Dick Dale: the King of Surf Guitar

His style is something different and unique. Since his first appearances in Balboa, Ca. at the famed Rendezvous Ballroom, he has set and broken attendance records everywhere he's performed. His appearances at the Rendezvous Ballroom broke every existing record for the Ballroom by drawing capacity crowds of over four thousand screaming dancing fans every weekend each night down on the Balboa peninsula.

Dick Dale invented surf music in the 1950's. Not the '60's as is commonly believed. He was given the title "King of the Surf Guitar" by his fellow surfers with whom he surfed with from sun-up to sun-down. He met Leo Fender the guitar and amplifier Guru and Leo asked Dale to play his newly creation, the Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar. The minute Dale picked up the guitar, Leo Fender broke into uncontrolled laughter and disbelief, he was watching Dale play a right handed guitar upside down and backwards, Dale was playing a right handed guitar left handed and changing the chords in his head then transposing the chords to his hands to create a sound never heard before.

Leo Fender gave the Fender Stratocaster along with a Fender Amp to Dale and told him to beat it to death and tell him what he thought of it, Dale took the guitar and started to beat it to death and he blew up Leo Fender's amp and blew out the speaker. Dale proceeded to blow up forty nine amps and speakers, they would actually catch on fire, Leo would say, 'Dick, why do you have to play so loud?' Dale would explain that he wanted to create the sound of Gene Krupa the famous jazz drummer that created the sounds of the native dancers in the jungles along with the roar of mother nature's creature's and the roar of the ocean.

Leo Fender kept giving Dale amps and Dale kept blowing them up! Till one night Leo and his right hand man Freddy T. went down to the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula in Balboa, California and stood in the middle of Four Thousand screaming dancing Dick Dale fans and said to Freddy, I now know what Dick Dale is trying to tell me, Back to the drawing board. A special 85 watt output transformer was made that peaked 100 watts when dale would pump up the volume of his amp, this transformer would create the sounds along with Dale's style of playing, the kind of sounds that Dale dreamed of. BUT! they now needed a speaker that would handle the power and not burn up from the volume that would come from Dale's guitar.

Leo, Freddy and Dale went to the James B. Lansing speaker company, they explained that they wanted a fifteen inch speaker built to their specifications and it would soon be known as the 15'' JBL -D130F speaker, it made the complete package for Dale to play through being named as the Single Showman Amp. When Dale plugged his Fender Stratocaster guitar into the new Showman amp and speaker cabinet, Dale became the first creature on earth to jump from the volume scale of a modest quiet guitar player of a scale of 4 to blasting up through the volume scale to TEN ! That is when Dale became the 'Father of Heavy Metal' quote "Guitar Player Magazine". Dale broke through the electronic barrier limitations of that era!

Dale still wanted to go further, as the crowds increased, Dale's volume increased, but he still wanted a bigger punch with thickness in the sound so that it would pulsate into the audience and leave them breathless. Dale designed a speaker cabinet and had Leo put 2 -15''-JBL-D103's into it which made Leo Fender create a new and more powerful output transformer, they would call it the Dick Dale Transformer made by the Triad Company. This became a 100 watt output transformer that would peak 180 watts, nothing like this had ever been done before in the world of guitars and amplifiers. This became known as the Dual-Showman Piggy Back Amp. This is why Dick Dale is called the Father of all the power Players in the world!

It is a Phenomena, that Dale is still playing with not only the same vengeance as he did in the 50's but his playing is unleashed and shredding into the 90's with a focus and power as if from mother nature. He shares the stage with fellow players of all generations up into the alternative's of the 90's. Being completely self taught, Dick Dale plays left handed upside down which was a result of holding the guitar lefthanded. The strings became upside-down, chords are designed for right handed players making it very difficult for a left handed player unless he were to change the strings for a left handed guitar, something that Dale never did.

Dale is also a master at the Acoustic, Electronic, Bass and Spanish Guitars'. As well as the Ukulele, Banjo, Drums, Piano, Organ, Electronic Keyboard, Harpsichord, Trumpet, Trombone, Saxophone, Harmonica, Xylophone and, believe it or not... the Accordion!

Dale was also responsible for another creation to the world of guitar players, 'The Fender Tank Reverb'. As Dale sang in his shows, he found that he did not have a vibrato in his voice and he did not like the straight flat dry sound. To sustain his vocal notes, he turned to an old Hammond organ and found a reverb unit and showed it to Leo Fender and together they came up with the 'Fender Tank Reverb'. Dale then plugged a Shure Dynamic Bird cage Microphone into it and as Dale sang, his voice took on a very rich, sexy and full sound. Later, Dale then plugged his Fender Stratocaster guitar into the Reverb Tank to sustain his guitar notes which became Dale's trademark sound.) (NOTE) Dale had already been titled 'King of the Surf Guitar' by his surfer friends before his creation of the Fender Reverb, Dale's first album called 'Surfer's Choice' was the first Surfing album to be commercially sold with a picture of Dale surfing by the pier in San Clemente, Ca. with a surfing title on it. This album alone sold over eighty-eight thousand albums in the late 50's and today in the 90's it would be like 4 million. There was not one song on that album that had a Reverb for effects, everything was played with nothing but Dale's sheer force and power. A bit of trivia, Dale's recording of 'Miserlou' became the title song for Quentin Tarantino's Blockbuster movie 'Pulp Fiction'.

Dick Dale has been called one of the hardest working men in show business. In the past five years he has maintained a heavy concert tour and public appearance schedule throughout the world. Focusing in Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada, South America and the U.S.. When touring, Dale brings his wife Jill and son Jimmy and occasionally the two will join in, Jill on Bass and Jimmy on Drums.

He makes time to endorse some of his favorite products, including Dean Markley strings, Pearl Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Graphtech String Saddles, Billabong clothing and Australia's Ugg Boot Company. Perhaps his most prominent endorsement would have to be for Fender Musical Instruments. Because of the popularity of Dale's signature playing, Fender added to their inventory of guitars, the making of the Dick Dale Signature Stratocaster which seems to be a favorite amongst the Dick Dale guitar players. John English, Fender's custom guitar maker set out to the task of building Dale's Signature Stratocaster guitar with Dale being the overseer. To be included with his favorites was the honor distinction to be the first musician ever to be endorsed by Telex Corp. Using the Telex FMR450 Wireless which has made it possible for Dale to play his guitar walking into the audience.

Along with his Dual Showman Fender Amps, Dale is particular in what tubes that he uses to help create his sound, he has chosen Ruby Tubes from a company called Magic Parts located in Point Reyes Station, California (800) 451-1992.

Dale has also recorded original material for Disneyland's Space Mountain roller coaster ride, and the soundtrack for the History of NASA video shown in Space Mountain. Dale's music is being used in all the Disneyland's throughout the world along with being featured in a Disneyland Music album which is being sold by Disneyland. May 21, 1998 a historical day for Disneyland, Dick Dale was chosen to be the person to highlight the grand opening of Tomorrowland by standing on top of Space Mountain (without the use of a safety harness) with his Gold Fender Stratocaster guitar (the beast) and play for all to hear throughout Disneyland "Ghost Riders"& "Miserlou" - Dale's music has gone down in the annals of Disneyland history.

Being a unique and versatile artist, Dick Dale is not limited to his musical skills. He has proved to be a respected Home designer and builder, personally designing and hand drawing the elevations and building his parents 7,000 square foot single story dream home in the california high desert so that he can be within easy reach to them. As of January 24, Dale's parent's celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary, his dad is 86 and his mother is 81 years young. Dale is an accomplished Horseman, Exotic Animal Trainer, Surfer, Martial Arts Expert, Archer, and Pilot. His favorite plane is a Cessna 337B Super Skymaster, a twin tailed, front and rear engine aircraft which was also flown in the military and also sold to the general aviation pilots. Dale has a twin engine pilot rating.

Featured in various articles including the Los Angeles Times Calender Section, Guitar World Magazine, Guitar and Guitar Player mag and just recently the back cover of Fender Frontline Magazine with his 5 year old son Jimmy Stix holding their Fender Strats. And in 1981, Dick Dale was awarded Guitarist of the Year by Guitar Player Magazine.

In 1986 Dick was named Forefather of Rock and Roll by Thirty Years of Rock and Roll, and in 1988 Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughn were both together nominated for a Grammy Award for the music in the motion picture Back to the Beach. Dale was also awarded the Lifetime Pop Music Culture Award from UC Berkeley with Ice-T, John Lee Hooker and Mick Fleetwood. In 1996 Dick was given a Platinum Record award for his performance recording of Miserlou, the guitar instrumental that gave Quentin Tarantino the energy force to create the the all time award movie Pulp Fiction. Miserlou was made the Title song. 1996, Dale was also inducted into the Hollywood Rock Walk of Fame and also inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame located in the Hall of Champions building in San Diego, Ca.. Dick Dale was the first person to create the surf music sound. The first to take a sport and develop a music for it. He was also the first to have more than one record on the Top Ten charts at one time, and also to have five songs from a single album on the charts at once. He was first to sell out the Los Angeles sports arena, and the first rock guitarist to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. He's also the first power rock guitarist to be featured in a double page layout in Life magazine.

King of Surf Guitar

Dick Dale takes no prisoners - he mows them down with his influential bad-ass guitar playing. "An innovator since the late fifties," said Rolling Stone, "Dick Dale is still running ahead of the pack." Dick Dale's career is littered with historic sonic achievements and legendary live shows - and everything he's done has come from the heart, from the love of making music, from the need to express his feelings through his thick, calloused fingertips - not from the cynicism and greed that inspire some musicians. Rolling Stone continued its praise by remarking that, " a show with Nirvana would be an appropriate forum for Dale."

Say the name Dick Dale to any modern music fan and you're bound to get the response, "King Of The Surf Guitar". He thinks it's always been something of a misnomer because his playing isn't confined to the heavy, staccato, machine-gun style picking of surf music - and because he hasn't gone surfing in years because of the polluted water. But if the crown fits, wear it proudly and that's just what Dale is doing on his latest guitar assault, Calling Up Spirits, his Beggars Banquet debut album.

Recorded in six action-packed days with Prairie Prince and Scott Matthews on dual drums, Vince Welnick from the Grateful Dead on keyboards, and Dale's longtime bassist, Ron Eglit, Calling Up Spirits opens with the classic Dale explosion of "Nitrus", and hammers through 12 more songs pulled from birth, death, sex, strength, pain and fear, all the experiences that have driven Dale in recent years from the mountaintop where he now lives to the studio and the world's concert stages.

Produced by Dale with Ron Eglit, the sound is classic Dale (who sings on four of the tracks): a compelling blend of hard rock, explosive guitar, reverb, a hint of latin, and what Dale readily identifies as the sound of our indigenous tribal roots. Snakes or moshers will feel at home in "The Pit", while the future for his four-year old son, Jimmy, inspires the chantlike, "Window", the uncertainty highlighted by an eerie spaghetti western treatment. A brassy addition to "Wedge Paradiso" gives it a South-of-the-border feel, while his take of Hendrix's "Third Stone From The Sun" draws to a close with some of the most delicate guitar sounds Dale has ever made.

"They gotta go in there like they're fighting in the arena, 'cause I beat the shit out of them," Dale says of the musicians brave enough to record with him. "We're non-stop. When we're in a groove, we're in a groove. I recorded it live and I wanted to keep it loose. I said, 'hey guys, just follow me." And we didn't leave 'till it was done. We lived there on the property where the studio is. So if my string goes out of tune, it goes out of tune because I hit it so hard. These are the things that let people know that it's real."

Calling Up Spirits is the third album that Dale has made since his recording career was rekindled in 1992. It's also his most power-packed, and his most earthy. The other two LPs, Tribal Thunder and Unknown Territory, were released on High Tone Records. The two albums, he proudly states, made him the oldest artist in history to make the Top 20 on the charts at the college radio trade journal, CMJ. Rolling Stone gave him four stars for Tribal Thunder, and after MTV's "Beavis And Butt-head" aired a video for "Nitro", a song he wrote for snowboarders, every kid in the country knew who Dick Dale was.

Calling Up Spirits is his first release for Beggars Banquet Records and his first record since director Quentin Tarantino used Dale's 1962 recording, "Misirlou" to open the hit film "Pulp Fiction". Dale earned his first platinum album for the soundtrack, and the song quickly became the signature theme for the film's worldwide success. Dale clearly feels at home with his new label - he says, "The attitude of the people at Beggars Banquet is so unpretentious - it made me feel like I was talking to grass-roots people. They didn't look down their noses at me like they're doing me a favour."Dale has always been a true independent. In 1960, Dale released his first album Surfers Choice on his own Del-tone Records and managed to sell 88,000 copies. When Capitol Records signed him in 1963, he received a $50,000 advance, eclipsing the previous industry record set by Elvis Presley in 1956. Although he made the obligatory "Ed Sullivan Show" appearance (plus roles in various beach movies and in Marilyn Monroe's last film, "Let's Make Love"), he didn't tour because he is a self-proclaimed "hermit" who doesn't particularly like other musicians. That, and the change in music after the British invasion, meant that for a while his star shone a little less brightly.

But that worked in his favour. Since his performing career never went beyond Southern California, Dale assumed a near-mythic status among other guitar players. Guitar Player observed, "Take away the title of the King Of Surf Guitar and you'd have the father of heavy metal". Paul Shaffer of "Late Night With David Letterman" insisted Dale join Joe Walsh and Joe Satriani on his 1989 album. In 1987, Dale's duets with Stevie Ray Vaughan on the movie soundtrack for "Back To The Beach" earned a "Best Rock Instrumental Performance" Grammy nomination for the song "Pipeline".

According to the self-taught Dale, "When I play guitar, I don't come to pose and play fancy pyrotechnic scales. I come to kick ass. I create sounds of frustration, sounds of mother nature, sounds of screaming and dying animals, and sounds of happiness. That's basically what I do. Meanwhile, I break 60 gauge strings."

Music on Calling Up Spirits could be called a matter of life and death. Four years ago, the 58 year old guitarist's wife Jill, gave birth to their son, Jimmy. Dale, who survived a battle with his cancer 30 years ago, never wanted children. He grew up wanting to be a veterinarian and used to have a collection of exotic animals including a young female lion, a couple of mountain lion clubs and an ocelot. He still has horses to this day. Dale knows how much it hurts to lose an animal from an incurable disease and he feared something similar happening with a child. But fathering a son has taught him, "You don't really start feeling things until you have a child of your own." Watching Jimmy's world evolve from their vantage point on an 80 acre spread in the high desert of Twenty-nine Palms, California (2,000 feet above Palm Springs) inspired the title cut, says Dale.

"This CD is called Calling Up Spirits because if the people in control of this earth have no conscience of what they are doing to the grass roots people, to our families, jobs and children, then maybe we should go back to the beginning of time and call up spirits." In the liner notes, Dale writes, "I will not watch our four year old Jimmy grow up in a world that is so infected with greed and power and not caring for the elderly, who brought us into the world." One of Dale's dreams was always to play with Jerry Garcia because, "he had the same feeling for people - his heart was in the right place." He never got the chance, but after Garcia died in August, 1995, Dale was able to help a member of the Grateful Dead cope with Garcia's sudden passing. Prairie Prince, who had worked with Vince Welnick in The Tubes, suggested to Dale that he ask Welnick to play on Calling Up Spirits..

"He said it would be a good gesture because Vince had been in a deep depression," recalls Dale, who had originally rejected the idea of using keyboards, telling Prince that he didn't like to put something on record that he couldn't duplicate with his three-piece live set up. "He hadn't touched his instrument again. I was told he was seeking help, so based on that, I asked him to come to the studio," says Dale. "At first he said he couldn't do it, but he, ended up playing on "Peppermint Man." That's exactly how I would have recorded it if I had played the riffs myself. When we did "Fever" he did some of the greatest augmented chords and jazz chords. At the end, he just looked at me with that smile in his eyes and said, "Thanks man, I really needed that."

The revitalized appreciation for Dale's music and encouragement from other artists helped him get over his contempt for touring. Now, he had little choice: Dick Dale had become a concert attraction all over the world. His legendary reputation and new music and video earned him a whole new generation of fans. Dale found himself playing to 450,000 at Holland's famous "Pink pop" festival and appearing on British TV shows with Eric Clapton and Dr John. Alternative music hero Frank Black called Dale's music "pure punk". The Australian press said Dale - the first guitarist to break the sound barrier with a 100 watt output transformer peaking at 180 watts and blasting into dual 15 inch speakers - was "louder that Motorhead". Japan went from calling him "The Phoenix", the bird that rises from the ashes, to Godzilla, "monster, monster Godzilla."

"I never wanted to tour because I never wanted to leave my family, my animals," Dale explains. "Now, I can't stop. I stand onstage for two hours and play for two hours until I'm ready to drop. I'm not going to retire to a rocking chair. When I do go, it'll be up there onstage, in an explosion of body parts. I've been in explosions, I've washed up on the beach unconscious, I've been in the jaws of lions and tigers. I've been burned and told I'd never play again. The reason I'm still here is to learn to feel everyone's pain. Music soothes the beast and takes no sides. I am a manipulator of musical instruments to create sounds of human emotion."

Dick Dale and His "Beast" Rock Irving Plaza

"Rolling Stone forgot who made the first loud rock'n'roll guitar album." - Dick Dale.

He could have been any casually dressed member of the road crew. His thining hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail that fell halfway down his back. A black T-shirt, slightly frayed around the edges, settled over his paunchy midsection and met up loosely with his brown shorts. He wore the typical beach thongs. No socks, just thongs. However, as soon as he strapped his gold-sparkle Fender Stratocaster, appropriately named "Beast," he became the one and only Dick Dale, gearing up for a blistering set of his trademark surf guitar.

Even if Dale's pioneering sound, a mix of intense tribal rhythms and Middle Eastern melodies, is not your cup of tea, you really have to admire the man's technical skill as well as the energy that is channeled through his music. His two most recent albums, Tribal Thunder (1993) and Unknown Territory (1994), have won Dale a nationwide cult following, although he has been a fixture on the West Coast for some thirty years now. Unlike many performers, Dale understands and appreciates his loyal following. His performances, regardless of their size, are quiet intimate.

With the thunderous drums and steady bass holding everything down, Dale and his "Beast" took center stage. Dale took pleasure in making his guitar wail and screech for the crowd as well as mixing things up by pouring our the beautiful melodies that make his music so expressive. The third song the band played, "Nitro," clearly demonstrated Dale's ability to come up with a powerful, buzzsaw guitar riff and then quickly change pace to a swinging, melodic passage.

After "Nitro," as was the case with most songs, Dale's guitar pick was too worn to be used any longer.

Dale's a tech head!

Most people know Dick Dale as the guy who played the theme over the opening credits of Pulp Fiction. The song, "Misirlou," is now so familiar, it has even been parodied on "The Simpsons." Taking advantage of his long-overdue notoriety, Dale, who rode the crest of the surf-music wave with his group the Del-Tones back in the early 1960s, has been touring almost nonstop for the past five years, bringing his shimmering guitar to a twenty-something generation raised on Dinosaur Jr. and Pearl Jam.

But while he is on the road, Dale likes to indulge a lesser-known aspect of his personality-it seems that he is a bit of a tech wonk, faithfully pursuing e-mail conversations with hundreds of fans and hacking graphics programs on his state-of-the-art Power Mac. Two days after he had put on a blistering show at New York's Irving Plaza, Dale sat down with YIL to talk about the surf music sites that accompany his surf sounds.

Unusually for a journeyman musician, Dale says he has been a tech nut ever since, as he puts it, the Macintosh had a whopping 48K of memory. "They used to say, 'Uh oh, we lost Dick. He's been on the computer from sunup till sundown,'" Dale says. "I think the world of reaching out by computer. I go online every day, and I'm really pissed when I can't get on to get my mail. I get mail from all over the world. Every time they see me in concert they write something, because I stand on the stage and tell them what my e-mail address is."

For all his technical acumen, Dale is a bit of a novice when it comes to the Web, but as he no longer surfs on water (a surfing accident that led to near-fatal water poisoning back in 1979 put a stop to that), he is more than happy to wet his toes in the Netsurf. Dale is impressed by a review on Entertainment Avenue that compares him to AC/DC and Metallica, and that says of his wife, who occasionally puts in a guest appearance on drums, "Jill kicks ass for a chick!" At the next stop, however, his enthusiasm dims noticeably. At Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, someone is hawking a white, gold-trimmed 1963 Fender Stratocaster supposedly built for the Dale himself-asking price, $14,000. "My guitar was given to me in 1955 by Leo Fender," Dale grouses. "I had a white guitar, yes, but it didn't have gold hardware. There's only one guitar I've had all my life, in a hundred different colors. We oughta tell them to get their s__ straight."

But Dale really rankles when we click through his entry on the Ultimate Band List and find ourselves in the official Dick Dale biography on CDnow, a direct vendor of music CDs over the Internet. There is a whopping faux pas: CDnow claims that Dale's major musical influence was fellow 60s guitarist Duane Eddy. "How do you make corrections on these things?" Dale demands. I suggest we go into AOL and drop a note to the CDnow Webmaster. Hunting and pecking carefully on the keyboard, Dale types out an off-the-cuff piece of rock history.

"A big correction on my influences: Duane Eddy was not a power player, he is a great player but not a power player. Hank Williams was a big influence and he didn't play electric guitar. Big band was my main influence along with Gene Krupa. Drums were my first instrument and I always wanted to be a cowboy singer, today you would say a country singer. I, along with Leo Fender, my second father, created the first power amps in the world. [signed] Dick Dale."

"Nobody came before me," Dale concludes, as we end our online session. "So how can I have influences?"