Rock and Roll; Interview with Dick Dale [Part 1 of 2]

You know what Mark said. If you want to rock your guitar for custom talk. The actual influence of my get the style that I play actually stems from you know a lot of people say what guitar players we're listening to and at that and my time when I started the only guy that I was listening to was Hank Williams and he didn't play like a guitar where I got my foot. My my actual feeling in my style was from listening to Gene Cooper and Jeanne Cooper and because drums was like my first instrument. And listening to the way that he went to the jungle

to study the native drumming styles to mesmerize people to keep the rhythm going didn't indict and indicted and indicted them like that instead of going down and then put in a band and not like you would do in a jam session or gestation trying to impress other musicians. He wanted to find out why people were could get mesmerized. And that's the reason why that the famous Gene Cooper drum solo was the one band to do to do to do better and to do about it. And that always grabbed everybody because music is not only an attitude it's sexual It's sensual. And when you tend to play the same thing like if I was doing if I start doing a thing like this. Yeah I could go on. People just all of a sudden. Even people who are deaf can feel. I've had them come to my concerts and gone and done and done. Now if I go on break that and start doing some other fancy things then I wake them up.

And that's what they did. They made them they made them not change their driving bottom sound so I decided I would not get not only that kind of a sound I get a thing that would go like oh you get that kind of sound just keeps and kickin and it's simple. Yeah yeah yeah. Right Marc. So it was a joke because you know what. The actual actual influences of my playing a lot of people say how did you get that sound and what made you do that song. It was actually all way back to being at the beginning of time when I was listening to my mom and dad's big

78 whatever they call records listening to like guys like Carrie James and I was listening to Gene Krupa and drums. Was he was such an influence on me and everything I do onstage is with this drumming rhythm that Jeanne Cooper put together. He was a man who went in into the jungles and tried to find out why the natives how they were mesmerized mesmerized them and he come to find out that keeping them Donna didn't like a sound that like for instance you would go like Oh now that's keeping it driving like that tend to mesmerize them. And if you changed it if you went over it if you went into that and did it you would just wake them up and then henceforth there goes the hip hip hip hip nautical type of trance you put people in. So when I play the guitar I play it like I'm playing a drum I play just the way Jeanne Cooper made his sounds I did and didn't and I take people for a ride on that kind of a song like I would go

for instance. You are. Due to that is is a heavy staccato picking machine gun staccato picking sound it's an attack and it keeps the timing tight and that is really the basis of what I play it's how I get that sound. And in that way I don't try to get too fancy. You know I don't get to keep it simple stupid. You've been cited as the first powered guitars now what was the inspiration for the actual power of my guitar. When I'm performing and when I'm playing what I was really looking for a lot of people say yeah he's the father of like a top player once said Take away the sort of title of Dick Dale and you get the father of heavy metal.

And he said what you mean by that and they go Well anybody who blows up forty eight amplifiers and speakers that's power. And it's true in the beginning when I first met Leo Fender he had given me he had made the guitar of the Telecaster for the country players and then he had given me this guitar that was just already out a year before I met him. The Stratocaster and he said here beat this to pieces and then tell me what you feel and think and when I would do that. Listening as I say to Jeanne Cooper albums and getting that tribal Bunder sound when I would play it. I could not capture that out of an amplifier because we did not have mikes to Mike in front of amps in those days they had a play on their own own qualities. So what would happen is here I get a little 10 inch speaker you know a 12 inch speaker and I'm pumping this guitarist I would like 60 gauge strings and when I was in the speakers a bird on the speakers and locking the speakers are rattling and and then the amp wasn't enough and so through a complete trial an area for many trial and error for

many months. Leo called me up one day. Here try this try this and finally it's a beautiful story and but as the end result was the big deal showman amplifier which was a combination of. And I'll put transformer that he he really focused on that favor the highs mids and the lows whereas most Transformers only favor one. And then along with the 15 inch lancing the 130 F speaker f meaning Fender we went to the Lansing company and they finally they thought we were nuts and we said this is what we need. But the speakers were breaking freezing burning to put bigger voice coils in bigger. We put rubberized the edges of the speakers and then the amplifier when it was finished was 100 amp and it picked a hundred 100 watts and it picked a hundred eighty Watts was 100 amp and hundred eighty Watts. That combination was the Sht the dick deal Shelmon amplifier and the dual showman was nothing. The only difference was the impedance change from 8 to 4

and. With the combination of the Stratocaster being solid wood the body making it as heavy as we could make it made it that thick sound if you could put strings on a telephone pole for they used to tell me and a pick up you'd have the purest sound in the world but fortunately you couldn't hold a telephone pole so we stuck with stacked Stratocaster as is. There are some some of the surf music stars actually served. What beach you actually served with. Were you inspired by the sounds of surfing the waves in your life was it was that something affected you. What songs are going on. You know after I finally understood what Jeanne Cooper was trying to do with sound rhythm driving rhythm figured about you trying to impress other musicians forget about jam sessions Forget about just doing all these

other things but just concentrating on the the average human. The average person who's not a professional they don't they don't understand an augmented 1 through 13. Neither do I and ever took a lesson in my life and anything I would I'd be surfing. I knew what I wanted I knew the sound that I wanted and it was very tribal and big. But I also at the same time was surfing and I also at the same time had lines and tigers and when I would watch my lion get 21 pounds per square inch and his jaw go through a stainless steel pan like it was somebody shot it with a metal piercing or something. The strength was so overwhelming made me feel really small. It made me really feel it made me realize what I'm not. And when you're paddling out to a wave is the same thing you paddle up to a 10 foot wave. You start saying your prayers and say God get me over the top of that wave and I'll go to Mass every Sunday the same thing it really homo's you and makes you realize that what you are really not. And

when I get wise guys who think they're really something I go go stand next to a 10 foot wave or go get in a cage with a 500 pound lion and then tell me how great you are. So with these real forms of spiritual power that nature has given us in the forms of exotic animals and the jungle animals in the forms all of the surf when I would do come across on a bottom turn I drop to the bottom. It would be just like my lions grow out roaring at around 5:30 every day they would go like that. That gives you chills just me until they give me chicken skin on it and the same way it's just like a weight. So when I would have my my line was like that's no good.