup combinations where you could really get some unique sounds,” he says. “And there were a few sounds where I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s that Jerry shit.’

“On the second night, I went to bend a string, and I could feel it, where I was like, ‘Oh, it’s about to give,’ and I backed off. I found the threshold, and I felt like we understood each other a little bit more.”

Trucks’ full interview will be published in the coming weeks.

Since Jerry Garcia’s beloved custom-built “Tiger” fetched $11,560,000 at the historic Jim Irsay auction, it has appeared at a gig… or two.

Just hours after the sale, Derek Trucks took the instrument to the stage at New York’s Beacon Theater. Now, another guitarist has been added to (what we can only assume is) an ever-growing list.

Last weekend (May 3), jazz fusion virtuoso Al Di Meola took “Tiger” out for a spin at Park West, Chicago. He was accompanied by Josh Olken from Terrapin Flyer, a nationally touring Grateful Dead cover band.

“I never got to meet Jerry Garcia, but I later heard he mentioned me as one of his favorite guitar players,” wrote Di Meola on social media.

“I couldn’t believe it, honestly. When I was 15, my friends and I would skip school, take the bus into the city, and see the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East. Some of my best memories! That era was magical!

“Last night in Chicago, I had the chance to play Jerry’s famous ‘Tiger.’ It was emotional in a way I didn’t expect. This is a close-up from soundcheck, just getting a feel for it. And there it was… the Jerry tone.”

Di Meola went on to thank Olken for “sitting in,” as well as the guitar’s new owner, Family Guitars co-founder Bobby Tseitlin.

Terrapin Flyer also pitched in with Olken’s own experience of getting to witness “Tiger” being played by a living legend.

“Josh had very little rehearsal time. Al changed the key so Josh had to transpose the song on the spot. It was a tight spot for Josh to be in performing with someone so talented and revered and he slayed it. We’re all very proud of him. Josh walks amongst giants. Mind blown.”

In other, “Tiger”-related news, in an exclusive interview with Guitar World, artist guitar expert Matthieu Lucas from Matt’s Guitar Shop recalled the exact moment “Tiger” went under the hammer for that jaw-dropping amount.

At just 32, Matthieu Lucas has managed to build something extraordinary.

The entrepreneur, guitarist, and music enthusiast has painstakingly chipped away at building the emporium that is Matt’s Guitar Shop from the ground up, attracting A-list clients from all four corners of the globe.

The journey was far from plain sailing. However, judging by the caliber of artist guitars gracing every inch of the walls in this slice of musical paradise – tucked away on an unassuming street in Paris – it has well and truly paid off.

“It was not easy because you just show up at a store, and you look like a baby, and somehow, you start talking big dollars to very reputable dealers or collectors, and some of them were like, ‘How is this possible… this guy is selling drugs somewhere,’” he quips, as he recalls the early days of his ambitious venture.

However, it’s perhaps Lucas’ marketing prowess and ethos – that even the most prestigious of guitars are meant to be played on stage – that has transformed him into the go-to guy for artist guitars, with players such as Marcus King, Craig Ross, Billie Joe Armstrong, Myles Kennedy, and Yungblud all getting in on the action.

“I was very inspired by banks and huge associations buying Stradivarius [violins] very early on and lending them to musicians on tour playing classical music,” Lucas says.

“Guitars need to be shared with the world. That's my theory. That's why we lend ours on stage all the time, and that's always going to raise the value. They're really artifacts of a very specific period when the guitar revolutionized everything.”

What inspired you to start Matt’s Guitar Shop in the first place?

It’s been a little bit more than 10 years, actually. Time flies! [However], it all started when I was 15 years old.

I was not really interested in music or guitar in general. I was just playing video games with a friend of mine. His father showed up in the room and he said, “Guys, you need to listen to AC/DC.” And then I said, "Okay, [I’ll] give this guy five minutes with his old band and then I'm going to be finished with him.”

And we listened, and Angus Young was really the guy who penetrated my brain, and my passion for guitar started there. Six months later, I was seeing AC/DC in a stadium and buying an SG copy, and that started it all. And then I just wanted to buy more and more guitars because I started to discover bands.

Step by step, I went to Paris guitar stores. I was hanging out in a store called Guitar Store in Paris, and the guy was nice to me, and he let me discover the world of guitar sales – buying, selling… the daily life of a guitar shop.

I was already buying and selling privately. So it [Matt’s Guitar Shop] started in an apartment in Paris – a very small apartment. Three years, maybe four years later, we had the opportunity to get the place here, and that was it.

What were some of the initial challenges, especially as a young businessman?

They really put you in boxes initially, and that was not easy, but step by step, we met people that trusted me, and I knew who I wanted to work with over time.

I don’t come from a musical family myself. So I was mainly listening to those guys in my headphones when I was younger. I was listening to Lenny [Kravitz] and Craig [Ross] quite a lot because I have deep respect for that duo and what they represent.

One day, I show up at Rudy's Music [in New York], and Rudy just traded me one of Craig’s main touring guitars, which was his 1964 ES-345.

I didn't have the money back then, so I said, ‘Give me three months. I'm going to buy and sell in France, and I'm going to come back and pick it up.’ And my friend, who was with me at this time, told me, ‘Are you crazy? This guitar is way too much money.’

It was a time when social media was different. I just sent a message to Craig on Facebook, and two weeks passed by, and I was like, ‘Okay, this guy is busy. He's never going to reach me.’ And, suddenly, my phone is popping off, and Craig Ross just answered me, and he was so kind. [He was like,] this guy is 22 or 23 years old, he just made a huge purchase for himself, compared to his capacity.

So when I bought this guitar, we met at L'Olympia in Paris, and we got that connection going. So, for me, just meeting him was great because Craig really proves that you can’t buy class. I met Lenny later, but with Craig, it's been like 10 years and I still have that connection with him.

Which artists’ guitars command the most demand and attention?

It's quite mixed. We have John Frusciante's 1961 [ES-]335 that he played on stage. We have, of course, Paul Kossoff's 1955 “Black Beauty”, which was also used by Eric Clapton during Cream because they used to trade guitars quite a lot.

I’ve had this guitar for almost 10 years now, and I don't regret buying it. Another interesting one is Steve Lukather’s 1951 Esquire. We [also] have AC/DC's Cliff Williams’ bass – we have number three, which was toured all around the world for four years with AC/DC.

How has your vision for the showroom evolved, compared to when you first opened the doors?

When I started this business with artists’ guitars, I had two kinds of people: the people who believed in it and the people who were laughing at me.

Now, I was very proud when I was assisting at the [Jim Irsay] auction in New York City because I think that the guitar changed the world, and that the guitar will still be listened to in 1,000 years, and all those guys will be gone, and what's left is the music and their instrument. [When you buy that guitar,] you are the owner of their legacy.

So we feel kind of amazed at the shop every day because I really believed in that market when it was not fancy.

What made the Jim Irsay auction different?

Everybody was waiting for that auction. That was, after all, the greatest collection [that ever existed] of artists’ guitars.

People are starting to understand that there are good aspects to buying a guitar – whether it's for the investment or whether you're a guitar player – but if you choose wisely, those guitars will never go down [in price] because there is always somebody richer than you who wants to have that guitar.

Why have the Jim Irsay guitars leapt in value in such a short time span?

It depends on the auction house you're dealing with, the place you're buying the guitar from, and the marketing around that.

Marketing is key when you want to sell a pricey instrument like that, and I think Christie’s did a great job. They went everywhere, and when you're doing that, you just attract the best buyers because they don't have any doubt about what they're buying.

Everything went through the roof because those buyers were brought together by Christie’s in one room. They could have been telephone bidders. They could be room bidders, or internet bidders, but they were all together in one room for this collection, which was exceptional.

I see that with the shop. I don't have a single customer older than 60, and usually my customers are between 25 and 50, so it's a new generation who just discovered the world of guitars, and those people are working hard to get those guitars.

When you put them in one room, I can guarantee you that you will see new world records. If Jimmy Page's “Number One” was in that room that day, that would be between 20 and 30 million [dollars] easy.

But who are these people? What are their backgrounds?

I can give you an example of one person I know: Bobby Tseitli in Chicago. Bobby is a good friend of mine – those guys are really amazing, and they're putting together a collection called Family Guitars.

I knew they wanted [Jerry Garcia’s] “Tiger” so much. I gave him a huge hug when he bought that guitar, and I can guarantee you that this guy probably cried like a baby in his room sleeping next to the guitar that night, and that everybody in the room was feeling amazed because he was bidding with all his heart. The night after, Derek [Trucks] played it on stage. I mean, what's better than that?

I think we should be thankful for those guys who believe in the market and make it dynamic because they're not only buying guitars; they are making the shows more attractive. Everybody in the room will remember the day they saw Jerry Garcia's guitar in the hands of Derek Trucks. [In terms of the buyers’ backgrounds], I never ask too much unless they talk about themselves.

For sure, at Christie’s, we saw hedge fund guys, tech guys, cryptocurrency guys… so it's new money, in a good way, not in a bad way. From what I can tell, we have more and more young people who are just working hard, and they could be in tech, they could be in sports, whatever… we have so many kinds of buyers, and that's the beauty of this job.

Do you think we're going to see David Gilmour’s Strat one on stage anytime soon?

I know by name the guy who bought it. I don't know him personally. If he reads the interview, [I would say] I think you should put that guitar on stage. But I hope all those guitars [from that auction] are going to be on stage soon.

How do most of these clients find you?

Social media helps. You put the guitars on stage, and people are always filming. The audience recognizes the guitar, and I get texts or messages on Instagram.

So, I think it's a win-win-win because the crowd is winning because they get to see a very special guitar that day. Marketing-wise it's great for the shop, and it's also great for the artist because when this is going to the press, the tour is gonna get some marketing.

When Marcus King was touring in Paris 10 years ago, he was playing in clubs [in front of] 20 people, and we were there already, and now he's more famous, of course. And he still loves to play that Paul Kosoff guitar. Every time he’s in Paris, he plays that guitar on stage, and it's one of his favorite guitars to play.

What trends are you noticing in the types of guitars that command the highest prices in today's market?

When I started, nobody really wanted a guitar from Green Day, for example. Now, I’m getting asked more often.

I think it's a generation thing – Green Day are getting bigger because the older they get, the bigger their legacy. When the band is getting older, their fans are also getting older, and they have more capacity to buy the items of their dreams. When artists pass away, sometimes you get a bit emotional. So, of course, people are missing them so much that they want their guitars.

But I would be curious to have one of those big “dinosaur” guitars on stage [at an auction]. After the success of the Gibson Keith Richards signature, [I would be curious to have] one of Keith's guitars going on stage, the black [ES-]355, the “Micawber” Tele... or Jimmy Page's guitars or Brian May's guitar or Paul McCartney's bass – those legendary guitars that are still used by them.

I think we would be surprised by the price they fetch because records are made to be broken and are made to be set higher every time. And again, it wouldn't surprise me in the near future if we see a guitar [sell for] between $20 and $30-40 million.

Do you see any risks or misconceptions for new buyers entering the vintage guitar market, especially those treating it as an investment?

I would suggest that you check the provenance of the instruments. You have to choose wisely. If you're advised wisely and if you decide to buy the guitar at the right price, that's great.

To give you an example, when I bought Steve Jones' guitar, I knew there were rumors of Steve selling the original one 14 times to different people.

So we checked the mother-of-pearl inlays. We checked all the dings and marks. We scanned the pictures of the guitar today, and we matched those mother-of-pearl inlays. When [there are] three matches, then you know.

Beyond the monetary value, what makes a guitar collectible?

The more provenance you have and the more history you have with the guitar [the better]. For example, if Keith Richards just played one guitar one time on the sofa two minutes backstage and signed it, that doesn't really make sense to me. But what matters to me is if he played it on stage. Why did he choose that particular one for his personal collection? Was there a reason sound-wise?

I don't agree with comments on the internet that say that, ‘Oh well, David Gilmour modified the Black Strat like 700 times over time…’ [If you want a pristine guitar,] then just buy a vintage guitar. Don't even look at an artist guitar.

I understand that it doesn’t make sense for some people to buy a $15 million guitar, but I think the more modifications it has, the more personal the instrument becomes – and that’s what makes its value even higher.

There's been a lot of criticism over the amounts spent at the Jim Irsay auction. What would you say to people who feel that collectible guitar prices have lost touch with reality?

I think we are living in a world where records are made to be broken.

I would get [that comment] from the perspective of somebody earning a medium salary. That's understandable, because for some people, it's just hard to feed their children, and then you see on the news that somebody just bought David Gilmour's guitar for $15 million.

But I would say it has been like this forever, in sports, the arts… let's not even talk about the football world. I think the world is discovering guitars with these auctions, with these pieces of history, [and] with the new players as well. The rich will always be richer. We can't control that. If they want the David Gilmour Strat for $50 million one day, that's it.

What's been your proudest moment of seeing one of your guitars being played on stage?

I lent Myles Kennedy Jeff Buckley's guitar on stage in Paris a few years ago. That was the final show I assisted before Covid, but that was a moment because it was at L'Olympia [in Paris].

It was full of symbolism. We were preparing for that day for four months. Myles was the perfect guy to sing Hallelujah on stage with the very guitar that Jeff recorded the song with. I still get chills talking about it.

[Another standout moment was when] I saw Craig Ross playing [Jeff Beck’s] Yardburst in Paris.

If I told my young self, [who was] listening to Lenny Kravitz and Craig Ross, that one day I would have Jeff Beck's guitar and then Craig would play it on tour, especially in Paris, my hometown, I wouldn't believe it. It was really a full-circle moment.

• Learn more about Matt's Guitar Shop.

Doug Irwin, the legendary guitar maker who built instruments for Jerry Garcia, died at the age of 76 over the weekend (March 27), it has been confirmed.

A statement posted to the Irwin Guitars Facebook channel paid tribute to the visionary luthier, writing, “Today we remember and honor Douglas Leo Irwin.”

“Doug was a master craftsman, a visionary, and someone who dedicated his life to his work,” it continued. “His guitars were never just instruments, they were built with intention, precision, and soul, becoming part of the music and the artists who played them.

“To his family, friends, and everyone who had the privilege of knowing him, Doug was more than his work. He was a presence, a character, and someone whose impact reached far beyond words.

“His legacy will live on through the instruments he created and the music they helped bring to life. He will be deeply missed and never forgotten. Rest in peace, Doug.”

A boundary-pushing luthier whose own penchant for the unconventional made him a perfect collaborator for Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Irwin spent time working with Alembic, before eventually branching out under his own banner to create his daring custom guitars.

It was during his Alembic days that Irwin first crossed paths with Garcia, who bought the Eagle – one of Irwin’s early Alembic builds – on the spot for $850 in 1972.

Impressed by how it played, Garcia asked Irwin to customize another guitar for him – a guitar that would eventually become the legendary Wolf guitar. Loaded with an abundance of electronics and concocted from an obscure melting pot of tonewoods, it became one of Garcia’s most iconic instruments, selling at auction in 2017 for $1,900,000.

That wasn’t the only guitar that Irwin built for Garcia, though, nor was the Wolf the only Irwin Guitar model to make big bucks at auction.

Immediately after receiving the Wolf, Garcia asked Irwin to build him another, and told him to make it the way he thought best, regardless of cost. Six years later, the Tiger hit the stage for the first time, and began its decades-long partnership with the guitar hero.

Irwin’s second creation for Garcia became the Grateful Dead guitarist’s main player, noted for its ultra-heavy, ultra-premium composition and the wealth of onboard controls that gave Garcia an absurd array of tones that he used in his jam band.

Such was the cultural and musical impact of the Tiger, it became one of the most expensive guitars of all time when it sold for $11.5 million at the Jim Irsay Collection auction earlier this month.

However, as per the Jerry Garcia website, Irwin’s masterpiece was the Rosebud – an evolution of the Wolf that featured onboard MIDI. There was also the Wolf Jr. – a headless sibling to the OG Wolf – bringing the total number of guitars Irwin made for Garcia to five.

In a press release shared with Guitar World by Irwin's daughter, a statement reads, “As the family begins the process of honoring my father’s life, our priority is ensuring his artistic legacy and historical archives are preserved with the respect due to his monumental contributions to American music.”

Following the record-breaking sale of Jerry Garcia's “Tiger” at the Jim Irsay auction earlier this month, Julien’s Auctions has just announced Treasures From The Golden Road Featuring The Property From “Big Steve,” “Ram Rod” & Trixie Garcia, an “extraordinary offering” of more than 300 pieces from the inner circle of the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia.

Sourced from the personal archives of Grateful Dead crew chief and Jerry Garcia Band manager “Big” Steve Parish, longtime family associate “Ram Rod,” and Garcia’s daughter Trixie Garcia, the auction includes its own fair share of guitars and gear.

These include Garcia’s studio- and video-played pre-war Gibson Super 400N, used on non-Dead projects including Not for Kids Only and Been All Around This World, and estimated to sell for between $80,000 and $120,000, as well as his custom Alvarez-Yairi acoustic, labeled “Custom Made for J. Garcia,” which is predicted to fetch between $70,000 and $100,000.

His stage-used 1975 Mesa Boogie Mark I, part of his 1975–76 live rig and later kept in his living room, is also up for grabs – with an estimated value of $30,000 to $50,000 – alongside a 1988 Dobro Model 64 square neck resonator guitar in a walnut finish with a “Tree of Life” fretboard inlay that reportedly never made it to the stage, estimated at $25,000–$30,000.

“These items represent fifty years of memories and experiences with the Grateful Dead – from the early days to the final shows in Chicago. Each piece tells a story of the music, the journey, and the community that made it all possible”, comments Parish.

“Being part of that community for all these years has meant everything to me, and I’m proud to continue representing what the Grateful Dead stood for. Now is the time to share these with the fans and collectors who understand what they mean.”

These Deadhead heirlooms and gear will be heading to auction on April 22, live at The Box SF in San Francisco, and online via the official auction house website.

For more information, head to Julien's.

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi have described the experience of getting hands-on with Jerry Garcia’s iconic Tiger, after the pair were given the opportunity to play the $11.56 million electric guitar hours after it was sold at auction.

The sale of Garcia’s Tiger was one of the biggest headlines of the Jim Irsay Collection auction, which shattered world records on multiple occasions and ushered in a new dawn in the value of the guitar.

Though David Gilmour’s Black Strat was the most expensive six-string of the evening, selling for a cool $14.6 million, Garcia’s Tiger was just behind, becoming the second most expensive guitar of all time when the hammer went down for just shy of $12,000,000.

Hours after the event ended, the Tiger was on its way to the Tedeschi Trucks Band camp, and swiftly returned to the stage in the hands of Trucks. The slide guitar master used the legendary instrument – crafted by Alembic Guitars in the late 1970s – for one of the band’s residency shows at the Beacon Theatre, New York.

Trucks and Tedeschi both took the Tiger for the spin backstage, and now the pair have looked back on the experience in a new interview with Howard Stern.

“It’s super-unique. It weighs about 14lbs, which is about twice what my guitar weighs, but it’s super-articulate,” Trucks says. “There’s a unique sound. It was very Jerry Garcia-sounding – like, you play it and you know it was his. It was a very 1980s instrument.”

The guitar is famously a bit of a beast. The body has a layered concoction of cocobolo, maple and paduak, with a bunch of expansive electronics and ornate accoutrements to boot (although, it should be noted, no secret drugs compartments).

It is heavy, and unlike anything else out there. As such, it proved to be a unique instrument to wrangle – something that stuck out to Tedeschi.

“There’s metal on the neck. It’s kind of hard to play, honestly,” she admits. “Guitars want to be played, and they want to be played in a certain way. So when you start playing it, it’s like, ‘Oh, it wants to play this kind of stuff.’”

Garcia’s Tiger was bought at auction by Bobby Tseitlin of Family Guitars – a Chicago family of historic instrument collectors – who wanted the guitar to see back in action as soon as possible.

“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass,” Tseitlin explained to Rolling Stone. “They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.”

Other highlights from the Irsay auction include Prince's Yellow Cloud guitar, Neal Schon's Don't Stop Believin' Les Paul, and a suite of basses played by Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac and ZZ Top.

Last Thursday (March 12), I found myself in the ritzy confines of Christie’s auction house in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. My assignment? To provide a play-by-play of what was likely to be the biggest guitar auction of all time, as the musical instrument and memorabilia collection of the late Indianapolis Colts owner and CEO Jim Irsay went under the hammer.

Though a record-breaking sale wasn’t a sure thing, any doubt on my end was erased on my arrival. The public rooms in the auction house had been subsumed by Irsay’s pop culture treasure trove. I’d read and reported on the collection many times before, but seeing the scale of it in person was incredible – room after room; multiple floors.

To give you an idea of the breadth of his acquisitions over the years – from handwritten Dylan lyrics, to the original typewriter scroll manuscript of On The Road – the auctioning of all the lots took four days.

That evening, it was the cream of the crop of Irsay’s music and literature-related possessions – including what’s now confirmed beyond doubt to be the most valuable collection of guitars ever held by a private individual – that was going under the hammer.

Those in the room who were aware of the sale that was set to occur were buzzing. At one point, before seating for the event began, facing away from the closed doors to the auction room, I suddenly saw eyes light up and phones fly out of pockets.

Turning around, I saw white-gloved attendants carrying the stars of the show to the front of the auction room: Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang, Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar, and David Gilmour’s Black Strat.

I’m ever a cynic, but I was taken aback by the aura – as the youth would say – of the instruments; enough that my moment’s hesitation cost me the paparazzi shot I wanted to get of the scene.

Once the proceedings got underway, it was clear that the bidders felt the same way – the estimated value of the guitars kept getting cleared by wider and wider margins.

Two John Lennon-used guitars, a Rickenbacker and a Gretsch, from the Beatles’ early-mid period, sold for $1.27 million apiece, over the top end of their estimated value. The 1964 Gibson SG George Harrison used extensively with the Beatles from 1966-1968 sold for roughly twice its estimate at $2.27 million. Eric Clapton’s iconic “The Fool” SG, so emblematic of the psychedelic era, sold for roughly three times its predicted price at $3 million.

My task was to liveblog the proceedings, so I had little time to ruminate on what those prices meant. It felt like Monopoly money – random numbers I just had to peck into my article.

And then came the white whale: David Gilmour’s Black Strat. The one-time record holder for the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction – for $3.975 million in 2019, in the very same room I was in now – it was valued at between $2 and $4 million.

It cleared its previous sale price quickly as bidding started: not a huge surprise. And then the bidding just kept going. And going. And going. $6 million – there goes the previous record, shelled out for Kurt Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E in 2020. $8 million. $9 million. Even some of the auction house employees near me in the press area – never mind the attendees – were stunned by this point.

By the time bidding hit $10 million, I went so far as to abandon my blogging duties, close my laptop to take it all in, and capture what I knew was history on video.

As the price climbed ever-higher, a distant voice in the back of my mind was telling me to be disgusted – ‘It’s a guitar! This is absurd!’ And yet I was ooohing and aaahing, too, smiling and laughing in wonder as 10 minutes of bidding went to 15, and then 20. Finally, at $14.6 million, the hammer went down and I burst into applause like everyone else.

Incredibly, that Everest-summiting-like bidding war was followed by another; this one a scrap for Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar. A $1 – $2 million estimate, another extended bidding exchange – and a sale priced way beyond expectations, at $11.6 million. Again caught up in it all, I got the perfect capture of the magic moment. Listen to the crowd!

When Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang became the third guitar of the evening to pass the former record holder – which Irsay felt wasn’t worth the princely sum that was paid for it – it was almost an afterthought; still some applause, but not the shock and awe heard earlier in the evening.

Given the figures from previous lots and the fact that that particular guitar had sold for $4.55 million just three years earlier – it wasn’t as much of an estimate-obliterator as the Gilmour and Garcia instruments.

And that’s food for thought. David Gilmour is, of course, still going strong, while Jerry Garcia has been gone for 30 years, but these legendary guitars of the classic rock pantheon, in particular, continue to capture people’s imaginations and smash through the ceiling of their predicted value.

The $14.5 million sale represents a stunning epoch in the value of the guitar. It puts the Black Strat in the neighborhood of many of the most expensive Stradivarius violins ever sold; are there vintage instruments any more “serious” and respected than those?

I thought I was way too cynical and skeptical to get caught up in the fuss of watching people proverbially tossing millions of dollars into the air like graduation caps, but there was something about being in the presence of that guitar in particular.

In the middle of all that frenzied bidding, I thought of sitting in front of my parents’ small TV as a youngster, seeing the master wrangle a sublime take on the Comfortably Numb solo out of that jet-black six-string. ‘Huh. Maybe if I did have a spare $14 million left over after helping those less fortunate…’

Just hours after someone raided their piggy bank to buy Jerry Garcia’s fabled ‘Tiger’ guitar for just shy of £12 million, Derek Trucks has taken the iconic instrument to the stage.

It was auctioned off along with a raft of seven-figure electric guitars from the late Jim Irsay’s monumental collection last week. The eye-watering $11.56 million sale price makes it the second most expensive guitar in history, with the winner also crowned during a record-shattering auction.

The guitar, crafted by Alembic Guitars for Garcia in the late ’70s, weighs 13.5 pounds, and the chiropractor's nightmare is lavishly kitted out. Garcia is said to have told Alembic not to hold back on its creation, and the ornate axe was the result.

It, along with Alembic’s Wolf build for Garcia, is the only guitar on the most expensive list (now expanded to 22) that is not produced by a major manufacturer.

For its body layers of cocobolo, maple, and padauk are laminated together for a 'hippie sandwich' approach to tonewood, and the six-string, which cost Garcia a comparatively measly $5,800, became his main guitar for the next decade.

Not much longer after the gavel went down in New York, Trucks was taking the instrument 24 blocks away, to the Beacon Theatre. There, the guitar featured Tedeschi Trucks Band's latest residency show.

“There are instruments where you look at it and go, ‘Holy shit, what has this thing seen?’” Trucks tells Rolling Stone. “Just imagining Garcia in his dressing room, fucking playing the thing. Instruments carry a spirit.”

But Trucks isn’t the guitar’s owner; he was merely loaned it. Bobby Tseitlin, 44, from Family Guitars – a Chicago family of historic-instrument collectors – is the man who broke the bank on this one-of-a-kind guitar.

The Tiger is his third purchase linked to Garcia's legacy, after the Travis Bean TB500 and Modulus Blackknife.

But like Matt's Guitar Shop has done with Jeff Beck's Yardburst and Steve Jones’ Les Paul, the family wants them to “live and breathe” rather than become museum pieces. So expect to be seeing a lot more of the Tiger in the hands of guitar greats in the future.

“We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass,” Tseitlin explains. “They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.”

“It’s like a work of art,” Amelia Walker – specialist head of the Private & Iconic Collections at Christie’s – reflects of Jerry Garcia’s ornate ‘Tiger’ custom electric, which has now sold for $11,560,000 as part of the Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame.

“For a lot of people, that is the guitar in the collection – it’s kind of the ultimate because it was the last guitar he played live before his death and it was his main guitar for about 10 years, from when it was delivered in 1979 up until to 1989. It was one of his most recognisable and favourite guitars.”

Guitar historian Tony Bacon says that ‘Tiger’ was the third such guitar Garcia owned: “Jerry Garcia’s custom guitar known as Tiger was made for him by Doug Irwin, who Jerry met in the early ’70s when Doug worked with Rick Turner at Alembic.

“He bought a couple of guitars that Doug made there, the first known as ‘Eagle’, and then one named ‘Wolf’ for the snarling inlay behind the bridge on its highly figured exotic-wood body. Wolf became Jerry’s stage favourite for a few years,” Tony says.

“Toward the end of the ’70s, Doug delivered another guitar to Jerry – this one, too, with a body inlay that provided its nickname, ‘Tiger’, and this one enjoyed an even longer life as a Jerry fave.

“He was first seen playing the guitar on stage with Grateful Dead in summer ’79 at the Oakland Auditorium in San Francisco. Jerry had given Doug free rein with the guitar’s construction, clearly evident in the deep-red body’s layered exotic woods including cocobolo and vermillion, as well as the brass strips for binding and body decoration,” Tony adds.

“Cocobolo is an incredibly exotic wood, and the maple on the back of the neck is hand-selected for the most figured timbers,” Amelia Walker observes. “Even on the front, as you’re looking at the horns, he’s carved the wood in such a way as to select the peak of the grain where it curls over the arched top. It’s very, very beautifully done.

“It’s a sort of sandwich laminate construction, but I think it is chambered as well. Otherwise, it would weigh about a ton,” she says, adding that the chambering gave rise to some very ’70s theories about why these cavities had been added.

“There was a lot of mythology around there being ‘secret drugs compartments’,” Amelia says. “I don’t think that’s the case; I don’t think that Doug Irwin specifically put in a ‘weed slot’. I think it’s just chambered and therefore to access the preamp cover, which has got this beautiful inlay, there is another little corner – which could potentially be used for transporting [small items].”

The guitar houses some quite complex electronics to serve Garcia’s broad sonic palette, Tony Bacon says: “Tiger’s DiMarzios are arranged in HHS format.

“The guitar was fitted with three controls (master volume; tone for neck and bridge; tone for middle), a pickup selector, three mini-switches and two output jacks (a mono out and a stereo socket, selected by one of the mini-switches: selecting the stereo looped the signal out to an effects rack and back to the guitar’s controls, then out via the mono jack).

“The other two mini-switches were coil selectors for the humbuckers, and the five-way selector provided Jerry with ‘in-between’ pickup selections when he needed them.

“‘So right there,’ Jerry told Jon Sievert at Guitar Player, ‘that’s like 12 discrete possible voices that are all pretty different.’ The rest of it was touch, he explained. ‘I mostly work off the middle pickup in the single-coil setting and I can get almost any sound I want out of that. And touch is so individualised. It’s something every guitar player has to find for himself.’”

Needless to say, such ornate decoration and complex electronics took a long time to craft; Doug Irwin estimated that it took a total of around two thousand hours of work in order to complete the build.

“Jerry Garcia commissioned it as soon as Doug Irwin completed Wolf in 1973 and it was delivered in 1979 – so it was six years on the bench,” Amelia Walker says. “And in terms of modifications, it was delivered with white pickups and then at some point during the ’80s it changed to these black pickups in an HHS configuration, which is what it has today.”

• Christie’s auctions The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame starting 12 March. For more information on the four-part sale series, visit Christie’s.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

It was the night when the records fell – 23 of them in total – when all pre-auction estimates were smashed, and quite possibly the market for vintage guitars with player kudos will never be the same again.

The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame auction, hosted at Christie’s in New York, was truly a historic event, with all 44 lots sold and a cool $84,091,350 changing hands – a record for a guitar auction. By close of play, those figures saw Christie’s exceed its sales estimate by 373 per cent.

After 21 minutes of intense bidding – received like a Federer vs Nadal rally at the Arthur Ashe Stadium – the world had a new most-expensive guitar, and to the surprise of no one in the weeks leading up to the auction, it was David Gilmour’s Black Strat, the heavily modified Stratocaster that “he grew tired of” and sold, but not before tracking Comfortably Numb and Shine on You Crazy Diamond with it, anointing it as the ne plus ultra of Pink Floyd guitars.

The hammer came down at $14,550,000. For that kind of money, here’s hoping they threw in a guitar strap and a fresh set of D’Addario NYXL 10s.

But it did not take long for jaws – and records – to fall once more. Inside the hall, there were some Amex Platinum credit cards going uncomfortably numb as the bidding heated up for Jerry Garcia’s custom-built Tiger, the electric guitar that was six years in the making, comprised of the finest tone woods known to humanity, and the Grateful Dead icon’s most-celebrated guitar.

It set another record for a Garcia-owned guitar – and needless to say, for a guitar built by Doug Irwin, selling for $11,560,000.

Of course this was the sort of night that someone would spend the best part of seven million bucks on a left-handed student-model Fender guitar that is the definition of player grade.

Yes, Kurt Cobain’s 1969 Competition Mustang from the Smells Like Teenage Spirit video fetched a record (for a Cobain guitar) $6,907,000. It was previously the world's most expensive guitar, and so, on the night, its record was broken three times.

Julien Pradels, president, Christie’s Americas, said the night was a testimony to Irsay’s curation of the most important guitars, musical instruments and pop-cultural ephemera in history.

This wasn’t just guitars breaking records; we had Ringo Starr’s Beatles logo Ed Sullivan Show Ludwig drum head going for $2,881,000; Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics sheet for The Times They Are a Changin’ sold for $2,515,000… Someone paid over one-and-a-half million dollars for a saddle!

“Lot after lot we felt like we were making history,” said Pradels. “The Irsay sale did justice to the brilliance of the collector, and of the monumental pieces he brought together, iconic objects that tell the story of our culture and our times. The Irsay Collection is singular, but Christie’s will have other amazing sales in this space moving forward.”

There was the record sale for any guitar owned by a woman, as Janis Joplin’s Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar went for $381,000.

There was a new record set for a Gibson guitar, as Eric Clapton’s The Fool SG sold for $3,003,000, while his 1939 Martin 000-42 – i.e. the one from MTV Unplugged, “See if you can spot this one…” and all that – changed hands for a whopping $4,101,000.

It was an expensive night to be a Beatlemaniac with deep pockets. Brace for more records: George Harrison’s Gibson SG Standard mopped up $2,271,000; John Lennon’s Broadwood piano (okay, that’s not a guitar) sold for $3,247,000.

Even when the lots were not making world records they were destroying pre-auction estimates.

Many exceptional guitars were sold for eye-watering sums, such as John Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Model 1996 and his 1963 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, with both going for $1,270,000.

Prince’s Custom ‘Yellow Cloud’ seems a bargain at $635,000, and that seems to be the going rate for iconic “shape” electrics as The Edge’s korina Explorer, a backup on U2’s Joshua Tree tour, went for the same price.

Harrison’s Bisgby-equipped Maton Mastersound, which older readers might remember seeing onstage when the Beatles played the UK in the summer of ’63, sold for $279,400 – and please let it have been Josh Homme who bought it, because that would look just the thing on a QOTSA stage.

The 1966 prototype Vox Kensington semi-hollow guitar, once owned by the Beatles, would look crazy on any stage with its tulip-inspired body shape and arcane electronics – and at $609,600 it would legit be crazy to take it on any stage, or out of the house for that matter.

Would this even be a history-making auction without a Johnny Cash guitar? Of course not. The Man in Black’s 1956 Martin D-21 fetched $215,900, and with its battered top and vibe off the charts, that, legitimately, feels like a good buy.

And so it went on, Paul McCartney’s Yamaha BB-1200 (an underrated bass guitar) sold for $228,600. Oh, and another David Gilmour guitar breaking the multi-million-dollar mark with his Wish You Were Here 1969 Martin D-35 going for $2,393,000. A lot of money, but you can be damn sure that it’ll make your Em7 and open G chords sound godly.

Last, but by no means least, one of the coolest guitar-related items to be auctioned in opening salvo from the Jim Irsay’s über collection is taken from the Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound,’ the 600-watt/300-watts-per-channel McIntosh MC2300 power amp nicknamed Budman. It sold for $381,000. That’d add a little punch to your backline.

So there you have it. As a wise man who is known to collect the odd guitar (to play them too), always says, “A guitar is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.”

But that's not all from Jim Irsay Collection. There will be a further three epic auctions, with the Icons of Popular Culture going live today, (March 13), The Jim Irsay Collection: Icons of Music going live on March 14, while the Jim Irsay Collection: Online, which is live from March 3 to 17.

See Christie's for more details.

The Jim Irsay Collection: what sold and for how much?

• David Gilmour Black Strat – $14,550,000
• Jerry Garcia Tiger – $11,560,000
• Kurt Cobain Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang – $6,907,000
• Eric Clapton’s MTV Unplugged Martin 000-42 – $4,101,000
• Eric Clapton’s Gibson SG “The Fool” – $3,003,000
• David Gilmour’s Wish You Were Here Martin D-35 – $2,393,000
• George Harrison’s 1964 Gibson SG Standard – $2,271,000
• John Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Model 1996 – $1,270,000
• John Lennon’s 1963 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins – $1,270,000
• The Beatles' 1966 Vox Kensington prototype – $609,600
• Prince’s Custom ‘Yellow Cloud’ Electric – $635,000
• The Edge's 1976 korina Gibson Explorer – $635,000
• George Harrison's Maton 'Mastersound' – $279,400
• Johnny Cash's 1956 Martin D-21 – $215,900
• Gibson circa 1954 Les Paul Custom prototype – $152,400

Many famous guitar collections are simply impressive – but some go far beyond that. So far, in fact, that they become as culturally important as anything found in a museum and raise questions about the role private guitar collections play in preserving pillars of modern culture.

Jim Irsay, who died last year, was that kind of collector. The catalogue of his collection reads like a roadmap of American pop culture and includes everything from the original paper-roll manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road to Miles Davis’s Martin trumpet and, of course, some of the most important guitars the world has ever seen.

“As a very wealthy individual, Jim Irsay had the means to collect so many iconic objects, which most of us can only dream of,” says Amelia Walker, who is specialist head of the Private & Iconic Collections at Christie’s.

“But I think he was genuinely just a really nice guy who loved guitars, loved music, and felt a responsibility to look after these things and steward them onto their next home. I think he was aware that you can’t be buried with these things – you are but the temporary custodian of them.

“So I think his main aim was to bring them together and let people access them, and he did a lot of touring exhibitions. He got the instruments played by The Jim Irsay Band, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd played the Black Strat. So I think he was very open to sharing them. And because he was also a player, I think he knew that, where the instrument’s condition allowed, these things should be played – they should be loved and warmed up and all of that sort of thing.

“While he was definitely somebody who had them behind glass in his office – which I think is every guitarist’s worst anticipation of what happens at auction – he did also play them.”

Eleanor Jane, founder and editor of Eleven magazine and the book Superstar Guitars, concurs, recalling her time documenting Jim Irsay’s instruments in a similar light.

“His office was like a museum – but one in which you were encouraged to interact with the artefacts,” she recalls. “I photographed the guitars up close and personal – a phenomenal collection of hitmaker after hitmaker. After the photoshoot, Mr Irsay arranged for a private concert for me and the team, demonstrating the most iconic guitars and flying in some of the best musicians around to perform and jam, including Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

“He even drove in Hunter S Thompson’s iconic ‘Red Shark’ car as an incredible backdrop for the event. This turned out to be the first of many, much larger, free concerts and exhibitions across the USA, in which Mr Irsay brought in artists such as Billy Gibbons and Tom Bukovac to perform, allowing thousands of fans an experience of a lifetime.”

All very commendable, but surely a collection of this calibre represents, in the final analysis, a cultural commonwealth of the kind that typically belongs in museums. Now that it’s all up for sale, is it likely that major pieces from the collection will end up in public hands again?

“Well, it’s interesting – and I’ve had the same conversations with people here in LA and in London,” says Amelia Walker. “You looked around the room at just a few of the highlights that we had and it was sort of like a museum exhibition, rather than an auction, because each of those items is an amazing item on its own individual merit, like you would see in a museum celebrating the best of the best of whatever category – and so it is museum-quality.

“People have all sorts of different thoughts and feelings about where collections such as this should end up, and I imagine there will be some participation from institutions.

“But people also forget that museums don’t have any money and it’s often down to generous philanthropic donations that they get pieces like this, like The Met collection donation from Dirk Ziff, which is one of the most incredible philanthropic donations ever, in this world [of iconic guitars].

“So it’ll be interesting to see who bids on these items. I suspect it will be a huge, varied mixture of guitarists, collectors, museums and investors.”

Indeed, the authenticators behind high-profile sales of this kind have to employ the sort of forensic approach normally reserved for academics.

With many of the modifications made to famous guitars taking place over decades on dim backstage workbenches or even at the hands of DIY-oriented players themselves, how do latter-day specialists determine what changes have been made (and when) in order to establish provenance?

Sometimes techs keep methodical, detailed notes over the years, but that kind of evidence is rare when it comes to fully confirming the backstory of iconic guitars.

“It’s a really good question and it keeps me up at night a lot of the time,” Walker says. “But we do our utmost to talk to every single person who’s touched that instrument, in terms of the techs, the roadies, the restorers, the dealers. Obviously, with the Black Strat, Phil Taylor wrote a whole book about it, so he was very, very involved, so we’ve obviously spoken to him recently.

“We do everything we can to get to the bottom of modifications, and we’re really lucky to be able to call up people like Seymour Duncan and ask, ‘Do you remember doing this? Is that what happened?’ And most of the time, people are so kind and generous with their recollections or their records, and it’s part of our due diligence process.

“But we do have to include a caveat that we will never be able to fully list every modification that would have happened since 1970, for example. This was a big issue with the Jeff Beck sale because they were Fenders [Beck’s Strats] and he continually swapped necks around and continually swapped the pickups around, and did it himself without telling his techs most of the time.

“I had such a nightmare trying to marry things up. We have a very clear line that we try to be spot-on with everything, but we cannot possibly list the full modifications, and part of being a touring and recording artist’s instrument is being modified for their needs. So that’s what we do. Basically, we go to pretty extreme lengths to try to get to the bottom of everything.”

• Christie’s will auction The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall Of Fame, including the iconic guitars in this feature and others, plus some of the most important cultural objects of the 20th century, on the evening of 12 March. For more information on the four-part sale series, visit Christie's
• Photographer and editor Eleanor Jane’s new book, The Guitar Chronicles, is due to be released on 17 September via Welbeck.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Christie's has just announced the details of the historic sale of the Jim Irsay Collection. Widely regarded as the greatest guitar collection on Earth, it will be auctioned off in a series of sales in 2026.

Compiled over decades by the late billionaire businessman and owner/CEO of the Indianapolis Colts, the Jim Irsay Collection has achieved a mythical status, as it includes some of the most famous acoustic and electric guitars to ever exist.

“Jim Irsay was an incredible collector with an eye for rare treasures tied to the most important moments in our collective history,” explains Christie's Americas President, Julien Pradels.

“It is a privilege to offer this renowned collection at Christie's, giving collectors and visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view, be inspired by, and bid on these objects.”

The first live sale is set to feature around 50 lots, comprising some of the most sought-after treasures in the collection

Highlights include David Gilmour's “Black Strat,” Kurt Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit 1966 Fender Mustang, Jerry Garcia's “Tiger” guitar, John Lennon's 1963 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120, George Harrison's stage-played Gibson SG, and Eric Clapton's MTV Unplugged 1939 Martin 000-42.

The once-in-a-generation auction will kick off with almost 400 items, tracing pivotal moments in music, film, sports, pop culture, and, of course, guitar, history, over four auctions from March 3 to March 18 – alongside a free, public exhibition at Christie's New York from March 6 to March 12.

For more information, head to Christie's.

John Mayer’s PRS Silver Sky signature guitar has proven to be incredibly popular with fans in recent years, but one luthier has taken it to interesting new heights – reimagining it as the "Golden Sky".

Jay Faires, commissioned by Grammy-winning producer/guitarist Eric Krasno, has converted a prototype SE Silver Sky, complete with a custom neckplate and plenty of wild electronic accoutrements to boot.

Without getting into the weeds of the mod job, it's clear that Faires has bestowed this electric guitar with some serious kit. Its stock single-coil pickups have been replaced with three humbuckers, which are joined by a rather switch-heavy control panel with two individual jacks.

Unfortunately, there’s no specific breakdown of the work done, but there are four mini-switches, likely operating split coils and phasing for the pickups. There’s also a battery compartment in the back of the guitar, which could be for active pickups or something like a built-in gain boost.

With its three-humbucker layout and smorgasbord of switches, it injects the Silver Sky with a serious Jerry Garcia ‘Tiger’ vibe. Not surprising, since Mayer himself honors Garcia’s music in Dead & Company. That, and Faires and Krasno bonded over a shared love for the Grateful Dead. A Tiger/Silver Sky mash-up, then, makes total sense. And we’re all here for it.

There looks to be plenty of similarities in the layouts. The Tiger had 12 different voices, and the Golden Sky seems to have stayed close to that crazy template.

“I have been a fan of Eric’s since age 13, discovering his band Soulive and keeping up with his playing ever since,” Faires writes on Instagram. “It didn’t come as a surprise to discover that he, too, had a deeply-rooted love and appreciation for the Grateful Dead: the last time Phil Lesh & Friends came through Boston, Eric kindly invited me to see the show.

“What I didn’t know at the time was that it would be the last time I got to see Phil Lesh play. That experience meant a great deal.

“It was fitting that we later started chatting about the conversion work I do,” he continues. “He mentioned he had a prototype SE Silver Sky that would be a fun platform to make something extra special – and the rest is history! The Golden Sky is now complete and in Mr. Krasno’s hands.”

As a scroll through his Instagram feed proves, Faires has a long history with Garcia-like mods, but it’s fair to say he’s outdone himself this time. He was the only man for such a madcap job.

Meanwhile, tube amp loyalist John Mayer, who has surprised the world by releasing a signature plugin with Neural DSP, has explained what finally convinced him to put his faith in digital emulation.

Warren Haynes will play a trio of electric guitars tied to three bona fide guitar legends at Gov’t Mule’s celebratory show at New York’s Beacon Theatre on New Year’s Eve.

The show will be the band’s 50th at the iconic venue and will be a celebration of all things 1971. It's been described by Haynes as “arguably the greatest year in rock music history,” and he’ll play three guitars that Jerry Garcia, Dickey Betts, and Bob Dylan made history with for a special set.

The first of those is Jerry Garcia’s 1976 Travis Bean TB500 #11. It featured extensively on the Grateful Dead’s ninth album, Terrapin Station, and was played at over 90 shows before it was auctioned off in 2013. The late great is said to have retired the guitar once the Tiger came into his life.

Dickey Betts' main guitar between 1969-71 – a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top Dark Back – will also play a key role. The guitar starred in their iconic Fillmore East shows and was used to track the Allman Brothers Band’s first three albums – The Allman Brothers Band (1969), Idlewild South (1970), and Eat a Peach (1972).

Rounding out the trio of history-makers is “the guitar that killed folk”: the 1963 Fender Telecaster that Mike Bloomfield played during Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival set, the first time he went electric.

It was later used to record Highway 61 Revisited, a record that saw Dylan further establish his rockier, more electrified sound. The Tele, which went up for sale for $275,000 in January, received a crude left-handed modification sometime after Bloomfield opted to swap it for a ’54 Les Paul in late 1965.

John Nuese, who took the hacksaw to the instrument, was the guitarist during Gram Parsons' early career.

Haynes will use the guitars to perform songs from a barmstorming year in rock. Albums released that year include Led Zeppelin’s IV, the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, and John Lennon’s Imagine, which should give you an idea of the evening’s setlist.

After years of trying to convince him, Haynes and Gibson finally worked on a signature Les Paul earlier this year. It's loaded up, in a shock twist, with P-90s – and the hybrid pups might just be having a renaissance.

The greatest guitar collection on Earth is set to be sold next spring when artefacts from the late Jim Irsay – widely considered to be one of the most renowned gear collectors of his time – go up for auction.

For guitar fans, Irsay’s collection needs no introduction. It’s not a stretch to say it’s perhaps the most culturally significant and historically important assortment of guitars to ever be curated. The list of guitars included in the collection reads like the stock inventory of a museum.

It includes many of rock and pop’s most famous electric guitars, many of which Irsay purchased himself at auction for multi-million dollar deals over the years. Highlights include (but certainly are not limited to) Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang, David Gilmour’s Black Fender Stratocaster, Jerry Garcia’s Tiger and the Strat Bob Dylan used to ‘go electric’ at the Newport Folk Festival.

That’s before we mention The Fool SG, which once belonged to Eric Clapton and Todd Rundgren, and John Lennon’s Gretsch 6120 Country Gentleman. Oh, and Irsay’s collection also features instruments and guitars once played and owned by Prince, Eddie Van Halen, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and more.

Such is the cultural significance of Irsay’s collection that he was once offered $1,000,000,000 (yes, one billion dollars) by a “middle east element” as part of a deal that would see it be relocated to Dubai.

Irsay held on to it, though, and in August this year he put his world-famous guitar collection on public display. In a bid to keep the legacy of each guitar alive, he was also prone to lending a few of his prized possessions to big-name players for live performances.

Now, in light of Irsay’s passing – and in a move that answers everybody’s queries as to what will happen to his collection – the entire thing will be offered at Christie’s New York in a series of auctions beginning in March 2026.

“Christie’s is honored to offer this magnificent collection, so lovingly compiled, maintained, and shared by legendary collector Jim Irsay over decades,” says Julien Pradels, president of the Christie’s Americans region.

“These extraordinary objects will be made available to passionate collectors around the globe, who have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of history, and provide this exquisite collection its next chapter.”

Given that a handful of the Irsay-owned guitars are already auction record-breakers in their own right, it feels very safe to say that this particular auction will set a new world record for guitar auction sales that will most likely never be beaten.

Gilmour’s Black Strat, for example, was picked up for $3,975,000. Irsay forked out $4,550,000 for the Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang. The Fool SG set him back $1,270,000.

These are all now going to make their way to new collectors, and given the caliber of guitars included in the auction, expect individuals with very deep pockets to spend big when the event rolls around next year.

Simply, it promises to be the biggest guitar auction event of all time.

Head over to Christie's to find out more in the meantime.

Irsay passed away in May this year, and was honored by his football team Indianpolis Colts with a memorial Stratocaster.

CORRECTION 6/18/25: A previous version of this article used a headline that incorrectly described Tom Lieber as a co-designer of Jerry Garcia's Wolf guitar, when the sole designer and builder was Doug Irwin. GuitarWorld.com is happy to apologize for the mistake.

Every gear company will have a pedigree of talent that it’s most associated with, though in the case of Lieber Guitars, it boils down to one band above all others – rock ’n’ roll originals the Grateful Dead.

Lieber Guitars owner Tom Lieber got his big break in 1974, when he was hired as an apprentice to Northern California luthier Doug Irwin, who had already made several instruments for the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia.

Those instruments included Wolf, the first custom guitar Irwin built for the ’Dead guitarist. When Lieber came on board, he helped Irwin create Tiger, a unique build that became Garcia’s most-played guitar. He also made a custom bass for Pete Sears of Jefferson Starship.

Lieber parted ways with Irwin in 1977 and went on to develop the Spider Grinder bass, which Stanley Clarke adopted in 1979. Clarke then requested an all-graphite bass, a project that awarded Lieber four patents and led him to form the Spellbinder Corporation with Clarke in 1980.

Other designs – including the Lieber Speedneck, the custom Gigerstein and the Butternut – followed, and since then, Lieber's instruments have been seen in the hands of Paul McCartney, Victor Wooten, Blondie’s Chris Stein and many other professionals.

Around the turn of the millennium, Lieber was asked to build a Tiger six-string for a client and decided to revisit his past as a full-time pursuit – producing top-of-the-line, custom-made instruments. He now oversees a range of Garcia-centric favorites, from limited-edition models to the Coco series, as well as basses connected to giants like John Entwistle, Clarke and Sears.

Below, the builder gives us a look into the business he’s running today.

How did you first get into guitar building?

“It helps to be a player first. That was the driving force for me to find a more refined tool in my hands. Around 1970, Alembic Inc. started a revolution with Jack Casady’s $4,000 bass. I was into what [Alembic co-founder] Rick Turner was talking about, but I couldn’t afford one. The only way to get one was to build it myself.

“I moved to California to find an apprenticeship and went to Alembic with some instruments I’d been modding, but they told me there was no room at the inn. I ended up getting put in touch with Doug Irwin, who worked for Jerry Garcia.

“I found Doug working out of a small chicken shack and convinced him to take me on. He needed nobody; Jerry was his only customer. I told him, ‘Dude, I’ve come a long way to learn. I’m going nowhere!’ I basically forced myself upon him.”

What are the most important things to remember about making these instruments?

“You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Everyone always says it must be nice building guitars, and I tell them, ‘Yeah, but the knowledge you need is broad; it goes well beyond what you think!’ I never expected I’d have to be a machinist and know how to take everything apart, repair whatever went wrong and then put it all back together. If you can’t do that, you’ll never be a boutique builder.”

Which of the Grateful Dead models did you end up making first?

“I began with the Pendulous bass, which was one of three models Doug and I did back in 1975. What became the Tiger was the ‘Garcia.’ And there was the Firedrake, which was a combination of the Pendulous and the Tiger.”

What was Jerry Garcia looking for?

“Jerry’s guitars were always a working platform. He liked to try different stuff, which was great for us. Not all of it worked. As a builder, your ego can get in the way if you’re not paying attention. For the player, the guitar should be comfortable like an old pair of shoes. There should be nothing foreign about it.

“As much as players say they want the Holy Grail, they usually want what they already have. Alembic were building all sorts of guitars for the Dead, who owned a portion of the company at one point. Bless Rick Turner, but he couldn’t get Jerry to play his guitars.

“On his own time, Doug got to use the Alembic shop to build. He made the Eagle, but he couldn’t afford to put the Alembic electronics, so he threw in some passive stuff. Jerry picked it up and loved it.”

And the rest was history?

“Pretty much. Jerry then contracted Doug to build the Wolf. At the time, Jerry was playing a modified Strat called the Alligator. Doug decided to make something similar. In a genius way, Jerry ended up thinking Doug was the greatest builder on the planet because he did the one thing Alembic refused to do.

“He’d been given loads of great guitars; he just didn’t know because he never liked the electronics. With those Fender pickups inside, Jerry was happy. That’s what sold him to Doug. It was just a case of paying attention.

“There was Gibson spacing for the strings at the bridge and nut, but with the Fender scale. It was one of the first long-scale Gibsons. I don’t care what anyone says, what Paul Reed Smith builds today is what Doug and I made back then.”

Your guitars were quite experimental for the time, featuring exotic woods and brass lines.

“Nobody was doing that kind of stuff. A lot of the exotic woods came from Doug’s time at Alembic. We were using purpleheart and padauk, plus other woods you probably shouldn’t use.

“We were always experimenting. We got the Wolf back for repair and had no idea what to do next. There was a Travis Bean [guitar] on the bench. Nobody was happy because Jerry had been playing that instead.

“I inspected the thing and noticed it weighed a lot. So we decided to stop worrying about weight and put together a hardwood laminate design. That’s how the Tiger came to be. Doug’s vision was a laminate sandwich with the brass going around the side. The only thing I had to do was bleed out the woods before assembly. The design and shape of the guitar was also mine. It took off – 40 years later!”

Which guitar is your best seller?

“Last year I sold more Garcias, which are high-end. Before that, I was selling one a year and then tons of the Coco models. The Spellcaster basses were going out the door for a while. For me, the Garcia stuff sells more than other stuff like the Butternut guitar. I’ve only ever made one Gigerstein and don’t plan to do any more, but it was amazing to work with [Swiss artist] H.R. Giger.”

What makes your guitars different from everything else out there?

“Lots of people build, but not many of them instill themselves into everything they make. With my creations, I can promise you that’s what happens. A piece of me goes into every guitar. I haven’t built a single guitar where I didn’t shed a drop of blood. I will cut myself or get a splinter or prick my finger at some point.

“I only make one of each guitar. There were 53 Spellbinder basses from 1980, and I did 24 Garcias for the Grateful Dead’s 50th [anniversary] – 12 Tigers and 12 Wolf models, all made out of sustainable materials. Other than that, it’s always one of everything. The way I look at it, there are other people doing replicas of this stuff. Mine are all originals.”

• See Lieber Guitars for more details of these incredible guitars.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The late Jerry Garcia played a key role in cementing the Grateful Dead’s legacy as the behemoth it is today, serving as the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist. His influence was so profound that the rest of the band doubted whether the group could continue without him after his passing in 1995.

“I didn’t think it would [go on], because when Jerry left, that was the end of the Grateful Dead. Period,” drummer Bill Kreutzmann tells CBS Mornings. “There’s just no way that you can replace Jerry Garcia.

He continues, “There’s great, wonderful players out there that can sit in, but Jerry had this thing. He took over the whole stage. He had everybody’s attention. He had all the musicians’ attention, and we followed him very closely. He would hold the rhythm down, sometimes a lot. It was a way of not ever getting lost when he was on stage.”

The band did indeed disband a few month’s after Garcia death. However, since then, there have been a number of reunions by the surviving members and combinations of different musicians – and guitarist Bob Weir insists that Garcia still very much serves as a source of inspiration, even visiting him in his dreams.

“I had a dream not long ago. In the dream, Jerry comes to me and he says, ‘Listen, I’m going to invite a song in to meet you,’” he explains. “‘I want you to meet this song,’ and then he goes and does that.”

He continues, “[The dream] solidified in me the notion that, yes, these characters that we evoke when we sing the songs, and these lines that we play, they're living things. They come and visit our world and they come through us.”

Earlier this month, the Grateful Dead received this year's Kennedy Center Honors alongside Bonnie Raitt, Francis Ford Coppola, and Arturo Sandoval.

John Mayer is continuing his gear love-in as part of Dead & Company’s Las Vegas residency at The Sphere.

Having played Jeff Beck’s Strat during a show last month – a fact Joe Bonamassa confirmed – he has now paid homage to Jerry Garcia by sporting a replica of his famous Alligator guitar.

As YouTuber Justin Jeske astutely points out, the guitar was, this time, not the real deal, but a rather convincing Fender Custom Shop reproduction.

Posting an Instagram story before Dead & Company’s July 11 show, Mayer said: “Gonna play this for a couple of tunes tonight... it's a replica. I was practicing with it in the dressing room and it was feeling too good to put down. Don't wanna pull a sneak on ya.”

Jeske also adds that Mayer's PRS Dead Spec Silver Sky mirrors a number of the Alligator's key specs. That includes three vintage-voiced single-coil pickups and a brass-plate Alembic Blaster preamp inspired by Garcia's in-built clean boost. Clearly, Mayer has been chasing a little of the Grateful Dead guitarist's tonal magic.

The eagle-eyed YouTuber also speculates that the guitar has been his green room practice guitar for a little while now, as it was spotted in the background of a photo Train's Scott Underwood posted online, presumably taken in Mayer's green room.

The guitar was seen sitting alongside a rack-mounted Kemper modeling amp and a cab – possibly a Vox – as a practice set up for the guitarist before curtain call. But the replica has proven so good, it's made its way onto The Sphere's futuristic stage.

Replica or not, however, the guitar isn't exactly falling under the budget banner anytime soon. The Fender Custom Shop Masterbuilt Jerry Garcia Alligator Stratocaster – to use its Sunday name – is currently listed online for prices ranging from $20,000 to $25,000.

Mayer used it for I Need a Miracle, the opening song of the night, and tonally, it sounded as supple as they come, practically purring through the song's lead lines.

Though, Mayer later returned to Instagram for some post-match analysis, noting, “I forgot that the output on this guitar is *hot* and my rig wasn't dialed in for the unbridled fury of Jerry's guitar tone.”

Mayer's live rig is perpetually under scrutiny from gear lovers – and gear snobs – and he's been the subject of recent speculation surrounding his amp choice for the residency shows.

Some feared he'd switched to digital amps. But it turns out Mayer has a secret hiding place for his amps as he works around the venue's stringent volume rules.

Jerry Garcia is revered almost as much for his guitar tinkering as his guitar talent. Now the immense custom guitar rig he used throughout his 1992-1995 dates with The Grateful Dead is up for auction.

Expected to fetch a final price of between $500,000 to $750,000 the rig has several remarkable features. Fortunately, the auction site Analogr has shared some decent pictures and we can get a closer look at the setup.

“Jerry's most sophisticated guitar setup was the culmination of decades of experimentation with state of the art gear and fine tuning,” says Analogr’s listing. 

“Needing the flexibility of working with a speaker-less stage setup with the Dead, and his more traditional three- and four-speaker cabinets with the Garcia band, this rig could perform in both contexts and meet Jerry's lofty sonic requirements.”

Central to the build is a Groove Tubes Trio preamp [the brown unit], which is an interesting model from the firm’s pre-Fender era. 

The triple channel tube amp is designed to replicate the cleans of a classic black panel Fender amp, while the ‘Mean’ channel covers cranked Tweed tones to Marshall’s 2203 circuit and ‘Scream’ brings it into shred-friendly modded-Marshall territory.

Moving down, you can see Garcia’s unique vertical rack-mounted pedalboard. 

Admittedly, with prices of $400+ for each, that vintage script logo MXR Phase 100 and Mu-Tron III wah (said to date back to 1976) are not exactly cheap on the used market.

However, elsewhere it’s inspiring to see how much off-the-shelf gear is included here, with Garcia otherwise favoring a bevy of Boss pedals, including the OD-1 and OD-2 (each paired with a GE-7 EQ) and an OC-2 octave pedal.

The most notable element of the rig, though, is the McIntosh MC-2300 power amp, which was used by Garcia’s bandmate Bob Weir in the Grateful Dead’s iconic 1974 Wall of Sound setup – and favored by Garcia as far back as ’73. 

McIntosh is a name usually associated with high-end hifi products, but the fastidious Garcia insisted on using them for the ’Dead’s power amp requirements. 

The name will also have piqued the interest of the auctioneers as Garcia’s famous Budman McIntosh 2300 sold at auction for $378,000 in 2021 – despite carrying a guide price of just $5,000 – $7,000.

Will the trick be repeated? Well, we’ll have to wait until the auction closes to find out, but at the time of writing, it’s already fetched bids of $75,000. 

For more information and to take part in the bidding on Jerry Garcia’s final tour rig, head to Analogr.

It’s been a busy news day when it comes to the Grateful Dead’s guitarists, as Bob Weir recently teamed up with Jason Isbell to cover Johnny B. Goode at Michael J. Fox’s recent fundraising event.

And in other Grateful Dead gear news, PRS has launched the ‘Dead Spec’ Silver Sky, a new take on John Mayer’s signature model inspired by Jerry Garcia’s Alligator Stratocaster.

PRS has unveiled the next evolution of John Mayer’s hugely popular Silver Sky signature guitar – the limited-edition ‘Dead Spec’ Silver Sky.

Said to be sonically inspired by the iconic Alligator Stratocaster once owned by late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the Dead Spec variant was purpose built for Mayer’s most recent Dead & Company tour, and is the first-ever model to deviate from the flagship template that was first introduced in 2018.

For those who kept an eye on this year’s Dead & Company farewell tour, the Dead Spec Silver Sky will no doubt be a familiar sight: since it was quite literally designed for the live shows, it’s seen plenty of stage action.

After the model was given one of its very first outings back in April, Mayer then made headlines when he once again wielded the “Advance Research Division” prototype model for a knockout guitar-swapping solo.

Naturally, its early appearances prompted an outpouring of speculation, with many Mayer fans theorizing that the blues-rock ace was in fact road-testing a new version of his Strat-a-like signature model.

While this, strictly speaking, might not have been the plan from the outset, it soon became clear to both Mayer and PRS that the Dead Spec Silver Sky was simply too versatile to keep away from fans – especially those keen on Mayer’s Dead & Company material.

As Mayer explains, “After playing the Silver Sky designed for the 2023 Dead & Company summer tour, I realized the guitar was special. It quickly became apparent this wasn’t just a tool for one particular job but could be extremely versatile in other players’ hands.”

At first glance, it looks to be a newly finished Silver Sky model, but upon closer inspection the suite of Dead & Company-specific updates can be found. At its core, a lightweight swamp ash body has been drafted in to replace the original's alder appointment, which in turn has been finished with an ultra-thin version of the Moc Sand colorway.

The Dead Spec design is also hardtail, meaning that although a modified version of the original’s bridge system is retained, it doesn’t function as a tremolo as the body itself has no room for a spring cavity, rendering the Gen III as a string-through bridge.

Having said that, the brass block of the bridge – which runs through the depth of the body – is still there, though is kept in place by a smaller cavity. This, according to PRS, “adds a musical warmth”, and works alongside a brass nut and string retainer bar that adds to the resonance and tone.

This deceptive spec lines up alongside arguably the Dead Spec’s most notable new appointment: a brass-plate Alembic Blaster preamp.

When early images of the six-string first surfaced, many spectators believed this was in fact the case, and now it is confirmed. Unlike the standard Silver Sky guitars, the Dead Spec version has an Alembic Blaster that adds the option of having a straight boost (thanks to the additional switch). There’s also an internal pot for adding 3-14dB of extra gain.

This directly pays homage to the same spec that was equipped to the original Alligator, and in practice is said to offer added punch and definitive note separation, as well as compensating for signal dips over long stage cables.

“We made this non-tremolo guitar with a lot of brass, which gave the guitar [a] beautiful warm midrange, and the Alembic Blaster switch that cleared everything up and gave the guitar some courage,” said Smith, who also revealed the first prototype took around five days to build.

“The first time I played it, I was smiling – I really like it,” he went on. “The other thing I love about this guitar is that the finish sinks into the wood. It’s part of the guitar, so the guitar feels alive in your hands. That’s really cool.”

With all that said and done, we have but one question: since the Dead Spec was specifically built for Dead & Company’s tour, and since that group has played their final tour, what does the future hold for Mayer’s own personal model?

Will he start using it during his own headline shows, or will it be removed from his guitar rotation entirely? Well, Mayer has left the door open for future shows with Bob Weir and co, so we imagine it will still come in handy at some point down the line.

Only 1,000 units of the Dead Spec Silver Sky will be made, and are available to preorder now for $3,350 each. Head over to PRS Guitars to find out more information.

John Mayer is enjoying a strong streak of signature guitar releases. A few months ago, he and Martin celebrated 20 years of signature models with two Gray Sunburst acoustic guitars.

Jim Irsay has revealed that he has received an offer from a “middle east element” to purchase his renowned pop culture and guitar collection in its entirety. 

The businessman and Indianapolis Colts owner has steadily acquired the world’s finest collection of iconic guitars, music and sports memorabilia.

It includes some of rock music’s most famous electric guitars, among them David Gilmour’s Black Fender Stratocaster, Jerry Garcia’s Tiger, the Strat Bob Dylan used to ‘go electric’ at the Newport Folk Festival and the Fender Mustang that Kurt Cobain used in the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit. 

And that’s before we get on to the world’s only complete Beatles drum kit, the original single-scroll manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and even Muhammed Ali’s Championship belt from his 1974 Rumble in the Jungle victory over George Foreman.

Now, in a new conversation with Eddie Trunk, Irsay says the offer from an unnamed middle eastern contingent mirrors some of the recent big money moves made from the region into sports like golf and soccer. 

The purchase offer, which it seems Irsay has turned down, would have reportedly seen the collection moved in its entirety to Dubai.

“I was offered by a middle east element – kind of like what’s been going on in golf a little bit – 1.150 billion dollars for the collection,” Irsay tells Trunk [around 58 mins]. “They wanted to move it to Dubai and they wanted it in totality.”

While Irsay does not go into further detail about the origin of the bid, it would likely have meant the loss of a significant chunk of the US’s cultural heritage.

Currently, Irsay periodically displays the collection and arranges free tours and performances featuring celebrity names – for instance, Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s performance of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb on Gilmour’s Black Strat last year.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Irsay explains his attachment to the collection and discusses some of the most valuable items – revealing that the most expensive purchase was not a guitar. 

“I’ve put this together for 25 years, with blood, sweat and tears,” says Irsay. “The collective of this ‘collection’ is so incredible, because there’s nothing like it. And you can’t get certain things anymore. You can’t get [Jerry Garcia’s guitar] Tiger anymore. You can’t get David Gilmour’s Strat or the Beatles drum kit. It’s just not out there. 

“The highest [value] thing that was bought at auction was actually Ali’s belt,” continues Irsay. “That went for almost seven million dollars. 

“[Then] the guitars keep breaking records. Gilmour’s Strat went for four million and 67 nations tuned in to that auction… Everything keeps going really up in value, because they’ve been owned for more than 20 years.”

In the same conversation, Irsay also names his favorite guitar from his $1 billion collection. If you want to hear the whole chat, head to The Eddie Trunk podcast. 

For more on some of the instrument’s from Irsay’s incredible haul, read about the 12 most expensive guitars sold at auction.

John Mayer has unveiled the latest addition to his enviable electric guitar collection – an all-new prototype replica of Jerry Garcia’s iconic Wolf guitar, which the Sob Rock star has taken on the road for Dead & Company’s last-ever tour.

Flexing his latest piece on Instagram, Mayer said he wanted to give fans a glimpse of the guitar prior to the supergroup’s first gig of 2023 last Saturday (January 14) so that those who attended didn’t mistake it for the real deal.

Built by Bill Asher of Asher Guitars, the replica Wolf was commissioned by Doug Irwin, the mastermind behind Garcia’s original guitar, and was reproduced with access to all of Irwin’s original design blueprints.

“I’m honored to have received the prototype of a very special guitar,” wrote Mayer. “Doug Irwin, the luthier who built Jerry Garcia’s famous 'Wolf' guitar, commissioned the great Bill Asher to faithfully recreate the original using all of Doug’s original drawings and templates. 

“The result is pretty unbelievable,” he continued. “How unbelievable? I have to make sure to post this before tonight’s Dead & Company show to make sure people don’t mistake it for the real thing!”

Mayer is a particular authority on the Wolf guitar and one of the best players to test-drive Asher’s replica, having played Garcia’s original axe in 2019. Though the guitar was sold at auction in 2017 for $1,900,000, Mayer was given the opportunity to play it to honor Grateful Dead’s music two years later.

“I can confidently say Doug and Bill nailed it,” Mayer concluded. “It shall always be played with love for this music and a culture that’s accepted me with open arms. See ya on stage…”

True to his word, Mayer gave Asher’s Wolf replica plenty of action during the band’s gig at last Saturday’s Playing In The Sand festival in Cancun, Mexico. In fact, he used it right from the off, starting the set with a cover of Grateful Dead’s Sugar Magnolia.

Preview footage from the band’s two sets can be found on Dead & Company’s official YouTube account – the whole set can be purchased from nugs.net – with footage also showcasing Mayer using Wolf 2.0 for a rendition of St. Stephen.

In some photos from the event, Mayer can also be seen donning his over-the-ear headphones, which he started using during Dead & Company gigs in 2021 as they gave him “more of a dynamic touch on the guitar”.

Since the replica is identical to the original 1974 Wolf, that means it features a purple heart body with bookmatched curly western maple on the top and back. Elsewhere the fiddleback maple and purpleheart neck runs through the length of the body, with the original’s removable pickup plate also returning.

Mayer’s example is one of only 10 replicas to be made by Asher and, owing to the guitar’s heritage, it comes as no surprise that all 10 have already been sold.

“The Irwin-Asher 'Wolf' guitar, limited to only 10 masterfully built instruments, will be among the finest replication of this iconic guitar played by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead,” a statement on Asher Guitars reads. “Using Irwin's original templates and drawings, 'Wolf' will also be crafted from Irwin's private 30-year-old stash of figured maple. 

“This replica will embody all the classic tones, contours, and details of Jerry's original, combined with Asher's unique artistry and craftsmanship,” it continued. “Limited to only 10 builds, which sold out in a matter of days, each will be accompanied by a signed Certificate Of Authenticity, as well as a hard-cover pictorial book of the Irwin-Asher journey.”

To find out more about the replica, head over to Asher Guitars.

Dead & Company’s current tour will be their last one ever, after it was announced that the group will be disbanding later in 2023. The tour will bring about an end to the project after eight years, which have seen Mayer share the stage with Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.

Visit Dead & Company’s website for a full list of upcoming dates.

2022 would have marked the 80th birthday of the late Jerry Garcia, and to honor the occasion the Fender Custom Shop has unveiled an ultra-limited replica of the Grateful Dead guitarist’s iconic Alligator Stratocaster.

Limited to only 100 units, the Masterbuilt recreation is a meticulously crafted ode to Garcia, and pays tribute to the “nature of collaboration and community that Garcia nurtured throughout his storied career”.

Austin MacNutt was the Fender Master Builder tasked with recreating the historic Alligator Strat, and worked to replicate every single scratch, modification and sticker that could be found on Garcia’s original axe with “staggering accuracy”.

The build was unveiled with the aid of longtime Garcia guitar tech Steve Parish, who had first-hand experience in the guitar’s extensive and illustrious modding history, including the small brass plate pickguard that houses the control layout.

“There’s a lot I can tell you about this guitar,” Parish said. “Jerry played a lot of guitars and a lot of Strats but he never had a favorite. He played Fender Twin Reverb because he loved it, and we collected every Fender we could buy. But this guitar quickly became his favorite.”

Fender’s replica aims to tell the story of Garcia’s Alligator Strat, which began in 1970 when Graham Nash gifted Garcia a 1955 swamp ash Stratocaster for his efforts while helping him record Songs for Beginners.

A love for the ‘55 soon blossomed, though a year later Garcia’s prized possession would undergo one of its first major mods: halfway through a gig at Boston Symphony Hall, the cold weather caused the Alligator’s pickguard to crack. A temporary fix was soon replaced with a Masonite and later a brass plate, with more modifications following suit.

By 1972, Garcia and Parish had introduced so many tweaks the Alligator had become an entirely different beast altogether, and was unrecognizable from the ‘55 that Nash had given him just two years earlier.

Further mods include a custom brass bridge with rosewood base plate, Schaller tuners, a retainer bar and the three iconic stickers, including the Alligator decal that gave the guitar its name.

All of these touches can be found on the new Alligator replica. Thanks to Garcia Guitars Foundation’s Andy Logan – who bought the original at auction in 2019 – MacNutt was able to consult the original Alligator up close. 

Not only did he take meticulous measurements and reference photographs, MacNutt was also able to confirm the Alligator as a ‘55 Strat, despite popular speculation that it was a ‘57 / ‘58 model.

Build-wise, the Alligator boasts a swamp ash body and one-piece rift sawn maple neck that was fabricated from a digital scan of the original, and comes equipped with the hammered brass control plate, custom brass bridge and Schaller M6 tuners.

In the electronic department, it features Josefina custom wound ‘55-style single-coils, which promise cutting highs, bell-like tones and a singing mid-range. These are wired to a custom clean boost output jack, as well as a five-way selector switch, master volume knob and two tone parameters.

Other appointments include a 7.25” radius, 1.625” brass nut, 21 medium vintage frets and a birdseye maple back plate. The Alligator, Harley-Davidson and Police Helper stickers also feature on the body.

“This guitar is a piece of American history,” said MacNutt. “There is so much history behind each alteration and modification made to the guitar; to have the opportunity to have the original for a day, take it apart, look inside and replicate it has been an honor.”

“Having the opportunity to replicate an iconic guitar from such a legendary artist is a Masterbuilders dream,” added Mike Lewis, VP of Product Development, Fender Custom Shop. “Recounting how each scratch was made, the stories behind each sticker and every modification made on the guitar felt almost like we were there with Jerry Garcia rocking on stage in the '70s. 

“We are so grateful to Steve, Andy Logan/Grateful Guitars Foundation, and the Jerry Garcia Family for their trust in us,” he continued. “Now 100 others will have the opportunity to carry on the Garcia Alligator Strat legacy.”

Of the build, Parish concluded, “When I see that, it’s a tribute to everything that we stood for and everything that we did and the achievement of Jerry’s playing. It also represents to me a slight shot at all the technical ways that we went so deeply into everything.”

The Alligator Stratocaster will be built to order, and carries a price tag of $20,000.

For more information, head over to the Fender Custom Shop.

Guitar amps used by The Who’s Pete Townshend and The Grateful Dead have been listed for sale on Reverb.com.

First up is a 1969/1970 Hiwatt CP103 Pete Townshend signature head and two matching cabs – all owned by Townshend himself – sold as a bundle for $100,000.

The head features “The Who” engraved on its front panel, while the cabs boast – according to the listing – the “exact same combination” of Fane and JBL speakers used by the guitarist both in the studio and onstage. It is, however, unclear when exactly Townshend used the amps. 

Additionally, the bundle comes with a certificate of authenticity, and the cabs will ship in their original road cases.

In terms of specs, the CP103 packs 100W of power, and features a custom circuit with four separate volume controls.

In another listing, a Fender Bassman “Chrysler” once owned by California rockers The Grateful Dead and played by guitarist Jerry Garcia is on sale for $55,872.

Purchased by the band at Leo’s Music in Oakland, California in 1969, the amp was subsequently customized by Garcia, who added the logo of automobile manufacturer Chrysler to its front face. Bought as a recording/spare rehearsal amp, it was used for overdubs on the title track from the band’s 1978 album, Shakedown Street.

The amp – which still sports its original speakers – also features a padded white vinyl covering its original tweed enclosure, and a handmade leather buckle handle.

The Bassman was launched by Fender in 1952, originally marketed as a bass guitar amp. Thereafter, its launch prompted other amp manufacturers to begin building higher-gain tube amps. Most notably was the Marshall JTM45, whose circuit was all but a clone of the 5F6-A Bassman’s. 

For more information on either the Hiwatt CP103 bundle or the Fender Bassman “Chrysler”, head to Reverb.

When it comes to John Mayer one thing’s for sure: for a guitar player, he gives a good interview. 

Just the other day we reported on his conversation with Dean Delray for the Let the Be Talk podcast, during which Mayer affirmed his love for all things Strat-like – so much so that he says it hindered his ability to be a bigger Led Zeppelin fan, whose Jimmy Page mostly played Gibsons. 

Now we’ve unearthed another electric guitar nugget from Mayer’s Let There Be Talk appearance, and this one has to do with the six-string that, he says, “changed him forever.”

And not only is he not referring to a Fender Strat, he also doesn’t mean his beloved PRS signature model, the hotly debated Silver Sky, or the PRS Super Eagle II, his main instrument for Dead & Company performances.  

Rather, Mayer is referring to Jerry Garcia’s Wolf guitar, custom built for Jerry by luthier Doug Irwin, and which sold at auction in 2017 for a cool $1.9 million.

Mayer played Wolf live onstage with Dead & Company this past June during a gig at New York's Citi Field, and, he recalled to Delray, "Here's what changed me forever: the tone of this guitar was so good. It's the one that's married to those songs. You don't even know if an EMI console sounds good or not; The Beatles recorded on it, it sounded good.”

"We don't know because that board made Abbey Road, it sounds good because it sounds like Abbey Road. So, this guitar sounds good because it sounds like Jerry, right?

"And all of a sudden, all I have to do is go 'bomp-bap-bomp-bap,' single notes, and I'm in heaven. And I realize, 'You got to get a guitar where the single notes make you happy.' You don't have to play that much at all."

Of course, as Mayer went on to explain, in the quest for good tone, one factor that doesn’t hurt is to just be, well, a good guitar player.

"Jerry Garcia played the guitar in this lighter way,” Mayer said. “It wasn't fiery, it was beautiful, it was bird-like; like birds are playing the guitar, and that has something to do wanting to hear it all the time because it's not adrenalized, it's a great way to look at it. I had to look it, like, 'Oh, a lot of these tones are quite pure, they're not in-between two pickups.'

"It's the way he played the guitar. If you're a good guitar player, you don't even need a good-sounding guitar, you'll find the one millimeter on the string over the pickup."

Back in 2017, Jerry Garcia’s custom 'Wolf' sold at auction for $1.9 million. Now another of Garcia’s famed electric guitars, 'Alligator', is going on the block.

The guitar is the headline item at Bonham’s Alligator!: A San Francisco Rock Star’s Guitars, Art & More auction, which is being held December 10 in Los Angeles.

Alligator, a Fender Stratocaster with a build date of 1955, was gifted to Garcia by singer Graham Nash in 1970. It became Garcia’s primary instrument between 1971 and 1973 and can be heard on the beloved Grateful Dead triple live album, Europe '72.

In addition to a swamp ash body, maple neck and natural finish, it features several stickers on its body, including the dancing alligator holding a knife and fork that gave the guitar its nickname.

Like virtually all of Garcia’s instruments, Alligator had numerous external and internal modifications done to it over the years, carried out largely by Alembic’s Frank Fuller and Rick Turner. Among them were replacement Schaller tuners, a customized brass control plate and a brass sustain block mounted on wood riser.

Bonham’s also reports that Alligator was originally fitted with a custom-made blaster preamp, which is no longer present, and that some of the wiring has been altered since Alembic's work on the guitar in the '70s, with all of the subsequent modifications made to the guitar while it was still in Garcia's possession.

Alligator is being sold in a red plush-lined hard case containing a "Manny's / Heavy" guitar pick, with a "Good Ol' Grateful Dead" sticker to the outside. 

The guitar is expected to fetch between $250,000 and $400,000.

For more information on Alligator – and also on Alligator!: A San Francisco Rock Star’s Guitars, Art & More – head to Bonham’s.

During Dead & Company's show at New York's Citi Field this past Sunday night, June 23, John Mayer abandoned his usual PRS in favor of a decidedly more iconic instrument. 

For the performance, Mayer used Jerry Garcia's legendary "Wolf" guitar, which is currently on display at the Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

You can watch Mayer play a few Grateful Dead classics on the guitar, including "St. Stephen" and "High Time," in the pro-shot livestream below.

Back in 2017, the Wolf guitar made headlines when it was sold for $1.9 million at auction, making it one of the most valuable guitars ever sold at the time.

Customized by luthier Doug Irwin, and labeled “D. Irwin 001," Wolf was first played by Garcia at a 1973 New York City performance the Grateful Dead gave for the Hell’s Angels. Garcia went on to use the guitar for countless performances and recordings over the following two decades. 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a new exhibit titled Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll, featuring more than 130 instruments that were used by artists including Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Metallica, Jimmy Page, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Steve Miller, Elvis Presley, St. Vincent, and more. 

According to Rolling Stone, the collection boasts instruments spanning from 1939 to 2017, and was curated from 70 private and public collections in the U.S. and U.K.

Some of the featured items, most of which have never been seen apart from their performances onstage, include Eric Clapton’s “Blackie,” Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstein” and Jerry Garcia’s “Wolf.”

Other highlights include Chuck Berry’s main guitar from 1957 to 1963, Jimmy Page’s “dragon-embroidered costume” worn during Led Zeppelin’s live shows circa 1975 to 1977 and St. Vincent’s electric guitar from 2015.

Play It Loud will go on display on April 8, 2019 through October 1st, 2019. It will then move to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

For more information, head over to MetMuseum.org.

Two years removed from the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary celebration and the triumphant “Fare Thee Well” stadium concerts in their native San Francisco Bay Area and in Chicago, the surprising, resurgent Deadmania has not subsided.

Indeed, the events of that year seem to have both rekindled the ardor for the group’s music in many Deadheads who dropped off the psychedelic bus following Jerry Garcia’s death in the summer of 1995, and also brought in many new fans who never had a chance to see the band but are attracted by the Dead’s amazingly diverse and appealing songbook, and the colorful, upbeat, Sixties glow that will forever surround the group.

The ongoing success of the many Phil Lesh & Friends lineups and, more recently, Dead and Company, featuring newish Dead convert John Mayer (playing with Bob Weir and Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart), show that the Dead’s legacy is very much intact and that the music is continuing to evolve.

The individual musicians in the Grateful Dead were never poll winners in music magazines, yet you would be hard-pressed to find a rock group with a core so adept at playing so many different styles—and always in an improvisational context.

They drew from electric and country blues, oldtime and bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll, soul, funk, Indian, New Orleans R&B, electronic and classical music; nothing was off-limits. Each of the musicians brought in different influences and forged his individual style. Nobody sounded quite like Garcia (often imitated, never duplicated), and the same could be said of Bob Weir, whose designation as a “rhythm guitarist” is hopelessly inadequate given the sophistication and depth of his playing.

Their styles couldn’t be more different, but they were completely sympathetic players, tightly enmeshed and equally in sync with bassist Lesh (another utterly unconventional player) and the drummers.

They brought it all together in a unique mélange that took them from the fire-breathing psychedelia of the late Sixties, to the Dead Americana of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, and far beyond. Along the way they built the most loyal fan base the music world had ever seen

What follows is a selection of the best live versions of 50 songs by the Grateful Dead (and a few cover tunes) spanning their history.

Why live performances? Because that’s where the magic happened with this band. Everyone, including band members, will tell you that studio albums never quite captured the Dead’s mystical X-factor. So, live recordings it is. Fortunately, the Dead had the largest archive of live tapes of any band ever, so there is much to draw from. The difficulty, of course, is narrowing it down to just 50. After all, hardcore Deadheads would argue that 50 versions of “Dark Star”—each different as can be—could be a list in itself.

And the fact is, this does go beyond 50: As you’ll see, for a number of tunes, there are second and third picks based on eras—songs such as “Dark Star,” “Playing in the Band,” “The Other One” and a few others changed radically from one period to the next (influenced by the change in keyboardists and other factors), so versions from each epoch get a nod.

As for the criteria for the choice of songs—most are ones that, over time, were most variable night to night either because of the jamming in them or the intensity of the vocal delivery, or some other elevating force. So why not have “Sugar Magnolia” here? Or “Deal”? Or “Touch of Gray”? Surely there are multiple versions of each that fit those categories. Of course there are, and so it is with nearly any tune you’d care to mention that is not here. Such are the cruel realities of list-making.

A couple of final notes: The songs are listed in chronological order by performance date. For the main picks, we’ve listed where they can be found on Grateful Dead–sanctioned releases (where applicable), most of which can be accessed through Apple Music and Spotify. But here’s the cool news: There’s a fantastic web site called headyversion.com that is the ultimate resource for listening to the “best” versions of Grateful Dead songs.

Not only do they appear in order of popularity according to hundreds of folks who have weighed in on their favorite versions of just about every song in the Dead cannon—280 versions of “Eyes of the World,” 27 versions of “Liberty,” 59 versions of “Jackaroe,” etc.—but the site also provides direct links to archive.org’s immense vault of Dead performances, so you can hear them all in just a couple of mouse-clicks.

Of course, there is no true consensus on any of this, but it is fair to say that there is widespread agreement that certain versions of certain songs would probably make most discerning Deadheads’ lists. Similarly there is general agreement on the Dead’s peak performance periods: 1968–1974, 1977, 1981–'82, 1988–'90; you’ll find a heavy concentration of Seventies performances here. In the end, though, opinions about “best” anything are always going to be completely subjective and also probably change over time.

50. “Victim or the Crime”
March 21, 1990; Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario

Call it jagged, gnarly, noisy or unpleasant, the fact is this dissonant late Eighties Weir song was a darkly powerful force to be reckoned with, and almost featured a harrowing jam, as its ascending lines crashed and clashed. This first-set version shows all its bludgeoning brute force (and sophistication), then dissolves into Garcia’s late-Eighties ballad tour de force, “Standing on the Moon”—which, truthfully, deserves to be on this list, too, so listen to both! Available on the Spring 1990 (The Other One) box.

49. “Foolish Heart”
July 19, 1989; Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin

Introduced two days after “Victim” in 1988, this melodic Hunter-Garcia number (occasionally paired with “Victim”) provided a bouncy contrast, somewhat in the tradition of “Franklin’s Tower.” This version, as presented as a bonus track on the remastered Built to Last CD, is mixed so that every instrument is clear and loud—you can really feast on Weir’s imaginative rhythm lines and Brent’s synth washes. And this is easily Garcia’s best-ever vocal on the song.

48. “The Music Never Stopped”
July 17, 1989; Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin

The best Eighties versions of this Weir tune, also from 1975’s Blues for Allah, have a ragged majesty and intensity that is unmatched by earlier ones. The song part is fairly similar one to the next, but the two jams at the end are where the fireworks occur. Chosen by Phil for his Fallout from the Phil Zone compilation.

47. “Dear Mr. Fantasy”
July 2, 1989; Sullivan Stadium, Foxboro, Massachusetts

From its introduction in the summer of 1984 until Brent’s demise in summer 1990, this relatively rare Traffic cover was a real crowd favorite. Brent would sing the first verse alone, Garcia would go wild between verses, and then sing the second verse as a duet, followed by more fiery leads, and in some cases—as in this incendiary version from 1989 (one of the Dead’s best years), go into the “Na-na-na” coda of “Hey Jude,” with Brent singing “Mr. Fantasy” in between the “na-nas.” Truly electric; Jerry goes off!

46. “Shakedown Street”
June 30, 1985; Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland

This song was Garcia’s great contribution to late Seventies funk, and this colossal version has been the deserving winner of every poll on the subject. The interplay between Garcia (again with the envelope-wah) and Weir (who artfully employs a phase-pedal wah and octave divider in the middle of the jam) is deliciously rhythmic, and Brent adds much with his keyboards as well. If spacey/strange is more your thing, look no further than this Seventies pick: Egypt 9-16-78 (no third verse or vocal coda, but jamming galore).

45. “Cassidy”
March 28, 1985; Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York

First on Weir’s solo Ace album in 1972, but not played regularly until 1976, this is another one that fully matured in the Brent era, thanks to his solid duet vocals and the more variegated jam near the end. This one hits all its marks beautifully, including a nice “landing” after the jam. Look for the “SteveSW” soundboard recording on archive.org.

44. “Uncle John’s Band”
October 12, 1984; Augusta Civic Center, Maine

Speedy and adventurous, this one has a searing middle jam and then a really long ride before the final vocal reprise—which doesn’t materialize! Instead, the boys drift into an unconnected spacey jam, then “Drums,” “Space,” a fantastic “Playing in the Band” reprise, and then back to the “Uncle John’s” vocal reprise; stunning! Available on the 30 Trips Around the Sun box. For an acoustic rendering closer to the Workingman’s Dead version, check out Harpur College 5-2-70.

43. “Lost Sailor” > “Saint of Circumstance”
October 10, 1982; Frost Amphitheatre, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

These two Weir-written nuggets, which date back to the summer of ’79 and were paired until mid 1986, show two sides of Bob’s writing. “Lost Sailor” is drifty and floaty, with a slightly odd structure (that works!); and “Saint of Circumstance” is a riff-heavy and ultimately anthemic rocker, which also has some unpredictable components. From December ’86 on, “Saint” appeared alone; usually not quite as potent as it was with the then-departed “Sailor.” (Still, check out this excellent Hornsby-era solo “Saint” pick: Giants Stadium 6-17-91.)

42. “Feel Like a Stranger”
August 10, 1982; Fieldhouse, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

When this wonderful Weir funk number—introduced in 1979, less than a year after “Shakedown”— appeared as an opener, it promised a “long, long, crazy, crazy night!” and laid the groundwork for exactly that. As with “Shakedown,” its success hinged on the meshing of different rhythmic lines from everyone in the band, with Jerry’s clucking envelope-wah dancing above Bob’s slashing chords.

41. “The Wheel”
December 14, 1980; Long Beach Arena, California

What a great moment it was at any show when the first golden notes of “The Wheel” would emerge, float into the air, and point the way to that rousing sing-along. It was best in the early Eighties, once Brent solidified the harmonies that were often rough in the late Seventies, and Garcia took more time getting into and out of the song. This one comes out of a fantastic “Estimated Prophet” and quickly rolls up to cruising speed and becomes very powerful; and the post-song jam is a thing of beauty, with Weir on tasteful background slide for some of it, before it eases into “Drums” (featuring Brazilian jazzers Flora Purim and Airto).

40. “Jack Straw”
January 11, 1979; Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York

Overall, my preference is for Brent-era versions, but there are many, many great ones from 1972 to 1979, and I have to concur with popular opinion that this one from the close of the Keith and Donna [Godchaux, singer] era smokes from beginning (“We used to play for acid/Now we play for Clive”) to the blistering ending jam. One of my longtime favorite Eighties versions is from Oakland Stadium 7-24-87, found on View from the Vault IV.

39. “Stella Blue”
October 21, 1978; Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco

It could be argued that this heavy, affecting ballad, introduced in the summer of 1972, is the single most perfect work that Garcia and [lyricist] Robert Hunter ever wrote, its power never diminishing through the years. This rightly revered version is, alas, cut near the end on the soundboard recording, but when it was officially released on Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 4, a patch from an audience-made recording was added, and it’s still the best there is.

38. “Estimated Prophet”
July 8, 1978; Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado

Year after year one of the most dependable tunes in the Dead’s second sets, Weir’s moody reggae number, with Garcia employing a wah-ish envelope filter, was played at most shows in ’77-’78 and was common for the rest of their history. The “song” part was reliable over time; it’s what happened in the jam that followed that Deadheads lived for. Here, it drifts evenly for a while, then picks up steam and rides high, before settling back down and eventually chiming into “The Other One.” Available on Red Rocks: 7/8/78.

Brent-era pick: Oakland 12-26-79 (major “clam” notwithstanding).

Nineties pick: Nassau 3-29-90, with [saxophonist] Branford Marsalis.

37. “Wharf Rat”
April 22, 1978; Nashville Municipal Auditorium, Tennessee

I’ve rarely encountered a “Wharf Rat” I didn’t love—which is good, because they played it a lot. Though I generally prefer the harmony vocals on the bridge in the Brent-era, the late Seventies versions have a distinctive haunting quality and some crushingly powerful jams. Here, the harmonies are fine, Garcia’s lead vocals are deep, and his playing outrageous and spectacular on the two concluding jams. Available on Dave’s Picks Volume 15.

36. “Black Peter”
October 29, 1977; Evans Field House, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois

Dark, passionately sung, with a wonderful, if brief, slide guitar solo, and then a completely rip-roaring finale that keeps on building to a sustained climax before it lurches into “Sugar Magnolia.” Look for the soundboard recording on archive.org.

35. “Terrapin Station”
September 3, 1977; Raceway Park, Englishtown, New Jersey

Introduced in March ’77, this multi-layered Hunter-Garcia epic was always solid during its first year, with this version—played as the encore of what to this point was their biggest show as a headliner—notable for both its precision and power; just about perfect. It combines a folk sensibility with its famous baroque-ish contrapuntal coda and crunching rock power. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 15.

34. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo”
September 3, 1977; Raceway Park, Englishtown, New Jersey

This perky little number took the Dead’s Americana thrust in a slightly new direction, with its nod to old-time jazz, as well as country flavors. It always built to a couple of nice peaks—the first instrumental and then the vocal coda (“Across the Rio Grande-o…”) and ending solo. This is another winner from the dynamite Englishtown show. Available on Dicks Pick’s Vol. 15.

33-32. “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower”
June 9, 1977; Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco

This powerful and diverse triumvirate had three distinct incarnations: ’75–’77, ’83–’85, and ’89–’95, while the bouncy “Franklin’s Tower” also enjoyed solo spins during the in-between periods. This titanic 31-minute marvel from ’77 crackles with electricity, with a booming “Help,” an intricate then relentlessly building “Slipknot!” jam, all resolved with a triumphal “Franklin’s Tower.” Available on Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings.

Eighties pick: Santa Fe 9-10-83 (“Slipknot!”).

Nineties pick: RFK Stadium 6-14-91 (with Bruce Hornsby and MIDI Jerry) “Franklin’s Tower” alone: Cape Cod 10-27-79.

31. “Sugaree”
May 22, 1977; The Sporatorium, Pembroke Pines, Florida

Again, lots of great choices from 1977. This one was vaultkeeper Dick Latvala’s favorite, a big reason he chose the show as Dick’s Picks Vol. 3, and it’s hard to argue against its greatness. It’s big, loping and jammed to the max between verses with everything from fast, intricate runs to powerful fanning to gentle guitar etchings. As the saying goes in the Dead universe: “All killer, no filler!”

30. “Comes a Time”
May 9, 1977; War Memorial, Buffalo, New York

The voters at headyversion.com get it right again. With this song, it’s all about Garcia’s vocal delivery and swelling, crying solo after the verses, and this one delivers in spades! My favorites are from ’76-’77, with Donna on sweet harmony vocals and Keith adding little piano touches to the spare arrangement. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 29.

It was still powerful when it was revived in the mid Eighties, and from that era I’d recommend checking out Richmond Coliseum 11-1-85, which has a fragile but committed Jerry really baring his soul. It almost falls apart, but the recovery is great!

29-28. “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”
May 8, 1977; Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

After a couple of years of “Scarlet” enlivening any set it appeared in, in March 1977 it was paired with the new “Fire on the Mountain” to become perhaps the most popular combo of songs in Dead history—it was played around 240 times. My own preferences run toward the driving, high-energy Brent-era versions ’79–’90 (I loved what Brent’s B-3 and backup vocals added), but it’s hard to argue with the primacy of Cornell ’77, which has the unbeatable ending “Fire on the Mountain” jam (but the best-ever “Scarlet” is the amazing Giants Stadium 9-2-78 version).

Eighties pick: Atlanta 11-30-80.

Nineties pick: Hamilton 4-22-90 (tight, great MIDI Jerry). “Scarlet” alone pick: Fresno 7-19-74.

27. “Morning Dew”
May 8, 1977; Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

This song was great in all eras, always a highlight when it appeared. The subtext of the Bonnie Dobson–penned folk ballad could not be more dire—the last man and woman on earth after a nuclear holocaust!—but in the Dead’s hands it was both delicate and filled with heavy pathos. At this show, it closes an incredible second set, with Garcia and company reducing the place to rubble with the ending buildup—the mark of a truly great “Dew.” A pre-hiatus version to check out is Winterland (San Francisco) 10-18-74.

From the Eighties, it’s hard to top Augusta, Maine 10-12-84.

26. “Crazy Fingers”
June 9, 1976; Boston Music Hall, Boston, Massachusetts

Played briefly in the mid Seventies and then from ’82 on, the ’76 versions capture the spirit of the jewel-like Blues for Allah version, with this one a particularly satisfying rendition, with its breezy, reggae lightness. Available on Road Trips Vol. 4 No. 5.

Eighties pick: Frost Amphitheatre 10-10-82.

25. “Eyes of the World”
August 6, 1974; Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City, NJ

So many contenders! Even though this is another tune that was great in every period, only versions from ’73 and ’74 included the amazing, still-unnamed jam that would materialize after a few minutes after the final verse (and following Phil’s dependably monstrous bass solo), in which the group bopped through an intricate series of key and tempo changes, jazzy intricate unison lines that were miles away from the song, and then soared on the “Eyes” groove for several minutes.

I love the relaxed-but-still intense vibe of Seventies “Eyes”; by the early Eighties the tempo had increased and the tune sometimes lacked that liquid-sunshine flow the song begs for. This one, clocking in at 19 minutes, is just about flawless in every respect. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 31.

Eighties pick: Greek Theatre 5-13-83; Seventies tempo, lots of jamming, nice work by Brent; look for the soundboard version on archive.org.

Nineties pick: Nassau Coliseum 3-27-90; gotta give some love to the magnificent first show where saxophonist Branford Marsalis sat in with the Dead, and fit in perfectly!

24-23. “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”
June 26, 1974; Providence Civic Center, Providence, Rhode Island

This was a tough one. The version 10 days earlier from Des Moines, Iowa, (6-16-74) has a slightly better “China Cat” and a cooler between-songs jam, but Providence has a fantastic long intro to “China Cat” and better “I Know You Rider,” so we’re going with that choice. Both are wonderful (as are most of these loping ’74s), filled with excellent interplay. Available on on Dick's Picks Vol. 12.

Eighties pick: Madison Square Garden, New York; 3-9-81. I really love all the peppy [keyboardist] Brent Mydland–era “China-Riders,” too. This one is over-the-top spectacular, with super high-energy jamming all the way through its generous length; one of several highlights in an amazing show from an underrated year.

Nineties pick: Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, California; 6-16-90. Strong late Brent-era version with hot extended jam (including MIDI flights) between tunes and solid “Rider.” Available on View from the Vault III.

22. “Truckin’ ”
May 19, 1974; Portland Memorial Coliseum, Oregon

Another nearly impossible choice, with more than 500 versions to pick from! Again, we lean early: ’72–’74, when Keith was in the band, Phil was at his most prominent musically, and the jams following the song typically opened up the widest and wildest. Like on this one—talk about the Group Mind in action! This one bounces and grooves forward with so much vigor and purpose before it falls into a funky jam and eventually ends up at “Not Fade Away.”

21. “Here Comes Sunshine”
November 30, 1973; Boston Music Hall, Boston, Massachusetts

It’s difficult to fathom why this lilting, bopping tune was only played during 1973 (and once in ’74), then dropped until 1992. Yes, the Beatles-ish harmonies were a challenge, but the jams were varied and often tremendous. Phil really shines on this version, but everyone is on-point. The harmonies were better in the Nineties, but the jams not nearly as interesting. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 14.

20. “Weather Report Suite”/“Let It Grow”
August 4, 1974; Philadelphia Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Weir’s three-part “Weather Report Suite” (“Prelude” > “Part One” > “Let It Grow”) was an important part of many shows only in ’73-’74; then “Let It Grow” alone was a fast-paced, multi-textured spin-off from ’76–’95. This version of the suite is spectacular, and leads to a long jam where Billy Kreutzmann takes the “Let It Grow” pulse and drives it frenetically in jazzy directions, with Garcia’s wah-wah and Keith’s Rhodes sounding like electric Miles Davis. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 31.

Eighties pick: “Let It Grow”: Alpine Valley 8-7-82.

Nineties pick: Capital Centre 3-14-90.

19. “He’s Gone”
May 26, 1973; Kezar Stadium, San Francisco

Always a winner pre-hiatus (i.e. ’72-’74), this particular version has a perfect tempo, a top-notch lead vocal, Keith seemingly channeling country piano great Floyd Cramer throughout, a soulful stroll through the “Nothin’s gonna bring him back” coda, and then an extremely tasty melodic jam that’s as pretty as anything you’ll hear from this group. Don’t miss it! In the Eighties, the trio of Jerry, Bobby and Brent always did a nice job on that vocal coda.

18. “Cumberland Blues”
September 27, 1972; Stanley Theatre, Jersey City, New Jersey

This song was always much more rockin’ and intense in a live setting than you might expect, and many versions in the early Seventies stretched out nicely under that fast, shuffling beat. At this show it comes out of 30-minute “Dark Star,” so it feels like it has a little extra juice and sparkle to it. Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 11.

17. “Bird Song”
August 27, 1972; Old Renaissance Faire Grounds, Veneta, Oregon

Are you picking up a trend here? Yes the ’72 Veneta show, put on by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, is as good as its reputation. No collection should be without the superb 2013 set called Sunshine Daydream, which includes the full concert and also a DVD of the trippy, long-bootlegged-but-now-restored film of (some of) the event that gives the box its name. This was the year that “Bird Song” really blossomed; from here on out it was a cherished jamming vehicle (usually) in GD first-sets; not as common as some, but always welcome when it flew in.

Eighties pick: Greek Theatre 7-15-84; cool and jazzy.

Nineties pick: Greensboro Coliseum 4-1-91; strong Bruce Hornsby and [keyboardist] Vince Welnick contributions, and some great peaks over its 17 minutes.

16. “Playing in the Band”
August 27, 1972; Old Renaissance Faire Grounds, Veneta, Oregon

You can’t lose with any ’72 “Playing in the Band” (it was featured every night on the European tour), but this justifiably famous version has an acid-drenched, edge-of-chaos vibe that that makes it completely gripping for every second of its 23 minutes. There are longer and spacier versions, but this has everything it needs. Available on Sunshine Daydream.

Eighties pick: Laguna Seca 7-29-88; a rare later version that includes the “reprise.”

Nineties pick: Cal Expo 5-26-93—one of the band’s last truly great jams; the “reprise” comes later in the set.

15. “Good Lovin’ ”
January 2, 1972; Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco

As Pigpen’s raps on this tend to be fairly similar one to the next, with a few notable exceptions (such as Princeton 4-17-71 with the famous “Brooklyn Bridge” rap), I tend to judge them by what the band does behind him. This one, from the first show of their greatest year, is smokin’ and amazingly varied, even tucking in a bouncing “China Cat” at around the 18-minute mark, before bringing “Good Lovin’ ” to a close. Weir revived the song in earnest in 1977, and many fine versions of that more compact, but still energetic, showstopper abound.

14-13. “Not Fade Away” > “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad”
November 15, 1971; Austin Municipal Auditorium, Texas

If you’re looking for a song to play for non-Deadheads, go with this one. The jam in between the two songs is completely magical, quoting “China Cat,” dipping in to a “Dark Star”–ish space briefly, and flitting into all sorts of other interesting realms. For a stand-alone “Not Fade Away,” try Englishtown 9-3-77. For “Goin’ Down the Road” it’s gotta be Fillmore East 4-29-71, coming out of an exquisitely constructed jam that has “China Cat” and “St. Stephen” teases in it. Available on Road Trips Vol. 3 No. 2.

12. “Hard to Handle”
August 6, 1971; Hollywood Palladium, California

Pigpen and the band really kicked out the jams on this Otis Redding tune, an explosive element in so many Dead sets in 1969 and ’70. This version is one that could reasonably be called a consensus choice—almost everyone thinks it’s easily the best they played. With its churning rhythms, slashing guitar, crunching bass and high-octane build-up during the jam, it’s a gripping rock/R&B tour de force. Available on the bonus disc of Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 3.

11. “New Speedway Boogie”
May 14, 1970; Meramec Community College, Kirkwood, Missouri

The Dead played this only in late 1969–70, and then again from ’91 (at the outset of the first Gulf War) until ’95. We’re going with this 1970 version because of Jerry’s emotional vocal delivery and the snaky, all-too-rare, slide solo that leans heavily on the old country blues lament “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

For a Nineties pick, let’s go with Giants Stadium 6-17-91, which really shows what pianist Bruce Hornsby brought to the mix in that era. Collected on the bonus disc of Road Trips Vol. 3 No. 3.

10. “Dancing in the Street”
May 2, 1970; Harpur College, Binghamton, New York

This Motown nugget [originally released by Martha and the Vandellas] was still relatively new when the Dead started covering it in 1966. By 1969–70, it had expanded to a big jamming number, with all sorts of great R&B riffing (a quote from Archie Bell & the Drells’ “Tighten Up”!) and sinewy threads. This version is the titan of them all! Available on Dick’s Picks Vol. 8.

The song came back in an exciting, if vocally challenged, disco-influenced arrangement—also very jam-heavy—in 1976. My favorite version in that style is the long, ultra-funky one from Cape Cod Coliseum, 10-27-79, just the second time Brent played it live. Dig that clavinet!

9. “That’s It for the Other One”
May 2, 1970; Harpur College, Binghamton, New York

The mini-suite from Anthem of the Sun, incorporating “Cryptical Envelopment” sandwiching “The Other One,” was at its best from 1968–70, with ’69 its best year, but this one is my longtime favorite, for its many incredible mood swings, peaks and valleys; just an amazing ride. By ’72, “The Other One” had been cut loose completely from its original moorings, but it still careened across the Dead landscape as a compelling and constantly changing blast of trippy energy for the rest of the group’s career.

While it would be impossible to choose the best Seventies version of “The Other One,” the one I’ve enjoyed most often the past few years is from May 7, 1972, at the Bickershaw Festival in Wigan, England). Churning, sweetness, Phil bombs, space; it’s all here. Available on Europe ’72 Vol. 2.

For an Eighties pick, try April 23, 1983, at Veteran’s Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut. The first hints come during a tremendously strange and ominous “Space,” then a long build-up (guitars and talking drum!), a full-band jam around the main riff, and more than 13 minutes in, Phil leaps forward with the classic entrance. Not as wildly explosive as some (8-19-89!), but consistently fine for more than 20 minutes.

8. “Saint Stephen”
February 27, 1969; Fillmore West, San Francisco

This performance, which is the Live Dead version, is what hooked me on the Dead back in November 1969, and though there are many other killer versions, this one still resonates most strongly with me. It’s big, bold and has both punch and crunch. Sad to say, I never got to see them sing the “High green chilly winds” bridge into “The Eleven.”

Seventies pick: Boston Music Hall, 6-9-76. When “Stephen” came back after a five-year break at this show, it was slower, more delicate and had its “Ladyfinger dipped in moonlight…” bridge turned into a waltz, but it also opened up in ways it never had before. This very spacey extended version is unlike any other they ever played. Available on Road Trips Vol. 4 No. 5.

7. “Dark Star”
February 27, 1969; Fillmore West (San Francisco)

The Big Kahuna of the entire Dead repertoire, utterly different from era to era, “Dark Star” evolved into the band’s most open and exploratory jamming tune, living up to its name night after night. I’ve probably listened to the 2-27-69 version immortalized on Live Dead, more than any other piece of music, so I am hopelessly biased about its greatness—the worlds it visits, its elastic rhythmic pulse, the riffs that were perfected this night, the overall flow of the thing.

Seventies pick: County Fairgrounds, Veneta, Oregon, 8-27-72. After about 11 minutes of floaty, drifty goodness leading up to the first verse, the jam gradually accelerates and starts to go more “out,” as Phil signals a shift to a mid-tempo cruising altitude, then does it again a few minutes later for a long spacey stretch. Major dissonance/weirdness ensues at around 30 minutes and hits some frightening (but cool!) meltdown moments along the way; 32 minutes in all and truly epic! (Available on Sunshine Daydream).

Eighties pick: Greek Theatre, Berkeley, July 13, 1984. Played for the first time in two-and-a-half years, this is more in the vein of ’69 versions (even dropping in a couple of actual riffs from that era) and surprisingly self-assured—more to my taste than the best late-Eighties or early-Nineties versions, which relied so heavily on MIDI textures.

Nineties pick: Greensboro (North Carolina) Coliseum, 4-1-91. [Keyboardist] Bruce Hornsby loved playing (and teasing) “Dark Star” during his tenure, and this is my favorite with him—long, weird and noisy pre-“Drums” with lots of Garcia MIDI, a totally hypnotic “Drums,” and then a short, tasteful reprise (second verse).

6. “Turn on Your Love Light”
January 26, 1969; Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco

Admittedly, my favorite “Love Light” is the one from Frankfurt, Germany, 4-26-72 (first released on Hundred Year Hall), on which the band is unflaggingly spectacular—go Keith! [Godchaux keyboards]—but it has almost no Pigpen verbal riffing on it, so it’s not fair to choose it as the version. So I go back to Live Dead again and pluck this one, which has all the cornerstones I love—the crazy double-drumming, Pig at his most confident, band members chiming in on backups, and a crowd going appropriately nuts throughout. Not too short, not too long, this one feels juuust right.

5. "The Eleven"
August 24, 1968; Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

This song/jam was only around for about two years, but what a glorious run it had! Nearly every version is a blazing psychedelic swirl. The one on Live Dead (from 1-26-69) is the most famous (and also great!), but this one from a few months earlier is even more exciting and expansive. It just won’t quit—until it drops down into a devastating “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” Available on Two from the Vault.

4-3. “Alligator” > “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)”
August 23, 1968; Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

With these two Pigpen numbers, it was less about the songs than the jams they spurred. “Alligator” always led to a mesmerizing rare-for-the time double-drum duel between Mickey and Bill, and the jam after would usually build from a Jerry-plus-drummers noodle to a ferocious full-band boil before dropping eventually into the locomotive rhythm and big crescendos that lace together Pig’s visit to the mysterious Gypsy Woman in “Caution.”

Available on Anthem of the Sun expanded edition. And don’t miss the primal, acid-drenched version from the Carousel Ballroom 2-14-68, and for a “Caution” alone, Fillmore Auditorium 11-8-69.

2. "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl"
February 14, 1968; Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA

The slinky, Pigpen-sung “Schoolgirl” gave the early Dead a chance to stretch out on an easy shuffling blues groove, with Garcia and Pig trading licks on guitar and harmonica, and Phil always dancing on top with what was already a formidable bass assault. Available onRoad Trips Vol. 2 No. 2.

1. "Viola Lee Blues"
November 10, 1967; Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA

The longest and perhaps most intense versions are from the late period of the song’s relatively brief existence in the repertoire (such as Chicago 4-26-69 and Harpur College 5-2-70), but this one from 1967 really encapsulates what made this song such an important part of the Dead’s first years—it was the biggest jamming vehicle for the early group, capturing that era’s feral intensity, with all the parts interlocking, more by kismet than by calculation, Phil completely monstrous on the bass, and [Ron] Pigpen [McKernan’s] swirling organ still such a fundamental part of the sound. Available on30 Trips Around the Sun.

Last year, in honor of the late Jerry Garcia's would-be 75th birthday (August 1), the wonderful lads and lasses over at Reverb.com came up with a few new lessons in honor of the late Grateful Dead frontman and guitarist.

The first video, which you can (obviously) check out below, focuses on a much-loved Grateful Dead medley—"Help on the Way" and the intricate and relentlessly building"Slipknot!"

As Joe at Reverb explains in his lesson, "Nearly everything that is played in this section is a 7th chord arpeggio, so if you are familiar with your 7th chord arpeggio shapes, access them. If you have never learned 7th chord arpeggio shapes, then this is a wonderful exercise for you."

Up next, Joe tackles the infectious country-rock anthem “Casey Jones.”

As Blair Jackson wrote in Guitar World in 2013, although Garcia’s original acoustic guitar-voice demo is strikingly similar to the way it ended up on Workingman’s Dead, the first several Grateful Dead versions in early summer 1969 have a different vibe. The main rhythm has an almost Motown feel to it (think 'I Second That Emotion'), and there are a couple of fairly lengthy guitar extrapolations. It wouldn’t be too long, however, before the song found its finished form."

The song is full of simple riffs, but that doesn't make them any less interesting or intriguing.

Up next, it's "Althea."

Back to Joe from Reverb: "I heard 'Althea,' I felt that a whole new sonic landscape of playing was unlocked for me. Not only did I love the riff, but I also thought I could pick it up pretty easily. B minor, A, E. Got it. Now, what’s the other stuff in there that makes it sound like Jerry? Similar to the "Casey Jones" lesson, this is simplicity."

If you're in the mood for another Garcia lesson, complete with tabs, check out The Acoustic Stylings of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. And while you're at it, be sure to read Plastic-Free "Ocean" Guitar Unveiled in Honor of Jerry Garcia's 75th Birthday and The Grateful Dead's 50 Best Live Performances. And let's not forget How 1970's 'Workingman’s Dead' Changed the Grateful Dead Forever.

For more information about this lesson, head here.

A 19-disc live Grateful Dead box set—Pacific Northwest '73-'74: The Complete Recordings—will be available September 7, Rhino announced today.

The box set—which, for the less fanatical among you, will also be available in 3-CD and 6-LP formats—contains recordings of the band's shows at the P.N.E. Coliseum in Vancouver, B.C. (6/22/73), Portland Memorial Coliseum in Portland, OR (6/24/73), Seattle Center Arena in Seattle, WA (6/26/73), the P.N.E. Coliseum (5/17/74), Portland Memorial Coliseum (5/19/74) and Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA (5/21/74). Each show was mastered in HDCD from the original master tapes by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering. The transfers from the masters were transferred and restored by Plangent Processes.

You can listen to the set's first single—an epic, 26-minute medley including "Truckin'" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" recorded at the May 1974 show at the Portland Memorial Coliseum—below.

"This is a boxed set that's a long time coming," said David Lemieux, Grateful Dead archivist and the set's producer. "A couple of the shows have come very, very close to being released on their own through the Grateful Dead's archival release programs of the past 20 years, but we always held off in the hopes and expectations that they'd make a better boxed set."

"The music at each and every one of these six shows is unique, special, inspired, and at times transcendent," Lemieux continued. "The shows contain some of the most famous moments in Grateful Dead live history, including the 'Bird Song' from Vancouver '73, the Portland '74 'Truckin'' jam and the 47-minute 'Playing In The Band' from Seattle '74. Each of these six shows has a distinct musical personality, and we're excited that you can get to know all of them in their entirety, sounding better than we've ever heard them."

The set is available now for pre-order and will be shipped to arrive on September 7. Production of the set is limited to 15,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively from dead.net for $189.98. The set will also be available in its entirety as a digital download in Apple Lossless ($119.99) and FLAC 192/24 ($149.99) exclusively at dead.net beginning on September 7.

Rhino is also releasing a compilation highlighting the best performances from the box set. Pacific Northwest '73-'74: Believe It If You Need It will will be available as a three-CD set ($24.98) and on digital download and streaming services. The complete Portland Memorial Coliseum show from 5/19/74 will also be released on 180-gram vinyl as a limited edition (7,500 copies) six-LP set ($129.98).

You can preorder the set over at dead.net.

Pacific Northwest '73-'74: Believe It If You Need It

Disc One

"China Cat Sunflower" (5/19/74)

"I Know You Rider" (5/19/74)

"Bird Song" (6/22/73)

"Box Of Rain" (6/24/73)

"Brown-Eyed Women" (5/21/74)

"Truckin'" (5/19/74)

Jam (5/19/74)

"Not Fade Away" (5/19/74)

"Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad" (5/19/74)

"One More Saturday Night" (5/19/74)

Disc Two

"Here Comes Sunshine" (6/22/73)

"Eyes Of The World" (5/17/74)

"China Doll" (5/21/74)

"Playing In The Band" (5/21/74)

Disc Three

"Sugaree" (5/17/74)

"He's Gone" (6/22/73)

"Truckin'" (6/22/73)

"The Other One" (6/22/73)

"Wharf Rat" (6/22/73)

"Sugar Magnolia" (6/22/73)

What a difference a year makes. In February 1969, the Grateful Dead recorded a series of shows at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore West in the hope of finally capturing on tape the psychedelic alchemy of their already legendary onstage interplay.

The double album Live Dead, released in November that year, showcased the Dead at their adventurous and exploratory acid-peak best and cemented their reputation as the premier jamming band of the era. Yet exactly one year later, in February 1970, the group ambled into a recording studio and, in a single week, cut an album that was Live Dead’s polar opposite.

With its concise songs, bright harmonies and folk and country trimmings, Workingman’s Dead felt almost like the work of a completely different band—a stylistic shift as radical as when the Beatles followed Rubber Soul with Revolver. It was made with little overt commercial intent, but Workingman’s Dead instantly became the best-selling album of the Dead’s five-year career, and it set the band on a course that would eventually make it one of the most popular acts America ever produced, with a devoted fan base second to none.

Until Workingman’s Dead, the Grateful Dead’s studio output had been largely ignored by the record-buying public. That album’s immediate predecessor, Aoxomoxoa, released in June 1969, was a carefully crafted effort full of intricately arranged songs brimming with playful, colorful and at times impenetrable lyrics dense with hallucinatory imagery.

The recording sessions were long and expensive, and though the album contained a few future Dead classics—most notably “St. Stephen” and “China Cat Sunflower”—in the end it never really found a wide audience. Compared to the group’s live performances, it felt stiff and mannered. Live Dead addressed that dilemma beautifully and was still picking up steam in the winter and spring of 1970, winning new converts to the Dead’s uniquely trippy mélange, when suddenly a completely different-sounding Grateful Dead started popping out of a million radios.

The song was “Uncle John’s Band,” and instead of molten electric guitars and bass in epic flight over the crashing and cracking drums and cymbals of two percussion powerhouses, the song had a warm and intimate acoustic glow. The voices of guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and bassist Phil Lesh rose in bright harmony, and lyricist Robert Hunter’s words exuded a gentle homespun wisdom: “Well, the first days are the hardest days/Don’t you worry any more/’Cause when life looks like easy street/There is danger at your door…”

Could this really be the notoriously off-key-singing and lyrically opaque Grateful Dead? It was, and much of the rest of the album that “Uncle John’s Band” kicked off, Workingman’s Dead, reinforced the group’s apparent transformation from blazing psychedelic astronauts to rootsy troubadours steeped in folk and country music. The infectious country-rock anthem “Casey Jones”— famous for its daring chorus: “Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better watch your speed”—would follow “Uncle John’s Band” as an FM radio hit that year, and both the rollicking country-bluegrass-rock fusion “Cumberland Blues” and the simmering rocker “New Speedway Boogie” were also popular radio numbers.

After years of fringe success, the Dead had truly entered the rock mainstream. It was not, however, an overnight change in direction for the band. For one thing, the Dead already had strong roots in folk and country. In his pre-Dead days, Garcia had been in a succession of acoustic groups that played old-time country, bluegrass and traditional folk music, and Weir had been a fan of the popular folkies of the early Sixties, like the Kingston Trio and Joan Baez, and also learned to play some country blues.

Their first group together, in 1964, Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, drew from those worlds and added a dash of acoustic rock and roll, while Ron “Pigpen” McKernan brought in a cool blues sensibility. When those three started an electric band, the Warlocks, in the spring of 1965—adding Bill Kreutzmann on drums and, fairly quickly, Lesh on bass—some of the old folk/country repertoire came with them, including “Cold Rain and Snow,” “I Know You Rider,” “Stealin’ ” and “Don’t Ease Me In.”

Those types of songs stayed in the Dead’s repertoire during the group’s halcyon days in the San Francisco ballrooms. But as they developed their songwriting chops during the second half of 1967 and through 1968, their sound increasingly moved away from their original influences and toward more complex structures, unusual time signatures and open-ended jamming that drew more from Indian music (partly the influence of drummer Mickey Hart, who joined in the fall of 1967) and jazz. Short songs were few and far between as the Dead developed and perfected their uncanny ability to stitch songs and jams together with what sometimes seemed to be magic Day-Glo thread.

The fall of 1968 through the spring of 1969 marks the Dead’s fiercest, most confident and accomplished psychedelic playing, reaching its apex around the time that Live Dead was recorded at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore West. But changes were on the way. Perhaps the harbinger of the future direction was a song on Aoxomoxoa called “Dupree’s Diamond Blues,” Hunter and Garcia’s clever recasting of a popular story-song that originated in the early Twenties.

It’s a relatively straight narrative song with roots in blues and early 20th century pop tunes, driven by acoustic guitars. “Hunter and I always had this thing where we liked to muddy the folk tradition by adding our versions of songs to the tradition,” Garcia told me in 1989. “We had our ‘Casey Jones’ song [on Workingman’s Dead]. We had our ‘Stagger Lee’ song [on Shakedown Street, 1978]. ‘Dupree’s Diamond Blues’ is another of those. It’s the thing of taking a well-founded tradition and putting in something that’s totally looped.” Musically, he added, “it has a kind of carnival or medicine show kind of feel, and also a ragtime feel.”

By February 1969, Garcia and Weir occasionally broke out acoustic guitars onstage to perform “Dupree’s,” followed by another Aoxomoxoa tune based around acoustic guitar, “Mountain of the Moon.” But leave it to Garcia and the Dead to then figure a way to segue that second acoustic number right into the trans-galactic flow of that era’s grandest improvisational piece, “Dark Star.”

For his part, Hunter, who also had a deep background in older folk music styles, found himself being increasingly drawn to the Band. Their brilliant first two albums, 1968’s Music from Big Pink and 1969’s The Band (a.k.a. The Brown Album) had drawn from a multitude of early American music styles and fused them into an utterly distinctive and original rock amalgamation.

As Hunter noted in an interview I did with him in 1988, “The direction [leader/songwriter Robbie Robertson] went with the Band was one of the things that made me think of conceiving Workingman’s Dead. I was very much impressed with the area Robertson was working in. I took it and moved it to the West, which is an area I’m familiar with…regional but not the South, because everyone was going back to the South for inspiration at that time.”

It’s unclear to what degree the Dead’s turn in a country direction might have been influenced by their move out of San Francisco’s crumbling Haight-Ashbury district in mid 1968 to more rustic Marin County, north across the Golden Gate Bridge. Mickey Hart settled on a Novato ranch that had a barn and horses, and the others spread out in nearby towns. Hunter and Garcia (with his lady love, Mountain Girl) rented a large but modest house in the southern Marin town of Larkspur, and over the course of about a year, churned out one fantastic song after another.

Hunter often typed lyrics day and night and fed them to Garcia, who would quickly set them to music, sometimes within hours of their delivery. This is where the songs for Workingman’s Dead were born—“glorious days,” as Hunter said. Country flavors had been creeping into rock and roll in general for quite some time. Buffalo Springfield had a strong country and folk undercurrent in some of their material, as did the Byrds, Moby Grape and, by 1968, the Rolling Stones on Beggar’s Banquet.

That same year, Dylan went back to acoustic music on John Wesley Harding, followed in 1969 by the more overtly country Nashville Skyline. Meanwhile, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Poco had helped put country-rock on the map. Even though the Dead were playing some of their most challenging and adventurous psychedelic music during this period, offstage Garcia and Weir were listening to country music mostly. Garcia was increasingly being influenced by guitarists from the “Bakersfield school” of country music, such as Roy Nichols (of Merle Haggard’s group, the Strangers) and Don Rich (of Buck Owens’ Buckaroos), both tasteful and soulful string-benders.

In March 1969, at the end of a tour, Garcia bought a Zane Beck pedal-steel guitar at a music store in Colorado, and it wasn’t long before he brought the pedal steel onto the stage. At first, Garcia backed a country music–loving singer and songwriter named John “Marmaduke” Dawson in a tiny club south of San Francisco. Then, the fearless Garcia played it occasionally with the Dead on a range of country songs.

A few months later, Marmaduke and Garcia formed the country-rock New Riders of the Purple Sage, with Garcia on steel for the first year-plus. (Incidentally, with the Dead in this era, Garcia mostly played a mid-Sixties red Gibson SG—that’s his Live Dead ax—through his trusty Fender Twin Reverb amps, but also occasionally employed a sunburst Stratocaster. Weir favored a Gibson 335 or 345 through a pair of Twins.) In June ’69, the first three Hunter-Garcia songs that would eventually find a home on Workingman’s Dead were introduced.

“Dire Wolf” came first, a dark but whimsical tale about a man who invites a wolf into his desolate cabin in the woods for a game of cards, possibly to determine whether the wolf will eat him or not. “Don’t murder me,” the storyteller begs, but the cards are clearly not falling his way. Musically, it’s a simple folk song, and some of the early live versions were sung by Weir, with Garcia adding steel accompaniment.

Soon, though, Garcia reclaimed it, and on occasion in 1969 he would suggest that the crowd sing along on the chorus. “Casey Jones” was the next new tune to emerge from the Larkspur songwriting sessions, and though Garcia’s original acoustic guitar-voice demo from early June is strikingly similar to the way it ended up on Workingman’s Dead, the first several Grateful Dead versions in early summer ’69 have a different vibe.

The main rhythm has an almost Motown feel to it (think “I Second That Emotion”), and there are a couple of fairly lengthy guitar extrapolations. It wouldn’t be too long, however, before the song found its finished form. A day after the debut of “Casey Jones” came “High Time,” a gorgeous bittersweet ballad that easily could have come from George Jones, Merle Haggard or any number of other country greats. Garcia once complained that he felt could never quite do the song justice as a singer, but from mid 1969 through mid 1970, it became an important cornerstone of the band’s repertoire, often serving as a nice, grounding contrast to spacey songs such “Dark Star” and “That’s It for the Other One,” or the spunky combo of “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider.”

The Pigpen-sung “Easy Wind,” written by Hunter alone, started turning up in August 1969. Pig is convincing as a hard-workin’, hard-drinkin’ road laborer “chippin’ them rocks from dawn ’til doom/While my rider hide my bottle in the other room.” From the outset, the song featured slashing guitar counterpoint lines from Weir and Garcia and a funky R&B feel. It’s a perfect vehicle for Pig, who during this period mostly sang cover tunes, from Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle” to the Olympics’ “Good Lovin’ ” to “Lovelight.”

The final burst of new Workingman’s Dead songs arrived in November and December 1969, ironically, right after the release of Live Dead, which had virtually no overt country and folk textures. Musically, Garcia described the spry and speedy “Cumberland Blues” (which he co-wrote with Phil Lesh) as a blend of Bakersfield country and up-tempo bluegrass.

Lyrically, Hunter paints a picture of a coal miner’s woes in and out of the mines. Like the other new songs, it took the Dead’s fans to some completely new places that, miraculously, fit in with all the other, stranger spaces their earlier material occupied.

“Black Peter” was a dire Hunter-Garcia folk blues about a man on his deathbed, while “Uncle John’s Band” was an upbeat anthem that became an instant favorite of everyone who heard it. The influence of Crosby, Stills & Nash—friends of the Dead’s whose harmony-filled first album had been ubiquitous since the summer of 1969—was obvious, and though the Dead weren’t at that level as singers, they had an undeniable vocal chemistry, and that song, in particular, had a reassuring glow that drew listeners in, made them feel that they too were maybe part of “Uncle John’s Band.”

The last Workingman’s song to be born was “New Speedway Boogie,” Hunter’s somewhat enigmatic commentary on the early December 1969 Altamont Speedway Free Festival. The event—a West Coast version of Woodstock—was marred by violence, including the death of concertgoer Meredith Hunter by a member of the Hells Angels, who were there to provide security. “New Speedway Boogie” rumbles along ominously—a modified shuffle/boogie—as Garcia sings in broad metaphorical terms about harsh realities, lessons learned (or not) and the broader takeaway: “One way or another, this darkness got to give…”

By the time “Speedway” was introduced, the Dead had already decided to make an album in the winter of 1970, cutting at Pacific High Recording, a relatively new addition to the San Francisco recording landscape. They had spent many months and more than $100,000 of Warner Bros.’ money making Aoxomoxoa, so this time they were determined to take their relatively simple and straightforward new songs and record them as live as possible in the studio.

“Workingman’s Dead was done very quickly,” producer/engineer Bob Matthews told me in 2004. (Matthews’ familiarity with the band extended all the way back to the Mother McCree’s days with Garcia, Weir and Pigpen.)

“We went into the studio first and spent a couple of days rehearsing—performing—all the tunes, recording them onto two-track. When that was done, I sat down and spliced together the tunes—beginning of side one to end of side one, beginning of side two to end of side two. I got that idea from [the Beatles’] Sgt Pepper’s: ‘Before we even start, let’s have a concept of what the end product is going to feel like, sequencing-wise.’ They rehearsed some more in their rehearsal studio, and then they came in and recorded [on one of Ampex’s new 16-track machines]. But at all times there was the perspective of where we were in the album.”

The Dead had further honed their chops by playing a series of acoustic sets during the winter of 1969–1970, mixing versions of their new songs among folk and country covers. The entire album was recorded and mixed in about 10 days. Overdubs included Garcia’s pedal-steel parts, Pigpen’s harmonica, various acoustic and electric guitar parts and, of course, the vocals, which were certainly at a level the Dead had never achieved before.

The noted San Francisco poster artist Stanley Mouse and his partner Alton Kelley conceived of the now-iconic front cover: the band and Hunter in workingman’s duds standing on a nondescript street corner.

When Warner Bros. boss Joe Smith first heard the finished record, he announced to all within earshot that, unbelievable as it might seem, the Dead had made a hit record. Smith was right. The album immediately took the Dead to a new level of popularity, and when they followed up Workingman’s Dead with the tonally similar and equally momentous American Beauty (“Ripple,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Truckin’ ”) just a few months later, they solidified their place among the great bands to survive the Sixties.

The Dead never stopped playing long, jamming tunes, even as they continued to carve out one slice of distinctive Americana after another through the early Seventies.

But Workingman’s Dead turned the Dead into a song band, and it was the launch pad for everything that came after it. It was a big gamble, a radical change in direction, but it paid off like a royal flush.

In honor of the late Jerry Garcia's would-be 75th birthday (August 1), the Jerry Garcia Foundation has commissioned luthier and artist Tom Lieber to create an eco-friendly, plastic-free electric guitar. The new guitar, named "Ocean," is made from sustainable maple and features a fingerboard inlay image of a Garcia's etching titled "Fish."

The instrument will be played at benefit events to support causes that were meaningful to Garcia, including coral reef preservation.

Jerry's daughter Keelin and his wife Manasha were delighted to meet Lieber—of Lieber Instruments Inc.—at a foundation benefit event. "This guitar, Ocean, has been conceived with love and intent to serve as a symbolic vehicle for the Jerry Garcia Foundation to utilize in its continuing effort of expanding the positive world impact of Jerry Garcia's creative legacy," Lieber said.

Doug Irwin and Lieber were the designers and builders of Garcia's two most famous guitars, "Tiger" and "Wolf." In June, "Wolf" sold at auction for $1.9 million and raised more than $3 million for charitable causes.

The new eco-friendly guitar's journey will begin this month as the Jerry Garcia Foundation invites artists to play the instrument at benefit events in support of ocean conservation in addition to other worthy causes. In his lifetime, Garcia was an active advocate for coral reef preservation. Coral reefs are vital to the ecosystem and known as the "rain forests of the sea."

For more information, visit jerrygarciafoundation.org.

Here's an interview with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia from the December 1987 issue of Guitar World, which features Joe Perry on the cover. The original story ran with the headline, "Back From the Dead: A little grey around the edges but still as out there as ever, Dead Head Jerry Garcia is pickin’ his way to prosperity."

Jerry Garcia looked around the Grateful Dead’s rehearsal studio in San Rafael, California, and smiled. “It’s good to not die,” said Garcia, who suffered a nearly fatal diabetic coma in July of ’86.

The legendary guitarist whose mercurial improvisations are the life’s blood of the Grateful Dead’s music has made a miraculous recovery from an illness that at first left him incapable of walking, speaking clearly or playing. “I remember the moment in the hospital when he was recuperating,” said Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

“Once he came out of his coma, you could see that he has life back in him,” The first thing he asked for was his acoustic guitar. He must play, he’s an animal. He’s like a thirsty animal, like a shark, always eating, always playing. If he can breathe, he’ll play.” Garcia insisted that he was never aware of being seriously ill. “For me it wasn’t one of those near-death experiences,” he explained.

“It was very weird, it had a sort of science-fiction quality to it. But it wasn’t painful, it was cerebral. The weird part of it was that it took a while for me to get to the point where I was understood. I had to fish for everything.

"It was like everything was in random access, I know all the words, but I can’t get it out of myself. So for the first few days it was mostly sort of Joycean inversions of language, and then after a while I started to remember how it worked. But I had to do that with everything. They had to teach me how to walk again, and playing the guitar, I had to do that stuff all over again. But it was all there. I mean the bits and pieces where all there, but I didn’t have ready access to all of them.”

Within three months Garcia was writing songs and playing with his solo group, the Jerry Garcia Band. In mid-December the Dead returned to the stage, opening with “Touch of Grey,” the celebration of aging that Garcia wrote a few years ago with lyricist Robert Hunter. The concert was a triumph. Instead of falling apart after Garcia’s illness, the Dead re-emerged with new energy. The group went back on the road, finished a concert film they’d been working on for years, then recorded In the Dark, their first album in seven years, and possibly their most commercially successful one yet. To simulate live conditions, the band recorded the album in a Marin County theater.

“That’s how the energy got into it,” said Garcia. “It’s a nice little theater and it has great sound. We rented it, moved out stuff in and set it up just as though we were playing live. We didn’t have an audience, but it was that same mood. We did the tracks as though we were performing full out, so on some of those tunes I didn’t replace any solos.” Garcia and Dead soundman John Cutler produced the album, and the results are astonishing.

The compression of the guitars sounds on the recording is unlike anything they’ve managed in the studio over the years. “The arrangements are read,” said Garcia. “The mix is my understanding about how Grateful Dead music works. A lot of the producers we’ve worked with haven’t understood how Grateful Dead music works. There’s real structure to it, there’s real architecture to it and there’s real conversation, like in a string quartet, to it “The instruments speak to each other. But unless you mix it so that that’s intelligible, then it’s nonsense. That’s the sense of the music, it’s something I can’t communicate to a producer, but I can hear it.

“One of the things the Grateful Dead can do is provide that energy,” said Garcia. “The music is mostly pretty minimalist, it’s just what’s in the band—rhythm guitar, keyboards, bass, drums and lead guitar. It’s classic rock ‘n’ roll in configuration, but the style is all Grateful Dead. We get that stuff from everywhere, and that urgency is what the band can do. That’s what we’ve tried to get on record all these years and failed miserably at.”

The other band members agree that In the Dark is their first truly representative recording. “I’m really impressed with it,” said Hart. “I can listen to it, and normally I can’t listen to Grateful Dead records. We were able to capture the spirit of the band for the first time.” Bob Weir confirmed that the group’s relief over Garcia’s recovery spurred them on.

“He bounces off his little brush with death,” said Weir, “and the momentum that he picked up carried through to the recording.” That crystal-clear guitar tone did not come from any specific recording technique. “The difference is intent,” he explained. “Usually on a record I do my solos toward the end of the record, but I have this problem with my own playing. I can play okay but I can’t judge myself. When I function as a producer I’m a pair of ears and I can do that pretty well. As a performer I can perform pretty well, but I can’t do them both at the same time. So I’ve always had problems judging my own work.

“Classically, I say, ‘Ah, it’s good enough,’ I’ll do however many takes and say, ‘Ah, that’ll do.’ Then later on it turns out to be a little lame, maybe, not as good as it could have been, not what I really wanted it to be. It’s like an afterthought because it’s the thing that I end up caring the least about from a producer’s point of view. “The thing about a guitar solo is, the guitar’s register is right in the human ear space, it’s like the human voice, you can almost not bury it. It penetrates through every cut. The smaller the speakers get, the louder the guitar gets. And so it’s not a problem to mix, never a problem to get on the tape, it’s one of the easiest things in the world to record. Everything else can be a problem.

“The guitar solos on Grateful Dead records have suffered from neglect, especially, just because it was me responsible for them. That’s just the way I worked. But on this record, part of it I was able to overcome because we played live, and I actually played the solos when he laid down the tracks, so they had the energy they needed. On things where I replaced them and did them again or did a different sort of solo or left a hole for a solo, I was more concerned with making the solo concise and intelligent and work well, so I spent more time. This is me conquering the problem.” Garcia admitted to finding himself playing things on In the Dark that surprised him.

“But I always used to do that,” he quickly added. “I remember that much about my own playing. I don’t invent that much of it, a lot of it invents itself. It all comes from spending hours with an instrument, you have to put in the time, and the more time you in the more access you have to the whole file of guitar possibilities, because all music is a collection of possibilities.”

Garcia and the band had several years to play much of the new material live and develop its arrangements before making the record.

Garcia pointed out that he never played “Touch of Grey” the same way twice before it was recorded. When asked if the recoded version represents his idea of the ideal guitar sounds, he answered, “It has enough contrast with the other elements in the mix so that it comes through on its own. I selected the sound based on what it does with the other things, so it sort of fits in, it has sort of a bell-like top and that fits in with the bells and metal-like top end on the track. The process of selecting the tone on the guitar is an aesthetic process like any other, so you try a lot of different things. Most of the things I’ve tried I’ve tried in live performances, so selecting this tone was not a problem; and the band has gotten very, very good. On a great night, sometimes miraculous things happen. But for a record, it’s an okay record.”

What a long, strange trip it’s been … but of course, the Dead is more a live band than anything else, so you have to see this statement in context.

As usual, Garcia played his customized guitar on In The Dark. “I have one custom guitar which I play almost exclusively,” Garcia said. “I have others—sometimes you want a little texture, kind of a different sound or something My guitar is a mutation between a classic Fender Stratocaster guitar, which I played for years, and a Gibson solid-body like an SG or a Les Paul. It contains all sounds of the basic classic rock ‘n’ roll guitars. It does what I want it to do,” he smiles.

“It’s not really me—I don’t design guitars or any of that kind of stuff, since I don’t have that kind of mind. The guy that made this guitar, Doug Irwin, is a luthier, a guitar-builder. His guitars all have great hands. My hand falls upon one of them and it says ‘play me,’ and it’s one of those things not all guitars do. Some guitars definitely don’t do it, but his guitars do that and it’s just a special thing.

"It’s not entirely a matter of balance, it’s not a matter of dimensions, of measurable stuff, it’s something indefinable, but my hand loves it. There’s almost like a physical attraction. The man’s work is museum quality, the workmanship and the detail—it’s a beautiful instrument. But even the aesthetics of it are not what make me like them, it’s just the way it feels in my hand. I don’t know what it is, he doesn’t even know what it is, but he just builds them the way he thinks I would like them, and it works perfectly.” Garcia found Irwin by the same process of serendipity that he uses to explain a lot of the fortuitous coincidences he’s experienced.

“He was working for a friend of mine, I picked up a guitar that he had built the neck for at a guitar store and said ‘Wow! Where did this come from? I gotta have this guitar.’ I bought the guitar, and that’s the first guitar I’d gotten where he built the neck and then I said, ‘Who’s the guy who made this neck?’ and the friends of mine that he was working for said, ‘This guy over here.’ I commissioned him to build me a guitar, and he did, and I played that guitar for most of the seventies. "When he delivered it to me, I said, ‘Now I want you to build me what you think would be the ultimate guitar. I don’t care when you deliver it, I don’t care how much it’s gonna cost or anything else.’ A couple of months later he told me it would cost about three grand, which at the time was a lot for a guitar, since it was the early Seventies. He delivered the guitar to me in ’78, eight years later. I’d forgotten I’d paid for it.

“Whatever the guitar says to me, I play.”

The Dead Play Dylan

Most bands who’ve survived the near-fatal illness of their lead guitarist, then gone on to make their first record in seven years would pat themselves on the back and call it a day. But not the Grateful Dead. They decided to go out on a mind-bending mini-tour of the nation’s biggest stadiums with Bob Dylan. “It’s serendipity,” said the Dead’s lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia.

“Of course, it has to do with everybody being willing and wanting to do this. "The thing of where you almost lose a guy, whatever it was that anybody might have been reluctant to do before, it’s like, ‘we may never get a chance to do something like this again, let’s go for it.’ There is a certain opening up, loosening of that kind of spirit of adventure.”

Dylan, dubbed “Spike” because “we already have one Bob in the band,” was an ethereal presence in breaks during rehearsals at “Club Dead,” the band’s funky Marin County office-studio complex. As soon as the band set up to play, though, he crackled with a kind of musical electricity, his body coiled and radiating pure energy.

Once they start playing, the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan are such a natural combination that you wonder why it took them this long to get together. In fact, the Dead have been playing Dylan songs for years, and the feeling is that these sessions recall Dylan’s momentous Basement Tapes, recordings with the Band in the late Sixties. “His approach is very much like ours,” said Bob Weir.

“He’s loose and we just rattle around from song to song.” “It’s hard to describe,” said Mickey Hart. “He’s a great musician, one of the most important poets of the century. He brings this whole feeling with him, his smell, musically. We’re playing all kinds of songs. We treat it all like Grateful Dead music.” Together they cover a staggering range of material—folk, blues, rock, jug band music. Dylan’s ragged, insistent guitar strumming lays a new rhythmic foundation for the Dead, creating wonderful, surprising results on songs as varied as “Tangled Up in Blue,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Serve Somebody,” “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” and “Chimes of Freedom.”

For encores, Dylan joins the Dead on “Touch of Grey.” “A lot of the songs I know,” said Garcia, “but his versions of them now are sometimes very different from the ones I know. It’s a lot of fun. You get three or four of those serious Dylan rushes every day, that’s the fun part, and it’s authentic, it’s the real thing.” Garcia realized that there was a certain amount of rick to going out with Dylan. “Every band’s got its chemistry, got its special mojo, adding one new element to it can sometimes really screw up what’s there. Sometimes it can help, though, if you know enough about the music and you’re familiar enough with the guys that are playing.” Playing with Dylan, Garcia also tried a little steel guitar and banjo, instruments he hasn’t “really touched” for the last 10 years.

“We’re doing this voluntarily,” concluded Garcia. “We’re doing this consciously by way of an experiment. We know that it’s only gonna last so long, and maybe be an opening for future possibilities, too. There’s no simple way to characterize what’s going on here, because Bob’s got his own weight, there’s too much to him to find out about in a few weeks. He’s packing 20 years of stuff all by himself.”

Jerry Garcia is best known as the lead guitar player and primary singer/songwriter of the Grateful Dead.

Though they are regarded as pioneers of the “jam band” genre that rose to prominence in the late Sixties, the Grateful Dead, unlike many of their counterculture contemporaries, never faltered with the changing times.

Up until Garcia’s passing in 1995, they toured tirelessly, followed on the road by their loyal Deadhead fans for months—or years—on end. Of course, the Dead & Company still thrive.

This month, I want to honor Jerry with an examination of his funky bluegrass- and folk-tinged acoustic passages, all of which take place in open position.

Garcia’s bluegrass influences—he was a huge fan of Doc Watson and Arthur Smith—inform his tasty picking on “Ripple” (American Beauty), which inspires FIGURE 1, a passage comprising melody (notes coinciding with accent marks, “>”) and strums of fragmented open G, C and D chords. Garcia really cut his teeth on this style in the early-to-mid Sixties with Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers and Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions (the latter of which morphed into the Grateful Dead in 1965).

In this example, as you hold each chord shape, alternate-pick swing eighth notes, hitting the strings in the prescribed rhythm. The majority of non-open-string melody notes can be fretted with the middle finger.

In 1972, Jerry released his first solo album, Garcia. Many of the album’s tracks, including “Bird Song,” which informs FIGURE 2, found a permanent home in the Grateful Dead’s set lists. “Bird Song” showcases Garcia’s funky, syncopated approach to playing, as its groovy strums (bars 1 and 3) and single-note riffs (bars 2 and 4) indicate. (Note that most of these riffs are derived from arpeggiated C, G and D chords.)

To cop the intended feel of this passage, play with a “bouncy” 16th-note swing feel, and be sure to heed the 16th-note rests (don’t play each time you see the symbol that first appears during beat three in bar 1).

Though the traditional blues “Deep Elem Blues,” similar to what’s shown in FIGURE 3, had been a Grateful Dead concert staple since 1966, they never recorded it until their live acoustic release, Reckoning, in 1981. Played on the bottom three strings, this riff is essentially a supercharged blues boogie pattern—a guitaristic adaptation of “boogie-woogie” blues piano accompaniment, coupling a root-fifth power chord with additional tones (usually the sixth and flat-seventh).

These are played on higher strings in alternation with the chord’s fifth. Garcia takes this framework and funks up the joint with a slinky 16th-note groove, squeezing out numerous variations as the form unfolds (refer to the original recording). For another classic “Jerry” interpretation of this track (and “Ripple”), check out Almost Acoustic, the first of a pair of releases by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band.

Jerry Garcia’s infamous “Wolf” guitar hit the auction block at last night's Guernsey's auction in Brooklyn—and its sale will wind up raising more than $3 million for charity.

The guitar was bought by Brian Halligan, CEO of marketing group HubSpot and a lifelong Deadhead.

Halligan paid $1.9 million, which includes the buyer's premium, and his $1.6 million pre-premium bid was matched by an anonymous charity. You can see a photo of Halligan with the guitar at last night's auction right here,courtesy of the BBC.

All the proceeds from the sale will go to Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC).

“I’ve been a fan of the Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege. But the time is right for Wolf to do some good,” said Daniel Pritzker, a philanthropist, musician and film director (and devoted Deadhead) who bought the guitar in 2002 for $790,000. “My wife and I have long supported the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and if ever we needed the SPLC, we sure do need them now.”

For millions of passionate Grateful Dead fans, there is only one “Wolf," Jerry Garcia’s legendary guitar. Customized by luthier Doug Irwin, and labeled “D. Irwin 001," Wolf was delivered to Jerry and first appeared in a 1973 New York City performance the Grateful Dead gave for the Hell’s Angels. Over the following two decades, Wolf became almost as well known as the performer himself as it was played in countless concerts and on treasured recordings throughout Jerry’s fabled career.

Indeed, the 1977 film The Grateful Dead Movie directed by Jerry features extensive footage of the beloved musician onstage playing Wolf. From San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom to NYC’s Palladium to Egypt’s Great Pyramids, Jerry and Wolf traveled, appearing in front of massive, passionate audiences.

Jerry Garcia’s infamous “Wolf” guitar will once again hit the auction block with Guernsey’s—but this time to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Guernsey’s previously sold the guitar in 2002 at Studio 54, where it fetched nearly $1 million, more than doubling the existing world record for any guitar ever sold.

Now, Wolf’s buyer, wishing to support the important efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center and its continuing fight against racism and hate groups, has returned Wolf to Guernsey’s for an unprecedented one lot auction of this most treasured instrument.

“I’ve been a fan of the Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege. But the time is right for Wolf to do some good,” said the devoted Deadhead who purchased the Wolf in 2002.

“My wife and I have long supported the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and if ever we needed the SPLC, we sure do need them now.”

For millions of passionate Grateful Dead fans, there is only one “Wolf," Jerry Garcia’s legendary guitar. Customized by luthier Doug Irwin, and labeled “D. Irwin 001," Wolf was delivered to Jerry and first appeared in a 1973 New York City performance the Grateful Dead gave for the Hell’s Angels. Over the following two decades, Wolf became almost as well known as the performer himself as it was played in countless concerts and on treasured recordings throughout Jerry’s fabled career.

Indeed, the 1977 film The Grateful Dead Movie directed by Jerry features extensive footage of the beloved musician onstage playing Wolf. From San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom to NYC’s Palladium to Egypt’s Great Pyramids, Jerry and Wolf travelled, appearing in front of massive, passionate audiences.

“Rarely, if ever, has there been an item as memorable and noteworthy as Wolf being sold to benefit such a worthy cause,” said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s. “Guernsey’s is thrilled that the return of Wolf will go a long way to combat poverty, racism and injustice across the country.

The proceeds of the winning high bid on this guitar will go directly to SPLC.

“We are deeply grateful that the Wolf’s current owner is willing to part with this piece of music history to support the SPLC’s mission fighting hate and bigotry,” said SPLC President Richard Cohen. “As extremism moves from the fringe to the mainstream, we have a lot of work to do. This remarkable act of generosity only strengthens our resolve.”

[[ CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PHOTOS OF THIS GUITAR ]]

The Guernsey’s event, additionally supported by the Relix Group, will take place May 31 following an evening of music played by a lineup of extraordinary musicians live at NYC’s Brooklyn Bowl. Absentee bidders also will be accommodated.

Those interested in bidding should visit guernseys.com or contact the auction house in at 212-794-2280.

Warren Haynes celebrated the life and music of Jerry Garcia last night in a performance that featured one of the most famous guitars Garcia ever owned.

The custom Doug Irwin Tiger guitar had not been played in public since Garcia’s last show with the Grateful Dead on July 9, 1995, at Chicago’s Soldier Field. He died one month later, on August 9.

Haynes played the guitar as part of the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration with the Colorado Symphony at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado. The date of the show, August 1, is also Garcia’s 74th birthday. Haynes was joined by the Symphonic Celebration band, which includes drummer Jeff Sipe, bassist Lincoln Schleifer, singer Jasmine Muhammad and singer Jacklyn LaBranch, who served as a backing vocalist in the Jerry Garcia Band from 1983 until his death in 1995. Following the performance, the core group was joined by organist and longtime Jerry Garcia Band member Melvin Seals for a third set.

“We started thinking about ways to honor the occasion and who we’d like to have be a part of the celebration, and there really was no one who made more sense than Melvin,” Haynes tells JerryGarcia.com. “If all that wasn’t enough, having the opportunity to play Tiger for the very first time since Jerry played it at the last Dead show over 20 years ago, really is the cherry on top.”Earlier in the day, Haynes posted a photo on Facebook that showed him rehearsing for the show with Tiger.

Tiger’s appearance was made possible through noted guitar collector and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, who purchased the instrument at auction for $957,500 (with commissions) in 2002. (That record-setting auction also netted Irsay Garcia’s Wolf ax.)

Tiger, the custom guitar Jerry Garcia played during his final public performance with the Grateful Dead, will return to the stage in the hands of Warren Haynes tonight, August 1.

Haynes will debut the instrument tonight at Red Rocks in Denver as part of a performance with the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration tour, which features Haynes performing the music of the Grateful Dead with local symphonic orchestras.

Tiger has resided in the collection of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay since he bought it for $850,000 in 2002, he's loaning it out for this summer's tour. "Because [Garcia's] music lives on, there's a need to preserve the instruments that created the sound," Isray told Rolling Stone. "Tiger needs to be available for future generations to see and hear. I know this instrument, in the right hands, can produce sound capable of moving the human spirit to dance, to tears, and every emotion in between."

Tiger was crafted by luthier Doug Irwin specifically for Garcia in 1979, and, when Garcia's other main guitars were unavailable, was used during his final performance with the Dead at Chicago's Soldier Field on July 9, 1995. In 1972, Garcia began a long association with Irwin when he purchased a guitar called Eagle from the luthier. Garcia liked the guitar so much that he placed a custom order with Irwin. That guitar—dubbed Wolf, for the cartoon wolf sticker Garcia had originally applied below its bridge—was completed in 1973. When Garcia went to pick it up, he was so impressed by it that he placed an order for another custom guitar before leaving.

Wolf became Garcia’s main instrument for the next four years, during which time he asked Irwin to make several modifications, including a buffered effect loop that let him wire his effect pedals to the guitar and bypass them with a switch. Eventually, though, Wolf was replaced by the guitar that Garcia had ordered back in 1973, when he’d received Wolf. That guitar was Tiger, which he received in July 1979.

Garcia had given Irwin total freedom with Tiger, and he was not disappointed. The guitar was beautiful, with contrasting layers of tone woods, including cocobolo, maple and vermillion. Detailed pearl inlays on the body’s back and fretboard heightened the guitar’s status as a work of art.

But Tiger was also a testament to Irwin’s technical innovation. The guitar’s coil-tap switches, five-position pickup selector, unity gain buffer, effect loop and other controls gave Garcia the freedom to craft a broad range of tones from the DiMarzio pickups, which included Dual Sound humbuckers in the middle and bridge positions and an SDS-1 in the neck (the Dual Sounds were replaced in 1982 with DiMarzio Super IIs).

“There are 12 discrete possible voices that are all pretty different,” Garcia said of Tiger’s electronics. That tonal power is the reason Tiger was his main guitar for the next 11 years, a continuous run longer than that of any other guitar Garcia played.

This weekend, the Grateful Dead will reunite for what is being billed as their final concerts.

From July 3 through 5, guitarists Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart will reunite, along with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, for three shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field, the site of the band’s last concert with legendary Dead cofounder Jerry Garcia on July 9, 1995.

With Grateful Dead’s last stand on the horizon, we thought this was a good time to celebrate the genius of Garcia, that band’s heart and soul.

We could talk about Jerry’s playing, but instead we want to look at a pair of instruments that were near and dear to him: the Doug Irwin creations Tiger and Rosebud. These were the last two guitars Garcia played onstage, when he made what would be his final performance 20 years ago at Soldier Field.

Tiger (1979)

In 1972, Garcia began a long association with Irwin when he purchased a guitar called Eagle from the luthier. Garcia liked the guitar so much that he placed a custom order with Irwin. That guitar—dubbed Wolf, for the cartoon wolf sticker Garcia had originally applied below its bridge—was completed in 1973. When Garcia went to pick it up, he was so impressed by it that he placed an order for another custom guitar before leaving.

Wolf became Garcia’s main instrument for the next four years, during which time he asked Irwin to make several modifications, including a buffered effect loop that let him wire his effect pedals to the guitar and bypass them with a switch. Eventually, though, Wolf was replaced by the guitar that Garcia had ordered back in 1973, when he’d received Wolf. That guitar was Tiger, which he received in July 1979.

Garcia had given Irwin total freedom with Tiger, and he was not disappointed. The guitar was beautiful, with contrasting layers of tone woods, including cocobolo, maple and vermillion. Detailed pearl inlays on the body’s back and fretboard heightened the guitar’s status as a work of art.

But Tiger was also a testament to Irwin’s technical innovation. The guitar’s coil-tap switches, five-position pickup selector, unity gain buffer, effect loop and other controls gave Garcia the freedom to craft a broad range of tones from the DiMarzio pickups, which included Dual Sound humbuckers in the middle and bridge positions and an SDS-1 in the neck (the Dual Sounds were replaced in 1982 with DiMarzio Super IIs).

“There are 12 discrete possible voices that are all pretty different,” Garcia said of Tiger’s electronics. That tonal power is the reason Tiger was his main guitar for the next 11 years, a continuous run longer than that of any other guitar Garcia played.

Rosebud (1990)

Rosebud was Tiger’s replacement, and Garcia considered it to be Irwin’s masterpiece. While it bore similarities to Tiger, it featured a very different complement of electronic components. These included three humbuckers and a Roland GK-2 hexaphonic guitar synth pickup. Irwin mounted the GK-2’s MIDI and synth controls on the guitar for ease of use. The guitar also had hollow body cavities that reduced its weight by two pounds.

Rosebud’s MIDI features were key to its versatility. Garcia had begun using guitar synths in the Eighties when he installed a Roland hexaphonic pickup on his Wolf guitar. In Rosebud, Garcia finally had one instrument with all the features he’d sought, allowing him to play a broad range of guitar tones as well as external sounds via MIDI.

Rosebud was eventually succeeded by a replica of Tiger called Lightning Bolt, built by luthier Stephen Cripe. The guitar takes its name from the Grateful Dead lightning bolt, which adorns the cover plate below the bridge. But when it came time for the Dead to play Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995—Garcia’s last gig with the group—Lightning Bolt was in the shop for repairs. In its place was Rosebud. When the guitar began to suffer technical problems midway through the show, Garcia pulled out Tiger, playing his last notes onstage with the guitar that had been with him longer than any other instrument.

On December 6 and 7, Julien’s Auctions will host a two-day auction, Icons & Idols: Rock n’ Roll. Its highlight will be Jerry Garcia’s Custom Travis Bean TB500 electric guitar.

Many fans argue this guitar was played during the pinnacle of Garcia’s most musically creative period with the Grateful Dead.

The guitar, designed and built by Travis Bean Inc., was played by Garcia on stage and in sessions. It features an aluminum neck (a design pioneered by Bean), three single-coil pickups and Garcia's onboard effects loop. This guitar was the first to employ the onboard effects loop, which was later incorporated into all of Garcia's guitars.

The guitar was debuted at the Grateful Dead show on December 31, 1976, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. Garcia played this TB500 at more than 90 shows in the late '70s, including the Grateful Dead's three-night stint at the Winterland Ballroom in 1977, approximately 35 Dead shows, a benefit for Greenpeace and with the Jerry Garcia Band. During this time, the Dead recorded Terrapin Station with Garcia playing this guitar.

It is accompanied by a letter of authenticity from Steve Parish, Garcia's guitar tech and the Grateful Dead's equipment manager from 1969 to 1995, who says this guitar was the third-most-played by Garcia — behind "Tiger" and "Wolf." A sticker affixed to the body reads "Ass, Grass or Gas/Nobody Rides Free," which was placed over an earlier sticker that read "The Enemy is Listening."

The guitar was exhibited at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum during The Grateful Dead: What a Long Strange Trip exhibit from April 12, 2012, to March 24, 2013. It is estimated to sell for $150,000 to $200,000 and believed to represent the last time a Garcia guitar of this significance will come up for sale.

The show will feature other rock artifacts.

In 1964 the Selmer Company, the British distributor of Hofner guitars, commissioned Hofner to design a special guitar for the new face of their violin bass, Paul McCartney. The custom guitar with gold plated pickups was to be given to McCartney as part of an arrangement to appear on the bass hang tags. How it traveled from Selmer to where it is today is a mystery. Only a few of its stops along the way are known and eventually it was identified by a music shop for its significance. It is one of only three Hofner basses made specifically for McCartney.

Psychedelic art will also celebrate the Grateful Dead and Garcia at the auction. The leading designers of psychedelic poster art of the 1960s, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Dennis Larkins and Gary Grimshaw are represented in an collection of artwork including many lots produced for the Grateful Dead. The collection includes the Grateful Dead Jester painting used on the cover of The Grateful Dead Songbook (1973), along with sketchbooks, logo lettering, concept drawings, finished artwork, logo lettering, T-shirt, publicity and poster designs also for the legendary rock band fronted by Garcia.

There isn’t any other musical icon associated with the world of early rock as widely as Jimi Hendrix. The iconic images of Hendrix on stage in his trademark embroidered vest are as vivid today as they were in the 1960s. The icon’s own stage-worn embroidered vest will be sold at Icons & Idols: Rock n’ Roll. Other highlights will include a Jimi Hendrix Experience signed cut sheet, Hendrix photographs taken by Ed Thrasher and Hendrix’s handwritten working lyrics for “Local Commotion,” said to have appeared on the unreleased “Black Gold” suite.

Other lyrics being offered will include Bob Dylan’s handwritten “Tambourine Man” lyric, Jim Morrison’s handwritten lyrics for “L’America,” George Harrison’s handwritten lyrics for “Isn’t It A Pity,” and other handwritten lyrics from Bon Scott, LL Cool J, Bruce Springsteen and annotated lyrics from Stevie Nicks.

Other equipment highlights include a Roland G-707 synthesizer guitar owned by Jimmy Page, a Kramer Ferrington guitar owned by Mick Jagger and later gifted to his brother Chris Jagger, a 1956 Fender Stratocaster and a 1873 Martin D-18 acoustic guitar owned by Creedence Clearwater’s Tom Fogerty, a 1954 Fender Telecaster played and signed by Keith Richards, a 1956 Guild Thunderbird electric guitar used by John Doe on his solo projects, a Jimmie Vaughan stage-played Fender Stratocaster and two guitars owned by Johnny Cash and one by his wife June Carter Cash.

Elvis Presley’s one pair of blue suede shoes from Memphis Mafia member Joe Esposito, his 1970s Cadillac Fleetwood 75 limousine outfitted with a plaque that reads “Custom made for Elvis Presley 70th Anniversary Edition,” the coat he wore on the album Elvis is Back with the original Paramount Pictures label, a ukulele gifted by Presley to Hank Garland, his personal gold “partner cross” commissioned by Presley in which he made the other for Priscilla and a 1977 Presley concert footage sold with copyright are among the Presley highlights.

Other highlights include a Fender Stratocaster painted and signed Ronnie Wood, a knit scarf of Ramones with “Hey Ho Let’s Go” framed, an original digital artwork representation of “Maggie May” created by Soundwaves Studio signed by Rod Stewart, a terracotta ram sculpture used in the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, (Proscenium, 1964), a group of approximately 83 backstage passes and 49 ticket stubs from Bruce Springsteen’s European leg of The River Tour in 1981, a Marshall 4 x 12 speaker cabinet used by the Who circa 1980, a Slash signed handwritten set list attributed to the 1988 Guns N’ Roses performance at Giants Stadium, a Ronnie Montrose 1943 Gibson J45 Acoustic guitar in Sunburst, a Cordoba Ukulele signed on the body “Eddie Vedder,” a white Gretsch guitar signed on the gold-toned pickguard “Neil Young,” a pair of blue denim jeans owned by Andy Warhol and A.B.C. Rich Bich Double Neck 4/8 string guitar used by Harry Shearer who plays Derek Smalls, bassist for the heavy metal band Spinal Tap.

Public Exhibition:
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. December 2 to December 5

Auction Dates and Hours
Friday December 6th, 2013
Session I: 2:00 pm PDT
Saturday, December 7th, 2013
Session II: 10:00 am PDT
Session III: 2:00 pm PDT

Registering To Bid
Registration is required to bid in this auction and can be done in person at the exhibition/auction or online before the sale at the JuliensAuctions.com registration page. You can bid by phone, proxy, in person or online at julienslive.com. You also can call 310-836-1818.

Today, GuitarWorld.com presents a live version of the Grateful Dead's "Playing In The Band," a track from Sunshine Daydream.

The album was released Tuesday, September 17.

On August 27, 1972, fresh off their European tour, the Grateful Dead traveled to Veneta, Oregon, and reunited with the Merry Pranksters to throw a benefit concert for the Kesey family’s Springfield Creamery. The show, which was recorded and filmed but never released, has since become the most-requested live show in Grateful Dead history.

Dead Heads recently had their patience rewarded when this unreleased gem finally had its time in the sun with a special “one night only” theatrical premiere nationwide on August 1, which happened to be Jerry Garcia’s birthday.

The new album gives fans a chance to relive this sought-after concert. The set is available in several different configurations, including two Dead.net exclusives.

The concert, which is considered to be the Merry Pranksters’ last “Acid Test,” offers a snapshot of the band at the peak of its playing prowess and features the classic lineup of Jerry Garcia, Donna Jean Godchaux, Keith Godchaux, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. The setlist that day included memorable performance of “Sugaree,” “Deal,” “Black-Throated Wind,” “Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Bird Song” and a mind-melting version of “Dark Star” that stretches past 30 minutes.

Apart from the band’s stellar performance, the show is also remembered for the sweltering temperature (having taken place on one of the hottest days on record in Oregon) and the lack of water at the Olde Renaissance Fairgrounds, where the concert was held. Both Dead.net exclusive versions include the bonus documentary “Grateful Days” which features never-before-seen footage of the concert and recently recorded interviews with key participants such as Ken Babbs, Sam Cutler, Wavy Gravy and Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia.

For more information about Sunshine Daydream, visit dead.net. The album is available HERE and at Amazon.com.

Fantasy Records has announced plans for a four-disc box set by Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, Keystone Companions/The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings.

The album, which was recorded live in July 1973 at the Keystone Club in Berkeley, California, will be released September 25, part of the celebration surrounding the late Garcia's 70th birthday (August 1).

The box set will include vintage photos, extensive liner notes by Grateful Dead expert David Gans, a poster, coaster, button and “scratchbook” (replicating the design of the original album’s promotional matchbooks).

The band featured Saunders on keyboards; Garcia, guitar and vocals; John Kahn, bass; and Bill Vitt, drums. David Grisman added mandolin to Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street.” The mix of songs ranged from Saunders originals to covers of songs by Jimmy Cliff, Junior Parker, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Rodgers & Hart, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Don Nix and Dan Penn and Dylan.

San Francisco-born keyboardist Merl Saunders had been writing and performing in New York before returning to the West Coast. Producer Nick Gravenites offered him studio work that included playing with Garcia, already at the helm of the Grateful Dead. “Garcia reminded me of [jazz guitarist] Eric Gale,” Saunders said. “Anything he played was very musical. He knew how to do a rhythm on any kind of tune — gospel, blues, jazz. I was amazed.”

Saunders also helped Garcia expand his harmonic knowledge and even showed him some Art Tatum runs. “He taught me music,” Garcia said of his friend.

By December 1970, a weekly jam session featuring Saunders, Garcia, Kahn, and Vitt had become a weekly gig at San Francisco’s Matrix. Garcia was already a major figure in the musical counterculture as lead guitarist for the Dead, so he kept this new band low-key — so much that it never really had a name (although it was referred to as The Group at times.) As Garcia said, “I couldn’t take the pressure of being a double celebrity. It’s a drag just being it once.” (That didn’t stop the itinerant Garcia from having a third band as well, Old and In the Way, with David Grisman, Peter Rowan and Vassar Clements.)

Live at Keystone, originally released as a double LP, was recorded by Grateful Dead associates Betty Cantor and Rex Jackson; all four artists are credited as producers. Additional material was released as Live at Keystone, Volumes 1 & 2 in 1988. This new box set assembles the original recordings and presents them, remastered, in the order in which the songs were performed at those two shows.

Also on September 25, Fantasy Records will reissue the first Saunders/Garcia album, Live at Keystone.

According to Rolling Stone, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia will be the subject of an upcoming documentary by filmmaker Malcolm Leo.

Leo has worked on documentary features on the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley and plans to center the film on a lengthy 1987 interview with Garcia. Leo and his partner John Hartmann have noted that they've also managed to secure the proper music rights for the film, a feat that Rolling Stone noted has eluded other filmmakers.

Garcia passed away in 1995 of a heart attack. He was 53.