Guitars Unlimited, Menlo Park

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5 responses to “Guitars Unlimited, Menlo Park”

1. 

   cryptdev

   April 9, 2010

   Guitars Unlimited was at approximately 417 El Camino in Menlo Park, a few blocks south of the original Kepler's on the same side of the street. It was a fine guitar store that, like Draper's and Dana Morgan's in Palo Alto, has disappeared.

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2. 

   Jerry’s Brokendown Palaces

   October 5, 2012

   Rehearsal Space/Office/Alembic ("The Pink behind Pinky's")
   Novato, CA

   "The pink Novato warehouse, which was surrounded on all four sides by the Air Force base (with just a driveway cutting through) and behind Pinky's Pizza Parlour, housed the Dead's rehearsal space, their business office, and a workshop for Owsley, the inveterate tinkerer."(3)

   "The Dead had their office and rehearsal space in what was affectionately known as "The Pink behind Pinky's". The building was the color of Pepto-Bismol and was located down a long driveway behind Pinky's Pizza Parlor. We shared a fence with Hamilton Air Force Base.
   Alembic had its offices in the building with the Dead and separate workshop and living space behind the warehouse."(1)

   Jerry rehearsed here in
   1969
   "We were stationed at Hamilton from 1969-1971.
   When my dad was sent to Vietnam, we moved off base
   into an apartment. I still attended the elementary school on Hamilton. However, behind our apt. complex, there was a pink stucco warehouse. My mom always warned me not to play back there. Come to find out, the group of people living in the warehouse was The Grateful Dead! How cool was that!!
   One evening we were at Pinky's Pizza and a helicopter landed in the parking lot. My mom thought we were being raided, but it was The Rolling Stones picking up The Grateful Dead for a concert in San Francisco. At the time I was too young to appreciate that fact, but looking back now, I'm like" The Grateful Dead were my neighbors!"(2)

   1.)^http://www.alembic.com/family/history.html
   2.)^Dave, http://hamiltonafbhistory.multiply.com/journal/item/8/Grateful-Dead?&item_id=8&view:replies=reverse&show_interstitial=1&u=%2Fjournal%2Fitem
   3.)^Jackson, Blair, Grateful Dead Gear, pg. 87, http://books.google.com/books?id=SiTGAQR-W3YC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=grateful+dead+pinky%27s+pizza&source=bl&ots=PSjbvdv6J0&sig=hLN2SWxZLNxQCu2rSYGpHaWFnSM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iCVuUIj1BISfiAKR8YHACA&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=grateful%20dead%20pinky%27s%20pizza&f=false

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3. 

   Anonymous

   April 20, 2014

   In 1965, I was a young 14 year old guitar player, growing up in Mill Valley. My father, being divorced from Mom was living in Menlo Park. One evening while visiting, I took a stroll down El Camino down to Kepler's Books, Discount Records and then stopped in at Guitars Unlimited where I found some guys in the back, listening intently to this 50ish Jazz-style player who used chords for each note of the song. I listened for a while totally captivated, acknowledging the other 2 longer hair older guys, and continued home. A few months later I walked up the stairs to The Fillmore to see The GD play for the 1st time and Jerry Garcia was standing there, with us seeming to recognize each other, which I later realized was from Guitars Unlimited. It wasn't until they played that night that I realized he was the GD guitar player, Jerry Garcia!

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4. 

   Fate Music

   April 23, 2014

   This is so cool. Thank you for sharing your recollections! I wonder who he was listening to.

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5. 

   Jim F

   February 8, 2020

   I just read these comments from someone on youtube, take that for what it's worth…

   "Grif Torres

   The Grateful Dead were still called The Warlocks, and Jerry used to give guitar lessons at this guitar store in Menlo Park. I would go in there after school and wonder at all the guitars- new, used, electric, acoustic, Martins, Gibsons, Fenders, Rickenbackers. I recognized him from the Warlocks poster on the shop's door, but he wasn't famous, and I didn't know his name, or anything. He was sitting by the counter, talking to the owner and waiting for his student to come in for his lesson. I was a beginner on guitar myself, but I wasn't taking any lessons- just trying to pick up stuff from the few chords I already knew. Jerry took a Mosrite guitar off of the wall, and started playing it unplugged. I noticed he was fast… He played the little guitar lick from "Mystic Eyes", by Them . I was impressed. He looked at me like "what are you starin' at, kid?", and said something to the owner about how he thought the guitar's neck was too thin and fast for his taste. He then casually strummed the D-A-E- chords for "Gloria", and he hung the guitar back up on the wall. I watched his fingers, and noticed that those were chords that I knew! I spent much of the rest of the afternoon back in my room playing the song on my new nylon-string guitar. It was the first rock and roll song I ever learned…

   (Continued..)

   Like I said, I didn't take lessons from Jerry, I just saw him at the store, and I didn't find out who he was for a few months yet (and he was still only a "local" guitar hero, then.) The store was called "Guitars Unlimited", and it was kinda long and narrow. There were two tiers of guitars on the wall on the left, and two on the right, and there was a sort of rack in the middle, with some guitars lined up in it. At the back, there were three or four little rooms (booths, really) where lessons were given. Sometimes, when I went into the store to look around, Jerry was in one of the rooms at the back practicing banjo or recorder. There were a lot of guitars, new and used. I don't remember what they had for amplifiers, though. It was my first up close look at things like an S.G., a Telecaster, a Guild Thunderbird, an ES-335, a Rickenbacker 360-12, a Martin electric, a beat-up army-green National single-cone resonator guitar, a Gibson Hummingbird, and many others. This was right around the corner from the pizza place where members of the Dead had played the previous summer as a jug band (though I missed that). I guess I remember because I was only 15 at the time."

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