Posted by Jeff Lester: Gregg Nixon mentioned the interview with Doug Irwin that's now available at www.jerrygarcia.com. This interview, coupled with the pictures of guitars at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (on Dancin Bear Akitas web page) give us some more insight into the mysterious "Wolf Jr." and "Headless" guitars, though I'm still somewhat confused. The Hall of Fame pictures are located at: http://www.dancingbearakitas.com/jerrysguitars.htm The two on the left are the Stephen Cripe built Lightning Bolt and Top Hat (never played on stage). As an aside, seeing them all lined up like this, I wonder why Cripe didn't do anything more interesting than dots for the fretboard inlays on Lightning Bolt? Then come the Irwin-built guitars. There's Rosebud and Tiger and then on the far right is a never-performed-with guitar labeled as being called "Headless." Okay with me so far? However, in the Irwin interview: http://www.jerrygarcia.com/music/interviews/doug-irwin/ Doug talks about the 5 guitars that he made Jerry. "SQ" is interviewer Seth Augustus Quittner. #1 (Eagle) DI: The first guitar I built that Jerry bought was one that was a double cutaway made of bird's eye maple and walnut, and it had a couple dual-coil humbucking type pickups on it. At the time, Jerry was using a lot of single-coil pickups and when he bought that guitar, the first thing he said right away was, "Wow, man if I could get this with a Stratocaster pickup, maybe I could play this shit." SQ: The first guitar had no symbols on it at all? DI: Nothing. Just my logo in the peg head which is an eagle, and on most of Jerry's guitars, he has what I call the deluxe logo, where it's the eagle circling the earth. #2 (Wolf) DI: He wanted another guitar, but he wanted it with Stratacaster pickups, he didn't want regular humbuckers. . So, I built the next guitar for him, which was a guitar that I had actually already started at the time that he ordered it, and it's made out of Purple Heart and Curly Maple. It had an ebony fingerboard and mother-of-pearl inlays in the fingerboard. It's kind of hard to describe that inlay pattern. This is the one that became the Wolf. SQ: Can you talk about the Wolf and the different totems that were used? DI: It was just stuff that evolved out of it after a while. It wasn't put on there at first. The Wolf didn't show up on that instrument 'til about three or four years later. SQ: That's something he put the guitar? DI: No, he asked me to refinish it and he had a little decal on there that was similar to that, and since I was refinishing it, I knew the decal was going to be gone, so I just redid it as an inlay. When he saw it, he said "wow, that's really nice, you saved that sticker." I went "no, no, no". and..... #5 Wolf Jr. (tremolo). DI: After a while, I complete the fifth guitar for him, Wolf Jr. which was one that he never really used much on stage or anything, it's a guitar that doesn't have a head because it has an unusual tremolo system on it. It's a Steinberger Trans Trem, and it uses strings, it has a ball end on each end of the string. So it didn't have a peg head on it.SQ: Why was it called Wolf Jr.? DI: It looked very similar to the Wolf except it doesn't have a peg head, but it's the same body style and it's made out of similar maple. I just really couldn't think of what to do at the time, so I just decided that we'll call it Wolf, Jr. and there's an inlay that I made for it but I never got a chance to put on it yet, of Wolf, Jr. The Wolf is like, it's like a kid. It's made out of the same materials and everything, but instead of being like the 19-year old looking Wolf, he was like the nine-year old looking Wolf, so it's got kind of a goofy look on his face. That's Wolf, Jr. I thought eventually this could evolve into its own cartoon. So GD is calling guitar #5 Headless, but Irwin calls it Wolf Jr. So does GD call #1 Wolf Jr because it was before Wolf and an early generation of Wolf?? -Jeff Lester