Ever listened to the steel guitar work on "Teach Your Children"? The liner credits tell you it's Jerry Garcia, but as is often the case there is more to the story. Graham Nash relates the background story to what became a huge hit for CSNY, as he details the first and last times he hung out with Jerry...
"We had done the track to “Teach Your Children,” and Stephen thought because he and Neil played guitar all the time that we should have something different. David [Crosby] said, “You know, Garcia’s in the next studio and he’s been playing steel guitar for a couple of months, let me ask him.” “Sure!” The Dead were next door recording… “American Beauty,” was it? And David asked him and he loved the idea; he had never played pedal steel on record before. So he set up his pedal steel and we played him the track, and as I do with most musicians, I said, “I’m not gonna tell you what to do. Feel it and play it.” So he played the first [take] and I said “Fantastic! That was just stunning. I’m shocked that that someone who’s only been playing pedal steel for less than half a year could play so beautifully,” because it was heartfelt and well thought-out in a very spontaneous way.
He said, “I kinda f—ed up a little in a couple of places, can I do a second take?” “Go right ahead” — I would never stop him from trying to make it better. So he played it and we got to the end, and I said “Yeah, it’s perfect, but it doesn’t feel like the first track you played, when you didn’t have any f—ing idea what you were gonna do!” So he laughed and said fine. I knew that “Teach Your Children” had a chance of being a hit, but when Jerry put his pedal steel on there I was convinced it was gonna be a hit. [The song peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970, but its impact reaches far beyond charts.]
I never paid him money for his part on “Teach Your Children,” but I did give him a vintage Fender Strat, which he immediately stuck an alligator decal on and that became his “Alligator guitar” for many years. I’d bought it in ’67, I believe, when I was on tour with the Hollies. We stopped in a pawn shop in Tucson, Arizona and it was cheap and I bought it — and it just sold for $470,000! [Laughs.]
So that was the first time I met Jerry. We didn’t become real close friends; he was mainly friends with Crosby, because Crosby lived up in Mill Valley, and besides we were traveling all over the world at that time. But he was always incredibly nice and gentlemanly, and he was obviously very wise."
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/first-last-times-saw-jerry-174151820.html
"We had done the track to “Teach Your Children,” and Stephen thought because he and Neil played guitar all the time that we should have something different. David [Crosby] said, “You know, Garcia’s in the next studio and he’s been playing steel guitar for a couple of months, let me ask him.” “Sure!” The Dead were next door recording… “American Beauty,” was it? And David asked him and he loved the idea; he had never played pedal steel on record before. So he set up his pedal steel and we played him the track, and as I do with most musicians, I said, “I’m not gonna tell you what to do. Feel it and play it.” So he played the first [take] and I said “Fantastic! That was just stunning. I’m shocked that that someone who’s only been playing pedal steel for less than half a year could play so beautifully,” because it was heartfelt and well thought-out in a very spontaneous way.
He said, “I kinda f—ed up a little in a couple of places, can I do a second take?” “Go right ahead” — I would never stop him from trying to make it better. So he played it and we got to the end, and I said “Yeah, it’s perfect, but it doesn’t feel like the first track you played, when you didn’t have any f—ing idea what you were gonna do!” So he laughed and said fine. I knew that “Teach Your Children” had a chance of being a hit, but when Jerry put his pedal steel on there I was convinced it was gonna be a hit. [The song peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970, but its impact reaches far beyond charts.]
I never paid him money for his part on “Teach Your Children,” but I did give him a vintage Fender Strat, which he immediately stuck an alligator decal on and that became his “Alligator guitar” for many years. I’d bought it in ’67, I believe, when I was on tour with the Hollies. We stopped in a pawn shop in Tucson, Arizona and it was cheap and I bought it — and it just sold for $470,000! [Laughs.]
So that was the first time I met Jerry. We didn’t become real close friends; he was mainly friends with Crosby, because Crosby lived up in Mill Valley, and besides we were traveling all over the world at that time. But he was always incredibly nice and gentlemanly, and he was obviously very wise."
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/first-last-times-saw-jerry-174151820.html
