Prog rock legend Adrian Belew has shared previously unseen images of his infamous relic’d Fender Stratocaster, which he and Seymour Duncan put through the wringer for its battered look.
Today, off-the-shelf relic’d guitars are commonplace. The Fender Custom Shop and Gibson Murphy Lab are but two examples of high-end mainstream relic'ing. Plenty of other brands have hopped on the artificial aging hype train, though, from Charvel, EVH to Solar and beyond.
In the late 1970s, however, Belew wasn't spoiled for choice with relic'd guitars, so he – with the help of Seymour Duncan – decided to take things into his own hands.
The electric guitar, originally sporting a brown sunburst colorway, was bought on the cheap, and the “ugly-ass” instrument was promptly hacked, gouged, set alight, and exposed to other barbaric and torturous relic'ing techniques. It was brutal, but it worked, and it would later grace the cover of Guitar World magazine.
Now, Belew has reflected on that day by sharing unseen photos on his Instagram.
“Seymour Duncan just sent these cool photos from the day he and I – mainly he – battered and burnt the $285 Strat I had just bought,” his caption reads. “It had to have been one of the earliest examples of ‘relic'ing’ a guitar: he laid it in the grass, doused it with lighter fluid, and phoof! the relic'ing ritual began.
“When we were finished gouging it with screwdrivers, spraying blobs of paint on it, dragging it around the yard, and banging it on the driveway, we hung it up in a tree,” he continues. One of the images shows it pinned against a large tree trunk, broken and scarred.
“The next day, when I took it into rehearsals, Frank [Zappa] said, ‘If you wanted to ruin your guitar, Adrian, why didn't you loan it to a friend?’”
Belew, who spent a year in Frank Zappa’s band before working with David Bowie and later linking up with Robert Fripp in King Crimson, said the Zappa gig was a game-changer for him.
But it's not the first time Belew has reflected on the creation of that fateful relic'd Strat. Last year, he told Guitar World that he believed it to be the first of its kind.
“I’m gonna be bold and say that might be the first relic’d guitar,” he said at the time, “and you can thank Seymour Duncan for that.”
In January, Belew revealed he'd had surgery to combat his carpal tunnel struggles. He's since opened up about how his recovery is going, while hinting at his next musical adventure.
Belew has also paid tribute to the late and highly innovative luthier, Ken Parker, who built his trusted and feature-laden Parker Fly signature guitar.
