Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia playing his Gibson Custom "Peanut Guitar" 36x24 Concert Photo-1971

 This photo features Jerry playing his infamous "Peanut" Guitar. I was contacted by Harry Angus in July 2015, he was doing a book on Jerry's guitars over the years and he related the story of said guitar to me......

"Rick Turner Custom guitar, Peanut SG, 1967
First played 11/8/70, it replaced the '62 Gibson Les Paul.
"I made the Peanut for myself in 1967 when I was playing guitar in the band AutoSalvage.
I'd gotten a smashed '61 or '62 Les Paul custom...a three humbucker, SG shaped Gibson...which had, incredibly, an intact neck and wiring harness. I designed a body for it based on an 1820's, probable Johann Stauffer guitar that I had, and a cabinet shop in New York (at about Broadway and Bleeker, as I recall) roughed out the body for me in Honduras mahogany. I then refined the shape, veneered the back and sides in walnut, bound it in wood, and put it together on my kitchen table at 13 Bleeker St. I wired it up "stereo" with the neck and bridge pickups on one channel and the middle pickup on the other, built a pedal board, and used the guitar into about 1970 when I diverted from being a pro musician into full time guitar repair and then co-founding Alembic. I sold (?) the guitar to Jerry in 1971, and it went down to being a two pickup guitar...interesting that in his late career, he went back to 3 humbucker Irwins, etc. The guitar eventually disappeared, and I think a guy in Woodacre, CA, has it now."[53]

"At one point in early 1968 I had a couple of small effects boxes strapped onto the Peanut and wired in. One was a Vox Treble Booster ( Trouble booster? and the other was a BossTone fuzz . So for a few months at least, the original Peanut was an "active" guitar...pre-Alembic...
This guitar shown was mostly designed by me, and Frank Fuller helped to build it at the Alembic shop on Judah St. in the Sunset District of San Francisco. I have no idea where that guitar is, though I'd love to have it back."[110]
Thanks
Harry"

 As a young photographer/musician in the 1969 to 1973 time period I attended a number of rock and folk concerts by such diverse artists as the Grateful Dead, the Who, Hot Tuna, the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in 1969, B.B. King, Joni Mitchell, Paul Butterfield, John Sebastian, Leo Kottke, Leon Redbone, John Jackson, Elizabeth Cotton, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Steve Goodman, Edgar Winter, and others. The photos I took of these artists from this era are a rare peek back at a period when they were in their prime and offer a glimpse seldom if ever seen of them from a stage front vantage point that is almost impossible to duplicate in today's mega-venue scene and restrictions on photos of any kind at most concerts. More recent artists featured are Marilyn Manson at R.P.I. Fieldhouse in 1997 and Elliott Smith at Higher Ground in Winooskie, VT in 2001.

 Other Rock Photo web pages, Morrison Hotel to name the most prominent one, feature photos by the great photographers of the era documenting these artists and many others, but many of the shots are from backstage vantage points or shots of the artist in a relaxed setting of a hotel, their homes, or staged publicity style shots. There's nothing wrong with that, God knows I wish I had the access they did in those days.

 My photos are from the trenches, I had no all access passes, I was down there with all you other concert goers, attempting to stand my ground while some of you probably were attempting to get around me for a better vantage point. And these photos capture the exhilarating moments that we experienced together, and for those of you too young to have been there, can give something of the feel of what it was like then, a bygone era that can never be revisited but thankfully lives on in these photos and others like them.