Relics of Empire: Demand for Artificially Aged Guitars in the Post-Industrial US

• In Event: Material Culture Caucus Panel: Crafting Empire: Material Culture Perspectives on the Objects of Colonial Relation

Abstract

When the Fender Musical Instrument Company introduced their new Relic Series of electric guitars and basses at the 1995 National Association of Music Merchants trade show in 1995, the company set off no small amount of debate and criticism among guitar players, luthiers, merchandisers, and manufacturers. Critics claimed these artificially aged instruments lacked authenticity and the hard-to-define quality of “mojo.” The instruments smacked of artificiality, pretense, and fraud, and seemed to bequeath a legitimacy to players at a price rather than for long hard years of playing, performing, and touring. There were fans as well, of course, who loved the lived-in look, the cool patina of age, seemingly unbothered by the charges of fakery and fraud from the allegedly more authentic players and collectors. These claims and counterclaims are engaging, of course, but in many ways they miss one of the fundamental reasons for the appeal of reliced guitars: a nostalgia for an era in which US-made guitars built by US craftspeople and factory workers dominated the world of rock and popular music, a demand that suggests that in many ways the faked relic guitar can be paradoxically viewed by consumers as a more real instrument than the affordable and indistinguishable guitars that emerge from the international networks of manufacturing and assembly located for the most part in the global south. This paper will explore the complicated appeal of “reliced” instruments in the face of the dramatic changes in the guitar industry over the past three decades, and appeal that in no small part hinges upon questions of heritage, nationality and nationalism, authenticity, and real or perceived craftship.

Author

• Gerald Ronning, Minneapolis College of Art & Design