The Grateful Dead’s music was a lot of things—bluesy, mellow, twangy, psychedelic—but their style was not exactly hard rock. For that reason, the late Jerry Garcia doesn’t always get his due as one of rock’s great lead guitarists.
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The Dead were prolific over their 30-year existence, and their discography is brimming with examples of Garcia’s sophisticated and nuanced playing. It’s not easy to settle on a short list of Garcia’s best solos, so to make it easier, we’re limiting the entries in this ranking to only those that appeared on one of the Grateful Dead’s 13 studio albums. Including their dozens of live albums would complicate the decision-making process, though there are plenty of great solos that could have made this list. Certainly, Garcia’s solo from “Me and My Uncle”—the song the Grateful Dead played the most frequently live—from the 1971 self-titled live album (a.k.a. “Skull and Roses”) would have been a candidate.
There is also no shortage of memorable solos from the studio portion of their discography, but these five in particular stand out.
5. “Friend of the Devil”
A highlight of the band’s classic American Beauty album, Garcia’s solo is acoustic and all of 10 measures long, but it’s notable for its bright melodicism. It features some fancy finger work, but like many of Garcia’s solos, it also makes great use of space and phrasing.
4. “Eyes of the World“
This gem from 1973’s Wake of the Flood features a pair of eight-bar solos from Garcia, and they’re just so tasty. He weaves his phrases so deftly around Bob Weir’s jazzy strumming and Phil Lesh’s quietly percolating bass line. Focusing on Garcia’s fluid playing makes listening to this track feel like you’re floating away on a cloud.
[RELATED: 5 Songs You Didn’t Know Jerry Garcia Wrote]
3. “Scarlet Begonias”
This track, which kicks off side two of 1974’s From the Mars Hotel, features a classic Garcia solo—melodic, spacious and unassuming. While the solo on this studio version is relatively modest in length, it was often part of an extended jam in live versions that combined “Scarlet Begonias” with “Fire on the Mountain.”
2. “Althea”
The only entry on this list from the ‘80s, this seven-minute Go to Heaven track includes three eight-bar solos from Garcia in the heart of the song, and all of them are glorious. But Garcia takes over the entire 80-second outro with a solo that, once again, delicately winds itself around the groove laid down by Weir, Lesh, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. The solo’s meandering quality is a perfect fit for this downtempo number.
1. “Dire Wolf”
Garcia’s beautiful pedal steel solo falls right in the middle of this track from 1970’s Workingman’s Dead. The arrangement on “Dire Wolf” is relatively sparse, so as opposed to Garcia’s solo on “Friend of the Devil,” which is somewhat buried in the mix, his playing is front and center on this track. His lilting solo melody lays gently on top of some acoustic strumming, propelling the song forward and providing a break in Garcia’s story about a man in the woods who invites a wolf in for a game of cards. While the story ends badly for the protagonist, the tune is one of the Grateful Dead’s most enjoyable, in large part because of Garcia’s pedal steel playing.
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My personal favorite is “Bertha” from the Skull And Roses album. It may have been the first Grateful Dead song I ever heard, as it definitely was the first album I bought, though I remember seeing “I Know You Rider” on TV around the same time. Jerry’s solo on Bertha sounds like a freight train barreling through the middle of the song. I had been playing guitar about three years and that album made a big impression on me.