The luthier who links the Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac and the Grateful Dead represented two ends of the rock music spectrum in the late 1970s. On one side was the Mac, who had survived for a decade as a band in flux before landing the pair that would launch them to pop stardom, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. On the other was the Dead, who had one of the most devoted fanbases in music but otherwise existed in their own bubble. Grateful Dead made some valiant attempts to break into the mainstream that Fleetwood Mac dominated in the late 1970s, even being asked by their record company to hire Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olsen to record their 1977 album Terrapin Station.
But both before and after that stranger convergence, the Dead and the Mac were unwittingly linked by one man: guitar luthier Rick Turner. Turner made a brief attempt at making a career as a musician in the late 1960s with his band AutoSalvage. Even though that didn’t work out, Turner made some important connections in the rock world when he turned his focus to building guitars.
By 1970, Turner was part of the team that incorporated Alembic, Inc. Originally founded by Grateful Dead financer/sound man/LSD chemist Owsley Stanley, Alembic officially became a company after Stanley went to jail for violating his probation from a 1967 drug bust. Turner partnered with sound engineer Bob Matthews and electronics expert Ron Wickersham to make Alembic an official company, providing instruments, amplification, and other needs for the Dead’s live shows. Eventually, Alembic became self-sustaining outside of the Dead’s payroll.
One of Turner’s first contributions to the Dead was building a new guitar for Jerry Garcia. “I got the neck, pickups, wiring harness, and hardware from a friend who managed an apartment building,” Turner later recalled. “Some junkie had smashed the guitar, I got the parts and made a mahogany body with back, and sides veneered in walnut with a wide marquetry stripe down the back. I put it together on my kitchen table at 13 Bleeker St. and used it wired stereo through a pedal board in my band AutoSalvage.”
Most of the parts were from a busted Gibson Les Paul SG model. Turner had constructed his own body for the guitar that resembled a peanut, giving the guitar its distinctive look and a long-lasting nickname. “Peanut” was actually finished in 1968, a few years before Turner began his association with Alembic. However, when Garcia wanted to play a new guitar in 1971, so with a few modifications from Turner, “Peanut” became his axe.
Featured prominently on the 1971 live album Grateful Dead, better known as either Skull and Roses or Skull Fuck, “Peanut” was the first guitar that most fans heard on classic songs like ‘Playing in the Band’ and ‘The Other One’ (divorced from the Anthem of the Sun suite ‘That’s It For The Other One’ for the first time on record). “Peanut” wouldn’t last very long as Garcia’s guitar of choice. Not long after Skull and Roses, Garcia had Alembic modify a 1955 Fender Stratocaster that was gifted to him by Graham Nash. “Alligator” would become Garcia’s favourite axe until 1973.
Turner took the lessons he learned from “Peanut” and began to experiment with his masterpiece, the Model 1. Featuring a similar slim body shape along with the best elements from different electric and acoustic guitars, the Model 1 was Turner’s first model after leaving Alembic and starting his own company, Rick Turner Guitars, in 1979. His first client would be Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.
Up to that point, Buckingham had largely been using a Gibson Les Paul as his main guitar, occasionally switching it out with a Fender Stratocaster and an Ovation acoustic guitar. When Turner presented him with the recently-finished Model 1, Buckingham found a guitar that combined all the tones of his favourite axes. The Model 1 became his one and only guitar for the next three decades, with Buckingham continuing to use the design on his most recent tours.
Listen to the guitar craftsmanship of Rick Turner down below.
