{"id":658057,"date":"2026-03-15T19:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T19:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/658057\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T19:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T19:43:15","slug":"derek-trucks-talks-playing-jerry-garcias-12-million-tiger-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/658057\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Trucks Talks Playing Jerry Garcia’s $12 Million ‘Tiger’ Guitar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn Aug. 4, 1979, the Grateful Dead<\/a> performed a stellar 21-song set at the Oakland City Auditorium in California. It marked their first-ever performance of \u201cAlthea<\/a>,\u201d Jerry Garcia<\/a>\u2019s latest collaboration with lyricist Robert Hunter<\/a>, that would soon become a Dead staple. He played it on his brand new instrument, onstage with him for the very first time: a 13.5 pound custom-made guitar named Tiger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGarcia instructed the creator, Alembic Guitars luthier Doug Irwin, not to hold back when making the instrument. The result was a gorgeously ornate solid-body guitar, featuring the titular animal under the bridge in mother-of-pearl. The instrument is built in the \u201chippie sandwich\u201d tradition, in which layers of wood \u2014 cocobolo, maple, and padauk \u2014 are laminated together. Tiger would become Garcia\u2019s go-to instrument for the next decade. \u201cI\u2019m not analytical about guitars, but I know what I like,\u201d he once said. \u201cAnd when I picked up that guitar, I\u2019d never felt anything before, or since, that my hand likes better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGarcia paid Irwin $5,800 for Tiger. Forty-six years and six months later, it sold<\/a> for $11.56 million on March 12, 2026. It was purchased at Christie\u2019s in New York City on Thursday, as part of the Jim Irsay Collection<\/a>, a multi-day auction featuring hundreds of the prized possessions<\/a> \u2014 from pop culture artifacts to legendary guitars \u2014\u00a0of the late Indianapolis Colts owner, who died in May 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead performs at the Greek Theatre on August 29, 1989 in Berkeley, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe next two evenings, Derek Trucks<\/a> played the guitar just 24 blocks away at the Beacon Theatre. He\u2019s currently in the middle of performing a 10-night residency there with Tedeschi Trucks Band<\/a>, which he fronts with his wife, singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi (the band is about to release their excellent new album, Future Soul). \u201cThere are instruments where you look at it and go, \u2018Holy shit, what has this thing seen?\u2019\u201d Trucks tells Rolling Stone. \u201cJust imagining Garcia in his dressing room, fucking playing the thing. Instruments carry a spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tBefore Trucks brought out Tiger onstage, he was spotted at the auction on that rainy Thursday afternoon (six feet tall with a long blonde ponytail at the nape of his neck, the 46-year-old guitar prodigy is hard to miss). Countless Deadheads began to speculate online if he was the purchaser, especially when the gavel went down and he cracked open a bottle of 20-year-old whiskey (his very own brand, Ass Pocket Whiskey) to celebrate.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut as Rolling Stone can confirm, Tiger does not belong to Trucks. \u201cThere\u2019s some people very close to me that thought that,\u201d Trucks says with a laugh. \u201cI was like, \u2018I appreciate that you think I have that kind of walking around scratch.\u2019\u201d He cites a text from his friend, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos (Hidalgo was once gifted a late-Fifties Stratocaster from Garcia). \u201cHe was like, \u2018Fuck, bro, when can I play it?\u2019\u201d Trucks says. \u201cI didn\u2019t tell him that it wasn\u2019t mine. He\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s Saturday afternoon, and I\u2019m backstage at the Beacon with Trucks and the new owner of Tiger: 44-year-old Chicagoan Bobby Tseitlin, co-founder of Family Guitars, a company that collects historic instruments. He has a family business in jewelry wholesale, but for the last 20 years, guitar collecting has been his passion project. And though he jokes that his guitar skills are mediocre, he says he collects as well as Trucks plays. Judging by the fact that Tseitlin now owns three Garcia guitars \u2014 Tiger, the Travis Bean TB500<\/a> from the late Seventies, and his Modulus Blackknife guitar from the mid-Eighties \u2014 he\u2019s absolutely right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDerek Trucks and Bobby Tseitlin with Jerry Garcia\u2019s beloved guitar, Tiger. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBradley Strickland*<\/p>\n

\n\tLocated in a private studio in a penthouse that overlooks Lake Michigan, Family Guitars is not a museum. Tseitlin and his partner have no interest in their guitars being \u201csafe queens,\u201d locked away collecting dust. \u201cWe don\u2019t want them behind glass,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want them to live and breathe. And that\u2019s why we wanted Tiger. We knew that if Tiger went somewhere else, it was most likely going to be left behind glass. Or if it goes overseas \u2014 because I\u2019ve seen a lot of instruments disappear overseas\u00a0\u2014 you won\u2019t see them again. It\u2019s just terrible. They deserve to be out there, and people want to hear them. Those guitars bring out something in players.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tIrsay felt the same way. After he purchased Tiger for $850,000 in 2002, he\u2019d occasionally loan it out, like to Warren Haynes, who played it on the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration tour in 2016. \u201cBecause [Garcia\u2019s] music lives on, there\u2019s a need to preserve the instruments that created the sound,\u201d Irsay told <\/a>Rolling Stone in 2016. \u201cTiger 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTiger was in the right hands at the Beacon, where Trucks shredded to the Allman Brothers\u2019 \u201cStatesboro Blues,\u201d Garcia\u2019s \u201cSugaree\u201d and others on Friday night, and took it for another spin on Saturday evening. \u201cIt\u2019s funny, you walk on stage with that guitar and the audience is like, \u2018Oh shit!\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s this New York Grateful Dead energy that\u2019s very unique.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a really heavy guitar, but it\u2019s really articulate when you play it,\u201d he adds. \u201cSo there\u2019s no hiding anywhere. You\u2019re going to hear all of it, every note. It almost speaks like a piano in some ways, where everything\u2019s clean and even. It\u2019s not for the faint of heart. You need to know what you\u2019re doing to play that guitar. I wasn\u2019t worried about hurting that thing. It\u2019s a big old heavy beast, and he can handle it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe nephew<\/a> of Allman Brothers\u2019 drummer Butch Trucks, Trucks joined his uncle\u2019s band in 1999. That same year, he got a call from Phil Lesh to replace guitarist Steve Kimock in Phil Lesh and Friends. \u201cThat was really my jump into the deep end,\u201d Trucks says. \u201cI told Phil, \u2018I\u2019ll come do it, but I got to be honest, I don\u2019t know any Grateful Dead material. I\u2019ll do my homework.\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018Perfect! That\u2019s how we like it.\u2019 The music was always around in the Allman Brothers world, so it was already in the bloodstream. I just didn\u2019t know it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBECAUSE TRUCKS HAD <\/strong>the day off from the Beacon residency, he was able to attend the auction on Thursday and offer Tseitlin some \u201cemotional support\u201d (Tseitlin is also a partner<\/a> of Ass Pocket Whiskey). \u201cWe were looking people off in the room,\u201d Trucks jokes. \u201c\u2019Stop bidding!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Irsay Collection contains more than 400 items, from the first fight robe Cassius Clay wore as Muhammed Ali in 1965 to the original scroll for Jack Kerouac\u2019s On the Road (purchased by Zach Bryan<\/a> for $12.1 million). But a majority of the items are rock & roll memorabilia, like Ringo Starr\u2019s blue sapphire pinky ring<\/a> (purchased for $120,650) and Jim Morrison\u2019s 1969 notebook<\/a> ($266,700).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the auctioning of legendary guitars brought the most money \u2014 and swear-inducing, nail-biting stress \u2014 to the event. David Gilmour\u2019s \u201cBlack Strat\u201d sold for $14.55 million, breaking the record<\/a> for the most expensive guitar ever sold. It was an incredibly tense few minutes, as two bidders went head-to-head for the guitar that birthed the \u201cComfortably Numb\u201d solo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDerek Trucks with Tiger<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBradley Strickland*<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was Lot 24, just three items ahead of Tiger, and I ask Tseitlin how he felt in that moment. \u201cI was like, I hope the guy who didn\u2019t win is like, \u2018All right, now I\u2019m going after Tiger,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cBecause there were a few people that I knew that were going after things and that was their strategy. If they weren\u2019t going to get this, then they might go after that. [But] it didn\u2019t matter if it went to that number. We were willing to exceed that. Tiger\u2019s very important to us, so we were willing to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tTseitlin isn\u2019t certain of the maximum amount he would have paid, but nothing was going to stop him from owning what he describes as the most iconic guitar of all time (and now the second-most expensive). Tseitlin also won Garcia\u2019s 1973 McIntosh MC2300 amplifier<\/a>, and briefly bid on Eric Clapton\u2019s \u201cThe Fool<\/a>\u201d Gibson SG. It wound up selling for $3 million. \u201cThe Clapton market is a little weird right now, just because of the political side of things, and it fully affected \u2018The Fool\u2019 at the auction,\u201d Tseitlin says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was often thought that Garcia played Tiger at his final show, before his death<\/a> in August 1995, but that has recently been debunked<\/a>. But that doesn\u2019t diminish its significance. \u201cYou spend a decade with something, your DNA\u2019s in it,\u201d says Trucks. \u201cI never got to meet Jerry, I never got to be around him. But he\u2019s such a huge presence in this whole scene, and every venue we\u2019ve ever played. He\u2019s hanging in the air, just like Duane Allman. In some way, the instruments keep the thread connected.\u201d<\/p>\n