Watch John Mayer Play Jerry Garcia's Wolf Guitar Onstage with Dead & Company

(Image credit: Dead & Company/YouTube)

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. 

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Jackson Maxwell

Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.