Yet Weir told Guitar Player in 1998 that two guitars in his collection stood above the rest: an early ’70s Gibson ES-335, which he affectionately called “an old sweetheart,” and an Ibanez George Benson model with an especially unusual back story. You can call the police or do whatever you’re going to do to me, but I’m taking it.’ The story says something about Weir’s relationship with the guitar — but so does his role in the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia and Weir perform with the Grateful Dead at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, September 13, 1981. In 1998, he told Guitar Player that the opportunity to keep reinventing himself was part of what made his post-Dead career so appealing.