Jerry Garcia‘s famed Alligator custom Fender Stratocaster guitar is going up for auction. The guitar is one of several items from the late Grateful Dead guitarist that will be auctioned off by Bonhams at the upcoming “Alligator! A San Franciso Rock Star’s Guitars, Art & More” event, set to take place on December 10th in Los Angeles.
Jerry Garcia used Alligator as his main guitar from mid-1971 to mid-1973, was originally purchased by Graham Nash in 1970 from a pawn shop in Phoenix and gifted to Jerry. According to an article published on Fender.com, Alligator underwent many modifications. “The Dead were gear obsessives from the start,” explains Fender.com, ” And their innovations in live sound would come to transform the industry. By the time Nash gifted Garcia with the Strat, the band had spun off their own instrument and gear-building auxiliary company, the still-operational Alembic. With guidance by Dead sound guru and former LSD chemist Owsley Stanley, the technicians at Alembic experimented constantly, and Garcia’s Strat found itself on the Alembic workbench numerous times.”
JerryGarcia.com notes that Jerry last played the guitar on-stage at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey on August 1st, 1973 and that Alligator is currently owned by the Jerry Garcia Estate.
Related: A Brief History Of Jerry Garcia’s Five Most Well-Known Guitars
Another Jerry Garcia guitar featured in the auction is a Martin D-28 acoustic Garcia used during the multi-band Festival Express tour of Canada in 1970. Garcia’s classic comic book collection is also included in the auction, split up into multiple lots. Other items include Jerry’s collection of Mad magazines, as well as amplifiers, test pressings of an Aoxomoxoa remix and Workingman’s Dead, gold records, a set of typed lyrics for “Passenger” with annotations by Garcia, and a signed picture of Larry Bird.
More details on all items going up for auction can be found here.
[H/T JamBase]