LET’S GO TRIPPIN’ — The King of Surf Guitar back in the day… uh, sometime in the ’60s, man.

By RUSS BENGTSON
(October 1995, Big Shout Magazine)

The King of Surf Guitar doesn’t surf anymore. At 58, Dick Dale is still living in California and still playing his signature Strat, but pollution and other environmental concerns have made him give up his signature sport. Back in the late ’50s and early ’60s however, Dick Dale was surfing. He surfed, surfers crowded his shows, and his music spawned a genre. Scores of imitators surfaced — including the Chantays and the Ventures — but no one could really duplicate Dale’s style. Dale’s popularity has resurged lately, helped out by his song “Miserlou” being used to open Pulp Fiction. In the last three years he has toured more than he ever has — he was called louder than Motorhead in Australia, was compared to Godzilla in Japan, and had Sick of It All open for him in Europe. Since we last heard from him, Dale dropped Hightone Records to do his own thing. His next record, Calling Up Spirits, will be released on his own label, Indigenous Records. Dale answered the phone himself, and was more than eager to chat before his appearance at the Trocadero in Philly on Oct. 11. Here’s some of what he said… sometimes referring to himself in the third person, no less…

THE BEGINNING

“[In 1956] Leo [Fender] brought Dick Dale in and said, ‘Here, take this guitar [the second-year Stratocaster], beat the devil out of it and tell me what you think… and take this amplifier.’ After this we started changing things around. Leo told me, ‘Dick, the thicker the wood, the purer the sound. If you could put strings on a telephone pole, you’d have the fattest sound in the world, but you can’t hold a telephone pole.’ So they made this real thick-bodied guitar called the Stratocaster. I put on 60-gauge strings — most guitar players play 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10-gauge strings. Dick Dale’s thinnest string is a 16. Then it goes to 18, 38, 48, 58 to 60-gauge string. They call them coat hangers, they call ’em bridge cables, and I laugh like hell ’cause I break ’em. And they go, ‘How the hell can that be?’ [Lansing] created a 15-inch speaker called the 15-inch D130F, meaning Fender. We put it in a three-foot high cabinet — three-foot high, two-foot wide, one-foot deep — put it in the center and played through it — and it had the most purest, beautiful round sound you’ve ever heard in your life — mixed with the Stratocaster solid-body, thick guitar with the 60-gauge strings. There were things we changed in the guitar like the Dick Dale 5-position switch, which I don’t even use ’cause it confuses me. I just put a toggle switch on. I even took off my tone controls ’cause I don’t wanna be bothered with the extra bullshit. I just go straight into my amplifier, turn it up, and make the noise with my hands… Dick Dale released the musician from playing as a regular, straight sound to breaking the sound barrier, to creating what is heavy metal. It’s loud, it’s just volume, no matter what you play.”

THE NEXT GENERATION

“My son is playing drums at 3 1/2. He’s just a monster — I mean, he’s endorsed by the Zildjian cymbal company already, and he’s been playing since he was 12 months old. He hits harder than some guys, and people can’t believe it. He’s either Damien or a man in a boy’s body. Where it permits, he will be onstage playing my concert because he knows it inside and out; he just knows my music.”

WHY HE QUIT SURFING

“The water is so goddamn polluted. I used to go in the water with my lions and tigers to heal my wounds, and now they say don’t even put the children in the water. They’re telling pregnant women not to eat the fish and children not to go in the water now. When you know what’s in the water like I know what’s in the water, there isn’t a stream, a lake or river in the world — striped bass have a little creature inside that eats your intestinal tract from the inside out. I caught this thing and my flesh started falling off right in front of my house at Newport Beach. Now I’m a pilot. I have 80-somewhat acres in the high desert. I haul water to my ranch like the days of Daniel Boone, abut I have two 2,800 foot landing strips away from all that bullshit.”

THE NEW HOBBY

“My life has become snowboarding. Until too many people piss in the snow and turn it yellow, I’m gonna snowboard. Of course, I haven’t been able to walk properly for six months since I wiped my ass out. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore flew us up to their nightclub there in Ketchum, Idaho for two concerts. And I went up and I was coming down the slope and, my God, I should have worn a butt protector. I hit that tailbone so bad. And I continued going the rest of the day, and I played that night. When I got home I had to go to the hospital ’cause I couldn’t lay down or walk or stand right or anything. And they said, ‘Oh, that’ll take about a year to heal,’ and I said, ‘What?’ And it’s been over a year and all I have to do is sit too long in one direction and that damn tailbone lets me know what’s happening. It’s never healed properly. So anybody who goes out there, tell them to be sure to put a butt protector in their baggy pants. You can get them, they strap on, they prevent your tailbone from being shattered.”

WHY HE PLAYS

“We can talk about personalities and the way a guy plays, and who gives a shit? People don’t know what an augmented ninth is or a thirteenth and neither do I, and I can’t even play a scale. Who cares? I get up there, and I make sounds of dying animals, of crashing waves, of screaming bears because their stomach is being eaten away by the mercury and the poisons, of the martial arts, putting your fist through a solid object, showing that you can control and focus your own inner strength. And that’s why Dick Dale plays like a madman up there.”