The famous Wolf guitar used by Jerry Garcia in The Grateful Dead sold for $1.9 million Wednesday at an auction to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot and major Deadhead, bought the guitar at a Guernsey’s auction at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl. His $1.9 million bid was matched by a $1.6 million donation, making the total donation $3.2 million, Rolling Stone reported.
Halligan wrote a book in 2010 called "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead" with David Meerman Scott, praising the band for doing "social media marketing before there was social media," and "essentially [inventing] the freemium distribution model," Rolling Stone reported.
The BBC reported that Halligan had followed the band from concert to concert as a Deadhead for years.
Halligan said he would keep the guitar at his Boston home but would play it and lend it to the Garcia family to use. The previous owner Daniel Pritzker bought the guitar in 2002 for $790,000, the largest bid for a guitar up to that point, Rolling Stone said.
"I’ve been a fan of the Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege," Pritzker said before the auction, Rolling Stone reported. "But the time is right for Wolf to do some good."
The guitar gets its name from the cartoon wolf sticker below the bridge. It was featured in the 1977 concert film "The Grateful Dead Movie," directed by Garcia. The guitar debuted at a show in 1973 and was last played by Garcia at the Oakland Coliseum in February 1993, Rolling Stone reported.
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