A Jerry Garcia modified practice guitar

A six-string, small, blue solid body electric guitar, with "Steal Your Face" logo on head, including Jerry's blue guitar strap and amplifier cord, with brown and white leather and plastic guitar case lined in red velvet, Simple Minds and The Pretenders backstage laid in case; chipping to head and body of guitar, case worn.

With autograph letter signed by Rock Scully detailing the history of the guitar: "Jerry Garcia called this solid body electric guitar the 'trainer' others jokingly called it a 'pony' (ie a junior Fender Mustang). Whatever you called it, this guitar was always a work in progress. I was originally looking for an inexpensive beginners guitar for my son Lucas. I had asked our friends at Bananna Music ... to be on the watch for a decent instrument ... When they located this ... I think they wanted around $100 (this was end of 1979). Jerry looked it over, plugged it in to a Yamaha practice amp and reeled off some stocatto triplets, octavoes and arpeggios. Jerry laughed and announced 'we should hot-rod this little sucker up.' First, he said, we needed to have it fitted with a new bridge. He had recently heard that this guy Kahler, who had been building cross for Fender, had started his own company. He told me to take it back to the store and see if their techs could outfit it with Kahler's new tremolo bridge which doubled as a fitted bridge as well. I'm going, 'Jerry the bridge is over $200.-,' and he then tells me to have the store order two P-90 pick ups and have them put it on his tab. This was very generous of Jerry but it meant that Luke would get it for Christmas 1980 maybe. The guitar finally found its way to Lucas who was actually able to learn some chords from Jerry. Of course at this age (14-15 yrs) all his friends wanted drums. By '83 Lucas was in a boarding school in the Sienas that only allowed acoustic instruments. So from then on it stood in my living room on Hepburn Heights available for any and all to play and Jerry and I always encouraged the kids to play with it."



Provenance: Rock Scully 35 ½ x 11 ½ in. (guitar); 38 x 12 x 4 in. (case)