Jerry Garcia 1973

Jerry Garcia 1973, hand-drawn here in upstate New York backstage at the “Summer Jam at Watkins Glen” on July 28, 1973 at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix race track, age 30.
Shown here playing his “Alligator” Fender Strat. The first custom guitar that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead ever owned was Alligator, the 1957 Fender Stratocaster that he played from the spring of 1971 until the fall of 1973.
Jerry received Alligator as a gift from Graham Nash in 1970, as a thank-you for the guitar work he contributed on Nash’s album Songs For Beginners (1970).
Alligator was retired after the Grateful Dead concert that took place on Jerry Garcia’s 31st birthday, August 1st, 1973.

An astounding 600,000 packed into the Watkins Glen Grand Prix race track for what was billed as “Summer Jam at Watkins Glen”, a 12 hour music festival.
They came to see the Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead and The Band. Many historians claimed that the Watkins Glen event was the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States.

150,000 tickets were sold for $10 each, some 450,000 folks got in for free.
From the endless line of cars that stretched for miles, to the mountains of trash and abandoned cars left behind, this rock concert drew fans from across the United States.

Garcia and the band toured almost constantly from their formation in 1965 until Garcia’s death in 1995.
Periodically, there were breaks due to exhaustion or health problems, often due to Garcia’s drug use. During their three-decade span, the Grateful Dead played 2,314 shows.

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