Sound of the Surf (2022) Movie Script
1
And we're rolling.
Alright, here we go.
Strange beautiful grass of green
with your majestic silver seas
Your mysterious mountains
I wish to see closer.
May I land my kinky machine?
Although your world wonders
me...
with your majestic and superior
cackling hen.
Your people, I do not understand
So to you, I shall put an end...
and you'll...
never hear surf music again.
Those are the words of
Jimi Hendrix
that have have been cited
thousands of times, as if Jimi
was saying
surf music had died in the 60s
And it couldn't be further from
the truth.
Hendrix was wrong.
Just like Motown for Detroit and
Reggae for Jamaica
It was a local regional music
that came out
of the lives of young kids in
Southern California.
The growth of surf music was
really quite phenomenal.
It started in 1961 in Southern
California
with only a handful of bands
and a handful of recordings
And within a year or two, there
were
hundreds of recordings by
hundreds of bands
across the country.
In the beginning, it was just
about the
music and the surfers enjoying
the music
and embracing it and claiming it
as their own.
Surf music is a
bunch of kids on a beach around
a bonfire and just having the
best time
without any social obligations
or school pressures.
And there was no future and no
war and no
economy and nothing to worry
about.
I was attracted to the
simplicity and the energy of it.
That's what rock and roll is and
was...
was simplicity and energy.
I dropped the flute like a hot
potato
because I loved the guitar.
Because there
were no sound systems
we knew that we couldn't hear
the voice anyway.
And we were more interested in
the melodic
and in the power!
Surf music truly is rock
instrumental
with a reverb tank.
There's something about the
sound of instrumental
surf music that flips a switch
with people.
There's something magic that
happens.
Something magic that happens
with the audience.
They regress, they start feeling
younger.
They want to get up out of their
seats and dance.
We had those amps.
It was that kind of music where
they didn't care.
It was the fun of the music,
because it was loud!
There's no pretension.
There's no hidden meanings.
There's no message.
It's just pure unadulterated
fun.
In the early sixties my family
lived
in Montclair, Southern
California.
A little dry dusty town in the
Inland Empire
on the edge of the Mojave
Desert.
Montclair was removed from
ground zero
of surf music by 40 or 50 miles.
But, I got a transistor radio in
and that opened up the world to
me.
K-Earth 101, the king of the
surf guitar
Dick Dale and the Del-Tones.
And one day, in 1961...
I'm listening to K-MEN in
San Bernardino
And they were the first radio
station to actually play...
Dick Dale's first record.
Once I heard my first Dick Dale
record
I was hooked on that kind of
music
And I started collecting surf
records left and right.
And at the same time, I was
learning how to play guitar.
Bands like Dick Dale and the
Del-Tones
The Challengers
they were like my teachers.
And a few years later, I
realized
that I had several thousand
records.
And I discovered that there had
been surf bands
from every state in the Union
and from almost every overseas
country.
It was just an amazingly diverse
form of music
that had spread like wildfire.
And so I wondered where did this
music come from
to begin with?
What happened to it?
Did it really go away?
If it did, why?
The outside world didn't really
view
surfers, all that much at first
because
there was just so few of them
and it was
more or less seen as a...
He-man athletic pursuit
that was very rare.
Or drawing of surfers would
appear on
the travel magazines.
Surfing as a culture, kind of
flew in the face
of mainstream culture.
It was non-productive, kind of
hedonistic...
pleasure seeking, responsibility
avoiding kind of thing.
And no, self-respecting, parent
would
endorse their children pursuing
that
in exchange for school and
career...
because our parents were all
children of the depression.
For them it was security.
As a surfer
you were getting the idea
that maybe that was a false god.
Maybe there were other things
that were important.
There was a real high
priority on
having a job, everybody
wanted to have a job
and be productive and be
contributing to society
and all of that kind of thing.
If you said you were a surfer,
it was like
you were a drop-out of that.
And you were sort of.
By the time, surf music exploded
in Southern California
in the early 60s, surfing
culture had pretty much
been firmly established here
at least since the late 50s.
As surfers, we'd drive to the
beach and get jacked up
to the music on the car radio.
Interestingly, the music that
we were
surfing to at that time was
probably jazz.
We'd get some beer and go to
some guys house.
Trying to get some girls to come
over
and put on Jazz records.
Like Herbie Mann
at the Village Gate.
Miles Davis, Henry Mancini,
the theme to Peter Gunn,
theme to Black Saddle.
In Newport was a place called
The Rendezvous Ballroom and my
parents found
out about the Rendezvous and
started taking
me there when I was maybe
fourteen.
And during a wonderful several
year period
I heard every major big band
that would come through.
Gene Krupa's band, and Les
Brown, Woody Herman
Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey,
Jimmy Dorsey.
To be there on the Bandstand and
watching the band and the
vocalists
and the drummers and all that
was
God, it was marvelous.
And then we start going down to
the
Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach and
there's a
bunch of guys from The
Stan Kenton Orchestra
that are playing, there's Shelly
Manne
is the drummer
Howard Rumsey on bass
Conte Candoli -trumpet
Shorty Rogers -trumpet, Bob
Cooper -sax
Bud Shank -sax.
And one of the more innovative
filmmakers was Bruce Brown
And Bruce Brown, would go down
to the Lighthouse
'cause that's where the jazz
was played.
The reason that jazz was adapted
to surfing
by surfers, was that it had kind
of a
lyrical flowing surf like
environment it created
and surfing the wave was a sort
of improvisational
and jazz was improvisational.
It was about virtuosity and Jazz
was about
individual instrumental
virtuosity.
So, there were really lots of
kind of symbiotic, aspects of
the two forms of expression.
These artists like Henry Mancini
Les Baxter and Martin Denny were
looking for
an atmosphere and that
atmosphere really
gelled with beach culture, and
ultimately
surf culture.
It really wasn't as much of an
idea of a
California culture, it was like
a transplanted
Hawaiian thing.
They kind of wanted to be like
Hawaiians.
In that kind of later 50s time
frame
the fact that the board went
from 100 lb
piece of dense wood to a light
30 or 40 lb
fiberglassed balsa wood board
surfboards became even more
accessible when foam came out in
59
so, they could make as many
boards as they
needed to fill the demand.
The sport had gone from maybe
500, 1500 surfers
to five, six, seven or 8000
surfers
And that's where it was
when the movie Gidget came out.
One day, I came to Malibu and
there was a
shack there and I think Harry
Stonelake
and Tubesteak built it.
Different guys would hang out
there 'cause there
was some shade. Terry Tracy, who
was living,
there was married and lived
elsewhere, like
Englewood or something.
He was at the shack a lot and he
would just
just hang there, you know, and
hang
out with guys and get them to
buy him some
beer and stuff like that, and he
named Gidget.
There was a girl midget that
arrived on the scene
and sets up headquarters.
She goes home and tells her
daddy all this stuff.
Her daddy writes a book.
I remember the day that my
father picked me
up at Malibu and drove me home.
It was in the Dynaflow Buick as
my board
was sticking out of the back.
I turned to him and I said: I'd
like to write a story
about what's going on
at Malibu.
And my father said: Why don't
you tell me
everything? And I'll write the
story for you.
I'm the writer.
So I started telling him...
that I was called Gidget at
Malibu
which meant girl midget.
I told him about Terry
Tubesteak Tracy that
lived in a shack with Harry
Stonelake.
And I told him how incredibly
interesting
the lifestyle that I thought
Malibu was.
It was all about what was
outside and I
thought the whole sorta
lifestyle was
fascinating that there were
surfboards... young men
There was somebody living in a
shack and we
were waiting for the wave.
That book really was... I don't
know
they're going: bitchin,
rocket bombs and
Go, Gidget, go! Shoot the
Curl!
God! Can you believe that? I
can't.
Columbia Studios bought the
rights to the novel
and in 1959, the Hollywood
version hits theaters nationwide.
The movie comes out, everybody
loved the movie
except, for guess whom? Surfers.
The movie Gidget
was kind of interesting.
These days, it would be pooh-
poohed.
The surfers would sneeze at it.
But, when it came out, it was
the first acknowledgement
by the mainstream world of
surfing.
The theme song to the movie was
sung by James Darren.
It became a top 100 hit record
in the spring of 1959.
When the Gidget film
comes out, a teenage
culture, emerges in a completely
different environment.
You're not seeing skyscrapers,
you're not seeing
buildings, you're not seeing
metal microphones,
you're seeing a shack in the
sand next to
water and luminous waves that
people are
zooming in and out of with these
little boards.
This is just unprecedented and
no one's
seen anything like this.
It may me cool
and it glorified the surf
culture, even
though it did it sort of in a
dorky way.
Every time Hollywood touches
surfing
they goof it up.
Even when surfers try to do
surfing...
they don't get it right.
So when Hollywood does it, what
are they
going to get?
So, surfers were listening to
jazz, and
rhythm and blues.
But where was the surf music?
There was no such thing
as surf music at the time.
I never heard that expression.
Surf music?
But, maybe somebody had a bongo
drum.
When you're in the water
and Malibu is six to eight feet.
You're out there and here comes
a set.
I guarantee you, you're not
going to sit there
saying: Oh, bro this is
music to surf by.
You don't do that.
You just take off on waves.
Surfing films of the 1950s, were
not seen
by all that many people.
Bud Browne had been making
surfing movies
from about 1942, or 43
and showing them just at
lifeguard stations.
Greg Noll was making little
tiny films called
Search for Surf.
Just before Gidget came out
Bruce Brown was doing his first
movie
Slippery When Wet.
Gidget gives the ability
for these people to make
full-length
features and draw larger
audiences.
Once Gidget becomes
popular, teenagers that
are into rock and roll, start
gravitating
towards surfing.
In the surf movies, they
wouldn't have
music synced on the footage
itself.
It was just they turn on the
projector.
He was just putting an album
on and he put
on the soundtrack to Peter Gunn.
The Mancini Peter Gunn thing
was used for big waves
at Sunset Beach.
We'd be looking at the screen
and you'd see
this wave and you couldn't
really tell what
was going on with it and
all of a sudden you
see a couple of ants sweep up
the face and
the driving boom-boom-boom-
boom and my God...
those waves were twenty-five
feet.
And, you know, you just get
jacked
out of your mind.
And so you started to
see a lot of
interesting things come about
from the filmmakers.
For instance, I remember a John
Severson in
a film sequence at Secos of a
hot
offshore morning, having Kemp
Aubrey
play Flamenco guitar.
I honestly think that Bud Browne
was
probably the first person to
connect
instrumental music to the surf
culture
because he acquired the
Fireballs music,
right when it came out in the
late 50s.
And he immediately started
playing those albums
with his movies.
Things were changing
Civil Rights Movement was
getting going.
Folk music was getting big
The Kingston Trio came along, so
they were all
these kind of hints at what was
going to
be developing culturally in the
60s.
It was still kind of in its
youth.
Kids weren't really paying that
much attention.
They were just doing their thing
but in
reality 1959-1960 was a pretty
bland
period musically.
What you were hearing on the
radio just
before surf music broke was
mostly teen idols in
heavily orchestrated material.
That was the era of Frankie
Avalon and Bobby Rydell.
What are generally regarded
as the
ones who tamed rock and roll
down to
where it was safe and the early
days of the
dangerous stuff were kind of
over and
it was still about four years
before
The Beatles came along.
With Elvis in the Army
and Chuck Berry busted by the
Mann Act
and Little Richard finding
religion
Jerry Lee Lewis getting busted
for having a
wife who was 13.
On the flip side of that
big rock and roll stars were
gone.
We started to hear instrumental
rock and roll
about 1956
with Bill Doggett and
Honky Tonk.
And then Bill Justis
had "Raunchy" in 57
And that had a really neat
little echoey
Nashville sort of guitar twang
to it.
And that was really exploited by
Duane Eddy
who came out with"
Rebel Rouser" in 1958.
On the flip side of that you had
Link Wray,
"Rawhide" and" Rumble", and
eventually" Jack the Ripper".
Then, there was Johnny and the
Hurricanes
with their full band, organ,
saxophone
guitar riffs...
The Fireballs were from New
Mexico
a little more Tex-Mex style
and starting to get a really
tough, rock and
roll sounds that were based in
guitar.
As a young guitar player, what
really held
the fascination for me and the
cool factor
was this new sound, this
instrumental
guitar led rock and roll.
I was particularly attracted
to the instrumental players
Duane Eddy, Link Wray.
That was probably the most vital
stuff that
was going on at that time.
It was spontaneous and
exciting.
And they pretty much started
the kind of music that evolved
into surf music in California.
And ultimately that
led to The Ventures.
The Ventures had "Walk Don't
Run" which was
like with Fireballs a straight
guitar sound
with no saxophone.
And that was like the shot heard
round the
world in 1960.
Walk Don't Run was a national
Top 10 record
that inspired and influenced,
thousands of
kids learning how to play guitar
at the time
myself included and all the
bands that we
played in, would play
Walk Don't Run
as well as all of the other
guitar dominant instrumentals,
that we were
hearing on the radio at the
time.
It was 1955
that I found, my dad went crazy
A 1941 WLD Flathead Harley.
It was like it just came out of
the military the way it was.
It was wild.
I lived in Southwest LA
My buddy Ray said to me, one day
Let's go down to Balboa, check
out the babes.
So we went on down there and
pulled into
that town and it was something
like
Alice in Wonderland.
It had the ferry that would
take you
across the channel to Balboa
Island.
You were on a peninsula
that was three miles long.
Because of our motorcycles I
guess we scared
some of the people maybe and the
police
invited us to leave.
So we left and came back in the
car
brought our guitars with us.
A couple of guitars.
Well, as you walk down Balboa
Boulevard,
you have the Fun Zone on the
left, which is
bordering the bay and you have
the
Rendezvous on the right after
you've passed
the Balboa Theater, you're at
The Rinky-Dink.
This is an area that was
populated with
people coming down for Easter
Break.
For the summer time. We were
playing
at the Rinky Dink on weekends
our audience, became primarily
surfers.
And these were people that heard
about us
from other surfers, from other
people
even from Dick.
Everybody that was there looked
at least like they were part of
the surf culture,
so this looked like a surf
culture happening.
The Vox was for adults.
The Prison of Socrates was for
folk music
so, the kids had no place to go.
So, when we moved to the
Rendezvous, we were
a magnet.
Dick didn't set out to be a surf
guitarist.
He wanted to be a country
western singer.
What happened was he started
playing at
the Rendezvous Ballroom, even
though he
wanted to be up there singing
the kids say: Play an
instrumental.
Next week, Dick Dale was playing
this song called
Let's Go Trippin'
, that he made up.
The kids used to say: Let's go
trippin' down to the
beach, to hear Dick Dale play.
So, he wrote a song about it and
it became
an anthem.
And from that grew another
instrumental,
that grew another instumentral
and Dick wasn't calling it
surf music, he was calling it
The Dick Dale sound.
We went to the Rendezvous, we
went there to
listen to the music and to dance
and to
just be part of the celebration
of all of
us having the common interest of
surfing
and surf music.
I was surfing with seventeen
surfers and I said:
I'm playing tonight at The
Rendezvous Ballroom
the biggest ballroom on the
peninsula.
Come on down, and have fun.
17 surfers.
That was my first audience.
They go: You're the king, man
You're the king. That sound on
your guitar.
Once we heard the Dick Dale
surfer thing
it was like there's no turning
back.
We had started surf music.
Miserlou was an Eastern
Mediterranean folk song
that had been around for
centuries.
But I took it, from listening to
my uncle playing
on an oud, the traditional way
where it goes:
Dong, da dong, da dong
dong, da dong, da dong.
And the belly dancers would come
out.
And I said: Well, that's too
slow to play.
So, what do I do the Gene Krupa
drumming picking?
Tickety tockety, tickety
tockety, tickety tah...
So, I went:
Yeeeeoh... Dockety dah dun dun,
dockety, dun dun dun
Diggity, dockety, diggity
dockety, dah!
That's how that came to be!
And this song comes on the radio
and I had never heard
anything like that before.
It really changed everything.
So all of a sudden kids were
talking about
who's going to drive this
weekend
to go down to the Rendezvous
to go to a Dick Dale stomp.
He was awesome.
Dick Dale was obviously a big
influence and we would
all go down there and watch him,
you know,
every Friday or Saturday night.
Everything was tight,
strong, with an attitude.
With the combination of the
bass, the rhythm guitar,
and the drums gave that animal
feel to it.
Dick Dale's sound was just
totally unique
from anything I'd ever heard
before.
This sound was intense
and it was big.
Our music was the template of
surf music in 1960
and we didn't have a name for
the band yet
and it happened that Dick's
sister Shirley
invited people to suggest names
and somehow
the name Del-Tones came out.
So we were called Dick Dale and
the Del-Tones
later it was changed to Dick
Dale and His Del-Tones.
We just started filling
up the place.
Playing with The Del-Tones was
just a gas.
It was like a dream come true.
I mean, I never thought in a
million years
that I would end up doing
anything like that.
And for a guy with all the
little surf girls
around here, the place being
packed
just seeing the lines of kids
around the block
waiting to get in.
I didn't care about getting
paid.
I didn't care about anything.
I just want to be a part of it.
We had a new sound, Dick
emphasized being loud.
I wanted that tribal sound and I
couldn't
find an amp that was powerful
enough
to sound like Gene Krupa's drums
until I met Leo Fender.
He was like Einstein.
He says: Here, I just made this
one trying
to get the bugs out of it
why don't you bang on it and
tell me what you think.
That gave me this big tribal
thunder where I'm going:
Dun-Dun-Dada, Dun-Dun-Dada.
Like that.
Leo used to say: If it can
withstand the
barrage of punishment of Dick
Dale, then it
is fit for the human
consumption.
Leo Fender listened and worked
with musicians at the time.
It was the work he
did with Dick Dale
that led to the revolutionary
development of the Showman
Amplifier
the most powerful amplifier at
the time.
He also worked with Dick to
develop the
Fender Reverb unit in 1961.
This was a device that gave a
wet kind of a
drippy sound to the guitar and
later that
sound became strongly associated
with the
sound of surf music.
As soon as we started playing
they were on the dance floor.
Everybody reacted to the music.
Obviously, or they wouldn't be
lining up to get in.
You could see that everybody was
feeling the music
not listening to it, but feeling
the music.
And thus, they started the
Surfer Stomp
that went along with it.
Of course you couldn't miss the
sound of the Surfer Stomp.
I remember the couples, facing
each other
just stomping away.
Kind of shuffling.
There was an old wooden floor at
the Rendezvous.
The floor would move up and down
you could kind of feel the whole
building
moving, you know, it's sweaty
it's hot, they're stomping,
it's loud, it was great.
It goes up to 4,000 people a
night and
I kept adding to my band,
bigger and bigger and bigger.
Our music, attracted some
attention with the
city officials.
They said the guitar music was
evil and
devil music.
There was a suggestion that we
leave town.
They fired me and they didn't
realize that
people were standing out in the
line coming
in from all these places to
watch us do
what we were doing.
And all of a sudden bands
started playing
this new style of rock and roll
that Dick Dale
and the Del-Tones were doing
this sound called surf music.
We were hanging around Torrance
Beach in the early
summer of 61 and I kept hearing
the surfers
they're talkin' about:
Hey man,
are you going down to the
Rendezvous this
weekend? We're going down to see
Dick Dale.
I had no idea what it was all
about.
We went down ourselves to see
what was
going on.
I was blown away.
I met this guy
Eddie Bertrand on a school bus
in 1959,
and we discovered that we were
both
fledgling guitarists.
Both Duane Eddy fans.
We got together and played
guitars
one day and went: Wow this is
really neat.
I developed a style of rhythm
guitar
playing that covered
it to sound complete with just
Eddie and I.
And that, ironically came to
sort of be
regarded as the surf-style of
rhythm playing.
The sound that we got
just fascinated us. So, we got a
drummer
and we got a sax player.
It became a band.
We just decided we needed to be
a band.
I was still learning my basic
chords and I
was just learning how to play a
bar
position B flat, and I was
switching back
and forth between that and the D
minor chord.
I started hearing this melody in
my head
to go with that.
Right about that time
there was this wrestler in LA
called "Mr. Moto".
That's the name for the song!
So, we titled it
"Mr. Moto".
"Mr. Moto" was one of the first
45 rpm records
I bought as a kid.
I really liked the chord changes
and the melody.
It was probably the first
instrumental
I learned how to play on the
guitar.
I did the musical arrangements
and Eddie
played the lead guitar and Delvy
was the business manager.
I said to them: Would you guys
like to make some money?
And they said: Sure.
So, I booked us a sock hop at
the high school I was going to.
The first dance we threw, we
passed out
flyers around the beach and sure
enough
We got about 200 kids to come.
Most of them were the surfers.
I remember one surfer came
up to me and
he simply said: Wow man, your
music sounds
like it feels out there on a
wave.
You oughta call it surf music.
I don't know if the Bel Airs
ever considered
themselves a surf band at first
I think people digging the band
kind of just
tagged us that.
The world of surfing claimed us,
so to speak
as theirs.
We went from 200 kids
begining of the summer, to 1500
kids at the
end of the summer.
We made an amazing amount of
money.
I couldn't believe it being a
kid making
all this money
everytime we did a dance.
That first dance we threw, I
remember going home
and we had about 600 bucks.
We threw it out all on a
mattress and we're
like you know doing this
with it.
We played at a party
and took that money and went to
Hollywood
and decided to make a record.
We rented some time at Liberty
recording studio.
Went in and spent about an hour
or two and recorded
five tracks.
"Mr. Moto" had two takes, 'cause
I didn't like how
I played the chorus.
Other than that, it was all
first takes
and we were out the door.
The record came out
and it didn't do anything for
like six months.
So, we started hyping the record
to the
radio stations.
We got our friends to call in
and request it.
And at that time, KRLA was
running
these things where they play the
top 10
from high schools every night.
Sam Riddle's show.
Came on at nine o'clock every
night and was called Topic Youth.
Every night, he would highlight
a different
high school and he would play
the top 10
records that that High School
submitted.
We started creating these phony
surveys.
So I sent him a list of the
top 10.
Of course, "Mr. Moto" was
number one.
I created a whole bogus top ten
for the
Redondo High School, where I was
going.
And that night, it was all about
Redondo High School and
"Mr. Moto" was number one on the
Redondo High School survey.
And then one night he plays the
top 10
from Palos Verdes High School
He says: I don't know who you
guys are, but good luck.
And there it goes and I went
just nuts.
If you saw the movie
"That Thing You Do"
you know exactly what it was
like
for a bunch of young kids to
hear the
song playing on the radio.
I got a... I got a big boost
every morning at 8 o'clock, as
I'm getting ready
to go to school
I could turn on the radio and
hear "Mr. Moto".
Big thrill.
After "Mr. Moto" became a small
hit, I'm getting phone calls
from parents in the group
trying to
tell me what their direction is
for the group.
Some of these people, I'd never
even talked to.
I got real upset and my mother
said:
Well quit the band.
Start another one.
I said: I can't do that.
I remember crying.
Something happened to kind of
split that
group apart and that something
that
happened was the Fender Reverb
unit.
Eddie Bertrand, decided he
really wanted to
start using that to modify his
sound in the band.
Paul Johnson, the other guitar
player,
really didn't want to go in that
direction.
So there was a separation of the
ways.
Eddie Bertrand left the group to
form
Eddie and the Showmen
and continue with his
powerful reverb, driven guitar
instrumentals.
"Squad Car" was written by Paul
Johnson but
Eddie recorded the most powerful
and
frantic version of the song that
became a
local radio hit.
It was kind of an easy
thing to do and it all happened
within,
probably, a couple... three weeks
after The Bel Airs broke up.
We played the Rendezvous
Ballroom in Balboa, and we just
kept
playing louder and louder and
louder.
By the end of the night that
speaker was shredded.
I thought, well I'll go to
Fender
he'll fix this.
Showed up, and he looks up, he
says "Now, how can I help you?"
I said: Well, I have
a Bandmaster piggyback and
I ripped the speaker to shreds.
I was just thinking, what if we
put two
speakers in there?
And he said: Tell you what,
you leave that stuff with me.
I'll give you something to play
out of until then.
Went back in two weeks
and here's this cabinet with two
speakers in it.
And I played it...
And I went: My God, this thing
sounds huge.
The last thing Leo said to me:
Whatever
you do, don't tell anybody what
we've done
because we don't produce these
amps.
Other musicians would come,
like, bam up to the stage.
What's that?
And I'd say: What's what?
Anyway, within probably a month
I'm guessing, it became the
standard
Bandmaster, had two 12s from
then on.
He wanted to model his sound
after Dick Dale's sound.
He was totally blown away by the
power of that Fender
guitar, reverb and amp
combination.
They really got a foothold
locally when
they became the house band at
the Retail Clerks Hall in
Buena Park
and started to attract
as many kids there, actually on
weekends as
Dick Dale was bringing to
Harmony Park.
In November of 1962, we came out
with an album
called Surfers' Choice.
A number of the songs
on the album were recorded at
the Harmony
Park Ballroom in Anaheim.
In 1963, Dick Dale and the
Del-Tones, were
having such success that they
booked a tour
up and down the East Coast.
Must have been 63, where we had
a small tour back East.
Mainly, we played at this
nightclub in
New Jersey.
Of course, it was a drinking
crowd
much different crowd than we had
in Southern California.
And when we went on stage and
played, it
was like we were from Mars, they
could not
relate to this music.
Now here's the youngster, you
read
about recently in Life Magazine,
here from
Boston and Quincy Mass and now
the coast
Dick Dale, Surfing'
and a Swingin'
So, let's have a fine hand!
It was a disappointment for
Dick.
We had to play behind a curtain
while
Dick was up front, probably
because they didn' t want
to pay us union scale or
whatever.
Let's have a nice hand for this
youngster.
Capitol in their wisdom had
decided that they didn't want to use
the Del-Tones on the records.
They want to use studio players,
big mistake, I think.
Dick said: Well if I can't have
my band, I
got to have at least one of my
guys,
and he chose me, thankfully.
While we were back East...
The Beach Boys
had like their first hit.
The talk around the beach was:
Who are these gremmies?
The whole feeling behind it was
that
these guys were just a bunch of
inlanders
who were trying to jump on the
trend
as it was developing. It only
sounded
vaguely like it related to the
kind of music
we were playing, there was a big
question mark
as to how authentic this was.
In fact, some of the surfers
were so annoyed
this was candy coating
and commercializing the sport.
And I remember hearing a bunch
of surfers
saying: Hey, let's go beat
those guys up.
This is my favorite sport next
to skydiving.
Look what just drove up.
Looks like a couple of senior
citizen drop outs.
The Beach Boys were booed
vegetables and fruit were
thrown at them on the stage
by the surfers because they
thought they
were quote: Rank .
Who wants to hear these stupid
lyrics?
It wasn't heavy duty, it
wasn't power.
I remember listening to the
radio and going:
How do they get to spread the
word about
surf music? And here we are
trying to do it
and here's Dick, the innovator
the father of surf music.
You know, he doesn't get to
partake
in spreading this word.
Dick Dale is the
originator, not one of the
originators
THE originator.
Here are The Challengers.
I just quit, walked away from
The Bel Airs
and I started The Challengers.
I was booking these little
Legion Halls
I call up the Pepsi company to
bring down a truck.
I call Brian Wilson, I have him
come down and
It'd be us and The Beach Boys
Next thing you know the place
was crowded and then
cops and fights would break out
and then that was the
last time we could use that
hall.
That happened to us
about three or four times.
The Challengers were
the hardest working band.
We backed more artists, made
more recordings
than all of the bands combined.
We were always the dependable
band that
could back you live and then do
our show
and draw a certain the number of
people to
the venue, so that really set
the stage for
credible appearances on
television and radio and we
would play the theme song for
Lloyd Thaxton's
TV show.
My name is Lloyd Thaxton.
So what!
The Lloyd Thaxton
Show was hugely popular
here in Southern California.
We would all rush home from
high school to
watch Lloyd Thaxton.
His was the only TV dance hop
that featured surf music on a
regular basis
including The Challengers.
In fact, they asked him to
endorse their
second album, Surfing
With The Challengers.
I played what I wanted to play
and it just so happened that I
liked
the music that the kids liked.
Here they are, The Astronauts!
Most shows came from New York
and they had
the New York look.
No one saw the surf music back
East. They didn't see this.
But, they could come to
California by turning on their
television set and watching
The Lloyd Thaxton Show.
That's what made surfing move
out of Southern California
to go all across the nation and
eventually, all over the world,
and it
happened because of the Dick
Dales
happens because of The
Challengers, they brought the
surf to me.
The Challengers gained a
national
reputation and became one of the
most
successful surf instrumental
bands by
virtue of their many appearances
on local
TV shows and syndicated TV shows
like
Hollywood a Go-Go and Shebang.
On behalf of myself
and the rest of the guys in the
group, we
would like to thank you all for
making our
song Pipeline such a big
hit throughout the nation.
We would like to play it for you
now.
What ended up becoming Pipeline
it was at one time
called 44 Magnum.
Next time, we called it
Liberty's Whip
but, we went to this Bruce
Browne movie
they showed the sequence of
Banzai
Pipeline, and we're going:
Whoa, this is cool.
Why don't we call the song
Pipeline?
The first time I heard the
opening glissando to
Pipeline, I was impressed.
It was the first time I'd heard
anything like that.
And as a result of
Pipeline, the glissando
became a standard technique used
by surf bands.
When Pipeline came
out, we were playing at the
Rendezvous Ballroom, we'd have
thousands of
people in there doing the Surfer
Stomp.
All the surfers will show up in
their huaraches
and the whole place would
start rocking
'cause everybody stomping on the
floor.
It was wild frenzied dancing,
you know
the people would just let
themselves go.
Every time I walked into that
Retail Clerks Hall
or the Rendezvous, either
one of those
giant places, I would have to
hold my ears
and it would take me ten or
fifteen minutes just
to get through the DB level,
that was being
pumped through that room.
Everyone sort of jumped up and
down
in unison to the music
and the building would move like
a wooden
gym floor and it was flexible.
And I think it bounced the
musicians on
the stage, from the crowd going
up and down.
The Rendezvous was a lot of fun,
but also
kind of dangerous.
But there were confrontations
between the
people from the beach and the
Inland people.
And I can remember, going out
dancing
and some big nasty looking biker
type hodad coming up to me and
saying:
You dance shitty.
A whole line of people would
link arms
and then facing them was
another line.
They would run up to the other
line. They
would come up like this and
go back...
destined for trouble.
This guy got into a fight with
this other guy
one of the fighter's
girlfriends got involved
and started mouthing at the
other guy
all of sudden
this guy pulled out a
switchblade and
stabbed at the guy and missed
him and hit
the girl, and it went into her
eye or something...
and my girlfriend and I just
fled, never went back.
Surf music was a male-dominated
cultural event.
And that's why
Kathy Marshall's presence on the
scene was
extremely significant.
She could have been a huge star
if the future
had unfolded a bit differently,
but she
does deserve a unique place in
the history books.
Kathy never released a
commercial
recording, but she went in the
studio with
Eddie and the Showmen
to record a demo of
Bullseye.
Being a girl and playing guitar
I don't know if I was good
enough to have
said: Come on in, let's play,
like a guy but
it also rubbed me wrong when:
be good for a girl.
I want to be as good as the
guys.
My grandmother had a little
get-together on
a Sunday afternoon and she
invited one of
her friends and he brought his
electric guitar.
I just was mesmerized.
The transistor radio was how I
learned
how to play the guitar.
I would come home from school,
turn on the
transistor radio, pick up my
guitar and
learn whatever song was on the
radio.
I was so devoted to it and I
think my mom
could see me getting
better at it.
It was her suggestion that I
take guitar lessons.
The first time I heard a surf
band live
was the time I played with one.
My sister was having a
graduation party at her
house and so, they hired a local
band
called The Blazers and my mom
mentioned that
I played guitar.
Their manager says: Let me hear
her.
So, I sat down and I played
Pipeline.
So, the day of the party I got
up and I
played with The Blazers.
When the party was over with,
their manager
said, to my mom: I don't think
I've ever
seen a girl rock and roll
electric guitar player before.
What do you think about her
playing with The Blazers?
And she said: Okay.
The Blazers
they were all surfers.
We'd get up at five in the
morning.
My mom would take us all down to
Huntington Beach.
They would surf
and we'd sit on the beach and
just
play our guitars.
It was surf music.
The Retail Clerks Union Hall
in Buena Park
it was like the mecca for all
the stars to go.
It's the first time I ever saw
Eddie and the Showmen play.
Eddie and the Showmen, to me
were like a huge step up in
musician quality
and I was kind of in awe of
them.
He's a good-looking guy.
What impressed me more, was his
presence.
Just before The
Righteous Brothers
were to go on, Eddie's dad came
to my mom
and said: Would she go on
with Eddie and the Showmen?
And my mom said: Yes.
I would play a lick and then
he'd play a lick.
It was like a battle going
back and forth.
Then, the next thing I know, he
starts stepping
on my licks and I walked up to
his guitar
like I was really going to watch
him play
and I just pulled his plug.
After that, I had a really good
following
because of this little rivalry
that went on between Eddie and I
from that point on.
I was fourteen.
Eddie was 18, or 19
our relationship was rocky at
times.
I don't want to say a love-hate
relationship.
I mean, I cared for him and I
think
he liked me and I liked him.
It seemed like he resented
me at times
but he always tried
to help me, too.
And he was the star, 'cause he
had the presence.
He was very patient with me.
Dave and the Marksmen
, Eddie and the Showmen
and Kathy Marshall, went out on
the road and toured California,
like a little review.
And it was just like one big,
happy family
having a great time on the road
like that.
We had some really great times
on those tours.
The first time I heard Dick Dale
play live was the day I played
with him.
I was not allowed to go to
Harmony Park,
which is where his venue was,
most of the time.
Harmony Park had a
reputation of being a kind of, a
rough place.
So, I never got to see him
in person.
My manager, booked me to play
with him at
the Huntington Pavilion.
And I was scared to death.
I had heard stories that he's
very rough
and he's not a nice guy and all
this stuff.
When they brought me up on
stage, he was
playing with me at the same time
he was
just like being a rhythm guitar
player
playing behind me and he stopped
what he
was doing and he walked over and
he stood
there for a minute in front of
the whole crowd and then
he threw his hands up
like he couldn't compete and
went over and
put his guitar down and stood
off to the side.
I gave her a title and I called
her
Queen of the Surf Guitar.
I never heard of another girl
rock-and-roll, electric guitar
player
at the time.
I was an anomaly, I mean, it was
something
very different.
I didn't think about being
well known, or
being even compared to someone
like Dick Dale.
My impetus was, I just want to
play guitar.
None of us really
could comprehend how big it was
going to get.
Within a short period
the large movie studios
saw an opportunity and started
producing
teen exploitation movies in the
form of
beach party films.
The mainstream jumped on it and
began to
merchandise the heck out of it.
It was just like in the movies.
Those depictions of fights and
stuff like that
those fights actually happened!
Beach Party with
Frankie and Annette.
That made more money
than Cleopatra did.
So, find the beauty in
commercialism.
The good part is, they woke up
the world
to the world of surfing.
And that blew it up into
a hula hoop
kind of fad, from which it never
recovered.
Thank you very much Keith.
Thank you, Mixtures.
And, um, just about ready?
Eddie and the Showmen
got to do the Hollywood Bowl
which in itself, was insane.
I'd like to tell you about
Eddie and the Showmen
I walked out and here's 10,000
plus people!
These boys come from the South
Bay, Palos Verdes.
The feeling I had was like,
whoa...
Allright Eddie, tell them what
you're gonna play...
Is surfing a fun sport?
There was a period of time that
you could
open up Time Magazine, Sports
Illustrated
and surfing was included as
part of mainstream America.
It just became an
industry, just like music
business.
And they got swept up into this
romantic wave
that if you go out west, it's
not movie stars.
It's the beach, it's blondes,
it's surf music.
It's all the freedom that you
could ask for
because there wasn't anything
else on the horizon yet.
The media just glamorized it
even more,
but it was glamorous.
There was this desire for
everybody to have
this identity with the surf
culture.
Suddenly you're bleaching
your hair
you had a flat top, with a
little bit of peroxide on it
so you look like you've been to
the beach
but you haven't been there, but
you look like it.
Kids would drive around in the
Midwest in the United States
with the half a surfboard
hanging out the trunk of the car
to emulate
being a surfer and they never
seen the ocean.
The surfing community
at the time wasn't
really thrilled
about going national
having surfing get that big.
Because, now it's bringing
a lot of people
who aren't really true surfers
into the field
but it happened, because of the
music.
In 1961, there was a literal
explosion of
bands and dances and 45 RPM
records
Within a short period
thousands of garages across
Southern California
began to fill with teenagers,
who were eager to form their own
bands
and jump on this new phenomenon.
The 45 RPM record became a way
for these
bands to market themselves and
their music.
The number of recordings
steadily escalated
and peaked during the summer of
But only a handful found their
way onto the
radio and even fewer were picked
up by
major labels and became hit
records such as
Pipeline by The Chantays
or Wipeout by The Surfaris.
Ronnie being the consummate
musician he was
starts this drumbeat and we go:
Well, we better put some chords
and a
melody to this, because it'll be
a drum solo if we don't!
Got a shingle from the roof.
Bob cracked it over his knee
sounded like a surfboard
cracking and then Dale had
this crazy laugh that he did at
parties.
Pretty soon, Wipeout
went worldwide.
So, we were having a really good
time.
Then...
When The Beatles came out
surf music suffered, a lot.
The Beatles changed everything.
I don't think people wanted to
sit and just
listen to instruments anymore
they wanted lyrics, and they
wanted voice.
The song, instead of being about
surfer girl
or your hot rod, it became
protest songs, and it just
became a very
unhopeful time.
The surf bands
for the most part, just sort of
like
one day, they were not there
anymore.
The marketing people were just
gearing up
to really cash in on the surf
culture.
When The Beatles showed up.
I had other bands after
The Bel Airs in the surf vein,
but it all was gone by 1965.
The folk rock thing was just
starting
and I jumped on that.
Lyrics tell you what to think.
Instrumental music doesn't.
It gives you the freedom to
think what you want
and go where you will.
That's why I loved instrumental
music.
To me, it was bubble gum
because, once again we were
doing this rock and roll
and rhythm and blues.
The artists that were just
breaking out
climbing up the charts
it was just like they hit a
brick wall.
In 1966,
the Rendezvous Ballroom, the
legendary home
to Dick Dale and the birthplace
of surf music
burned to the ground.
Surf music should never be
anything but fun.
It just happened
that it ended and it couldn't
support.
It couldn't pay its way,
anymore.
The music changed and the people
changed
and their attitudes changed.
And you'll never hear surf music
again.
Jimi Hendrix may have been
right.
Surf music experienced an
existential crisis,
the music of the 70's was
characterized by
long drawn-out solos,
overproduced
arrangements, conceptual album
music with
hidden meaning.
And there was disco.
I mean it just seems like nobody
was
interested in surf music anymore
but that wasn't true for me.
So it occurred to me one day,
that it might be
fun to put a band together and
make a surf record
which is something
I wanted to do
back in the 60s
but I never had the chance.
Surf music died a long time ago.
Nobody even knew
what surf music was.
There were no surf music crowds.
There was no such thing, unless
The Beach Boys
big-name bands, like that
Jan and Dean probably were
doing something somewhere.
As time went by
in music, in the 70s, everything
was overblown
overproduced, big guitar, big
hair
I think people started getting
tired of that.
I think the main appeal
of Jon and the Nightriders
It was just the pulse. It was
primal to the nth power.
This was recorded at a friend's
house in
Orange County on a 4-track
Reel-to-reel tape recorder, and
I took the
tape into Los Angeles, to have
it pressed up
by a record company and I asked
them to do it
on blue vinyl, because I thought
it looked cool.
I took this record and I drove
it to
K-ROQ, which were in Pasadena,
I walked
right into the control room and
I said:
Hey, you got to play
this record. And they put it
on and they played it
immediately right on the spot.
That's how cool the station was.
And then we booked a studio in
Los Angeles
and recorded
What eventually became
Surf Beat 80.
This album hadn't been out
longer than a couple
months when I had a phone call
from a
concert promoter, who
wanted to hire us to open
a big show at the Santa Monica
Civic Auditorium.
It's historically known as the
concert that revived surf music.
It was The Surf Punks and
Dick Dale
at the Santa Monica Civic and
we're the opening act.
Jon and the Nightriders,
we were like doing
lightning speed versions of... I
mean we were
like surf music on drugs or
something.
That just opened the door.
All the LA bands
like The Go-Gos and
Missing Persons
, they all wanted
Jon and the Nightriders
to open for them.
Alright, surf's up!
More and more people
were picking up on this sound.
I mean, in the 1960s, I don't
believe any
surf band ever played at
The Whiskey a Go-Go
and yet in the 80s
several surf bands played at the
Whiskey A Go-Go.
The only gigs they could even
get were
with areas of the punk rock
audience.
And if Jon and the Nightriders
came out and rocked
they'd slam dance to them, too.
As long as you ducked the beer
cans
It was fun!
A very exciting time in
Hollywood.
Lot of punk bands playing
LA Weekly and Bam Magazine, and
all these
trades were talking about the
band.
The punk scene had been given
birth, you had
X and The Germs, that
whole scene was going on.
People had just embraced it
again into
this whole era of the early 80s.
But when you got off into surf
punk world
we just found our little slot
right in that.
So there was a whole
instrumental revival
like nobody'd ever seen before,
and it started
happening all over the world.
All of a sudden John says: Ok
guys, we're going to Europe.
That was almost shocking.
Are these people nuts?
They want surf music in Europe?
That first show that we did in
Holland
was at a huge rockabilly
festival.
At the time
what was very current and trendy
and
popular in Holland, was the
Clark Gable movie
Gone With the Wind
. And they were all
like into the southern motif.
We were playing in a very large
Hall and
there must have been several
thousand
rockabilly fans there.
And I remember being constantly
booed
by the audience.
And then a bunch of German
rockabilly guys
were kind of yelling at us:
Rockabilly, man, rockabilly!
The promoter had told us before
we left:
You need to learn
the Song of the South
surf style.
So we flew right off into Dixie.
The moment we did that song that
crowd
erupted and loved us.
Everybody in the crowd, man
just started waving flags and
everybody
started cheering.
The crowd did a complete
180-degree change in their
attitude and we walked off that
stage
as heroes.
I think if we wouldn't have done
that, they
may have stormed the stage
Jon and the Nightriders
may have never
come back to America, you know.
I remember thinking on the
flight home that
European audiences, really
weren't that
much different than those in the
states.
It was obvious to me that surf
music
had a universal appeal.
There was a place for it in the
pop music scene.
We came home to do more tours.
Make more records and play
more venues.
Throughout the 80s new surf
bands continued to form.
Bands like The Surf Raiders,
Paul Johnson and the Packards
The Evasions, The Surf Punks
The Insect Surfers
and the Malibooz
were among a growing number of
surf bands
that all helped draw
attention to the music.
Dick Dale was featured in a
segment on KABC's
Eye on LA
He was interviewed at his home
in Newport Beach
when he felt he was ready for a
comeback
after battling cancer and being
absent from
the concert scene throughout the
1970s.
And he did come back to tour and
record again.
It was really great to see
somebody make a
comeback like that.
The Ventures, who toured
exclusively in Japan for years,
returned to US
stages after a decade of
absence.
Reunion concerts were held.
And people remembered the fun
again.
And then something happened in
1994 that
sparked the popularity of surf
music to a
greater degree than ever before.
For just sheer rock-charged
viscera
I think it would have to be
Miserlou.
Pulp Fiction really
cemented surf music into the
consciousness of the world.
As a result, surf bands started
forming in even greater
numbers all across the globe.
This time period became known as
the third wave.
All around Europe, the same
story is repeating
Pulp Fiction clearly presented
surf music to a wider audience,
instead of
using the words surf music, a
lot of people now
tell us: You're playing
Pulp Fiction music.
Founded in the late 80s, the
Huntington
Beach International Surfing
Museum
continues to support the surf
music
community with Sunday afternoon
concerts
during the summer.
For the last several years,
Livorno a small
Tuscany town on the west coast
of Italy has
been the location for a huge
three day
International surf music event,
called
The Surfer Joe Festival.
The Surfer Joe Summer Festival
was born from my idea
a few years ago, with the
purpose to put together
all Italian surf bands.
But people was thinking that I
was crazy
trying to put together shows and
push the
entire surf music movement in
Italy.
We had the first Festival in
2003 and the
festival was absolutely great.
Los Straightjackets have
recorded over thirteen
albums to date and have appeared
several
times on the Conan O'Brien show.
Not surprisingly, they're hugely
popular
in Mexico.
The first time Los Straitjackets
went to Mexico
We weren't sure how they were
going to receive us.
If they would have thought that
we were
making fun of them or something,
which we
weren't, we were inspired by
their culture.
There were two shows, one in
Mexico City and
one in Guadalajara and they were
both sold out.
It was a shock.
We had no idea we were that
popular there.
Dick Dale started to tour,
headlined in
Vegas and made records again.
And every so often I'd hear
about surf bands
popping up in some of the most
surprising
places like Japan, Finland,
Croatia. Countries
you'd never expect to hear surf
music from.
The appeal of the music was
cross cultural.
And even more diverse than
before.
Surf music had experienced a
full-fledged
revival.
It became obvious to me
that surf music was very much
alive with a universal
appeal that I hadn't imagined a
few years earlier.
Surf music is my life.
Unfortunately.
Surf music for me, it's a
religious
life form, it just gets in your heart it
gets in your soul, it gets in your spirit.
For me, it's my childhood.
Takes me back.
Its all in the melody and the
beat.
It's still all about escapism.
Enjoying the moment, dancing,
having fun.
Even though we're slowly
losing the
pioneers and the people who
first played
around with it, it's bigger than
it's ever been, by far!
The spirit of surf music fans
has not been dampened by the
test of time.
That spirit still represents
all of the things that made the
sound of surf
popular in the days before
The Beatles.
It's commonly assumed that when
Jimi said: You'll never hear
surf music ever again, that he
was saying: We're
here now and screw you, but he
apparently
was a really big fan of Dick
Dale and the
real reason he said it was
there'd been a
false news report at the time
that Dick Dale
was ill and dying.
I had collapsed.
And then I was at the hospital.
Jimi was recording at the time.
Hey, I heard Dale did a
no-show.
And his guitar player said:
No man.
He's dying.
And then Jimi said: Man, you'll
never hear
surf music again.
But he knew what a fighter I was
and he said...
That sounds like a lie
to me.
I have that on tape.
Somewhere.
The King of Surf Guitar has
passed away.
Dick Dale, led the way for
generations.
Dale performed
at blazing speed until the end.
Dick Dale was 81 years old.
You'll never hear surf music
again.
That's a big lie.
Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh
Da-nuh-da-nuh-da-nuh
That's about it.
And we're rolling.
Alright, here we go.
Strange beautiful grass of green
with your majestic silver seas
Your mysterious mountains
I wish to see closer.
May I land my kinky machine?
Although your world wonders
me...
with your majestic and superior
cackling hen.
Your people, I do not understand
So to you, I shall put an end...
and you'll...
never hear surf music again.
Those are the words of
Jimi Hendrix
that have have been cited
thousands of times, as if Jimi
was saying
surf music had died in the 60s
And it couldn't be further from
the truth.
Hendrix was wrong.
Just like Motown for Detroit and
Reggae for Jamaica
It was a local regional music
that came out
of the lives of young kids in
Southern California.
The growth of surf music was
really quite phenomenal.
It started in 1961 in Southern
California
with only a handful of bands
and a handful of recordings
And within a year or two, there
were
hundreds of recordings by
hundreds of bands
across the country.
In the beginning, it was just
about the
music and the surfers enjoying
the music
and embracing it and claiming it
as their own.
Surf music is a
bunch of kids on a beach around
a bonfire and just having the
best time
without any social obligations
or school pressures.
And there was no future and no
war and no
economy and nothing to worry
about.
I was attracted to the
simplicity and the energy of it.
That's what rock and roll is and
was...
was simplicity and energy.
I dropped the flute like a hot
potato
because I loved the guitar.
Because there
were no sound systems
we knew that we couldn't hear
the voice anyway.
And we were more interested in
the melodic
and in the power!
Surf music truly is rock
instrumental
with a reverb tank.
There's something about the
sound of instrumental
surf music that flips a switch
with people.
There's something magic that
happens.
Something magic that happens
with the audience.
They regress, they start feeling
younger.
They want to get up out of their
seats and dance.
We had those amps.
It was that kind of music where
they didn't care.
It was the fun of the music,
because it was loud!
There's no pretension.
There's no hidden meanings.
There's no message.
It's just pure unadulterated
fun.
In the early sixties my family
lived
in Montclair, Southern
California.
A little dry dusty town in the
Inland Empire
on the edge of the Mojave
Desert.
Montclair was removed from
ground zero
of surf music by 40 or 50 miles.
But, I got a transistor radio in
and that opened up the world to
me.
K-Earth 101, the king of the
surf guitar
Dick Dale and the Del-Tones.
And one day, in 1961...
I'm listening to K-MEN in
San Bernardino
And they were the first radio
station to actually play...
Dick Dale's first record.
Once I heard my first Dick Dale
record
I was hooked on that kind of
music
And I started collecting surf
records left and right.
And at the same time, I was
learning how to play guitar.
Bands like Dick Dale and the
Del-Tones
The Challengers
they were like my teachers.
And a few years later, I
realized
that I had several thousand
records.
And I discovered that there had
been surf bands
from every state in the Union
and from almost every overseas
country.
It was just an amazingly diverse
form of music
that had spread like wildfire.
And so I wondered where did this
music come from
to begin with?
What happened to it?
Did it really go away?
If it did, why?
The outside world didn't really
view
surfers, all that much at first
because
there was just so few of them
and it was
more or less seen as a...
He-man athletic pursuit
that was very rare.
Or drawing of surfers would
appear on
the travel magazines.
Surfing as a culture, kind of
flew in the face
of mainstream culture.
It was non-productive, kind of
hedonistic...
pleasure seeking, responsibility
avoiding kind of thing.
And no, self-respecting, parent
would
endorse their children pursuing
that
in exchange for school and
career...
because our parents were all
children of the depression.
For them it was security.
As a surfer
you were getting the idea
that maybe that was a false god.
Maybe there were other things
that were important.
There was a real high
priority on
having a job, everybody
wanted to have a job
and be productive and be
contributing to society
and all of that kind of thing.
If you said you were a surfer,
it was like
you were a drop-out of that.
And you were sort of.
By the time, surf music exploded
in Southern California
in the early 60s, surfing
culture had pretty much
been firmly established here
at least since the late 50s.
As surfers, we'd drive to the
beach and get jacked up
to the music on the car radio.
Interestingly, the music that
we were
surfing to at that time was
probably jazz.
We'd get some beer and go to
some guys house.
Trying to get some girls to come
over
and put on Jazz records.
Like Herbie Mann
at the Village Gate.
Miles Davis, Henry Mancini,
the theme to Peter Gunn,
theme to Black Saddle.
In Newport was a place called
The Rendezvous Ballroom and my
parents found
out about the Rendezvous and
started taking
me there when I was maybe
fourteen.
And during a wonderful several
year period
I heard every major big band
that would come through.
Gene Krupa's band, and Les
Brown, Woody Herman
Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey,
Jimmy Dorsey.
To be there on the Bandstand and
watching the band and the
vocalists
and the drummers and all that
was
God, it was marvelous.
And then we start going down to
the
Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach and
there's a
bunch of guys from The
Stan Kenton Orchestra
that are playing, there's Shelly
Manne
is the drummer
Howard Rumsey on bass
Conte Candoli -trumpet
Shorty Rogers -trumpet, Bob
Cooper -sax
Bud Shank -sax.
And one of the more innovative
filmmakers was Bruce Brown
And Bruce Brown, would go down
to the Lighthouse
'cause that's where the jazz
was played.
The reason that jazz was adapted
to surfing
by surfers, was that it had kind
of a
lyrical flowing surf like
environment it created
and surfing the wave was a sort
of improvisational
and jazz was improvisational.
It was about virtuosity and Jazz
was about
individual instrumental
virtuosity.
So, there were really lots of
kind of symbiotic, aspects of
the two forms of expression.
These artists like Henry Mancini
Les Baxter and Martin Denny were
looking for
an atmosphere and that
atmosphere really
gelled with beach culture, and
ultimately
surf culture.
It really wasn't as much of an
idea of a
California culture, it was like
a transplanted
Hawaiian thing.
They kind of wanted to be like
Hawaiians.
In that kind of later 50s time
frame
the fact that the board went
from 100 lb
piece of dense wood to a light
30 or 40 lb
fiberglassed balsa wood board
surfboards became even more
accessible when foam came out in
59
so, they could make as many
boards as they
needed to fill the demand.
The sport had gone from maybe
500, 1500 surfers
to five, six, seven or 8000
surfers
And that's where it was
when the movie Gidget came out.
One day, I came to Malibu and
there was a
shack there and I think Harry
Stonelake
and Tubesteak built it.
Different guys would hang out
there 'cause there
was some shade. Terry Tracy, who
was living,
there was married and lived
elsewhere, like
Englewood or something.
He was at the shack a lot and he
would just
just hang there, you know, and
hang
out with guys and get them to
buy him some
beer and stuff like that, and he
named Gidget.
There was a girl midget that
arrived on the scene
and sets up headquarters.
She goes home and tells her
daddy all this stuff.
Her daddy writes a book.
I remember the day that my
father picked me
up at Malibu and drove me home.
It was in the Dynaflow Buick as
my board
was sticking out of the back.
I turned to him and I said: I'd
like to write a story
about what's going on
at Malibu.
And my father said: Why don't
you tell me
everything? And I'll write the
story for you.
I'm the writer.
So I started telling him...
that I was called Gidget at
Malibu
which meant girl midget.
I told him about Terry
Tubesteak Tracy that
lived in a shack with Harry
Stonelake.
And I told him how incredibly
interesting
the lifestyle that I thought
Malibu was.
It was all about what was
outside and I
thought the whole sorta
lifestyle was
fascinating that there were
surfboards... young men
There was somebody living in a
shack and we
were waiting for the wave.
That book really was... I don't
know
they're going: bitchin,
rocket bombs and
Go, Gidget, go! Shoot the
Curl!
God! Can you believe that? I
can't.
Columbia Studios bought the
rights to the novel
and in 1959, the Hollywood
version hits theaters nationwide.
The movie comes out, everybody
loved the movie
except, for guess whom? Surfers.
The movie Gidget
was kind of interesting.
These days, it would be pooh-
poohed.
The surfers would sneeze at it.
But, when it came out, it was
the first acknowledgement
by the mainstream world of
surfing.
The theme song to the movie was
sung by James Darren.
It became a top 100 hit record
in the spring of 1959.
When the Gidget film
comes out, a teenage
culture, emerges in a completely
different environment.
You're not seeing skyscrapers,
you're not seeing
buildings, you're not seeing
metal microphones,
you're seeing a shack in the
sand next to
water and luminous waves that
people are
zooming in and out of with these
little boards.
This is just unprecedented and
no one's
seen anything like this.
It may me cool
and it glorified the surf
culture, even
though it did it sort of in a
dorky way.
Every time Hollywood touches
surfing
they goof it up.
Even when surfers try to do
surfing...
they don't get it right.
So when Hollywood does it, what
are they
going to get?
So, surfers were listening to
jazz, and
rhythm and blues.
But where was the surf music?
There was no such thing
as surf music at the time.
I never heard that expression.
Surf music?
But, maybe somebody had a bongo
drum.
When you're in the water
and Malibu is six to eight feet.
You're out there and here comes
a set.
I guarantee you, you're not
going to sit there
saying: Oh, bro this is
music to surf by.
You don't do that.
You just take off on waves.
Surfing films of the 1950s, were
not seen
by all that many people.
Bud Browne had been making
surfing movies
from about 1942, or 43
and showing them just at
lifeguard stations.
Greg Noll was making little
tiny films called
Search for Surf.
Just before Gidget came out
Bruce Brown was doing his first
movie
Slippery When Wet.
Gidget gives the ability
for these people to make
full-length
features and draw larger
audiences.
Once Gidget becomes
popular, teenagers that
are into rock and roll, start
gravitating
towards surfing.
In the surf movies, they
wouldn't have
music synced on the footage
itself.
It was just they turn on the
projector.
He was just putting an album
on and he put
on the soundtrack to Peter Gunn.
The Mancini Peter Gunn thing
was used for big waves
at Sunset Beach.
We'd be looking at the screen
and you'd see
this wave and you couldn't
really tell what
was going on with it and
all of a sudden you
see a couple of ants sweep up
the face and
the driving boom-boom-boom-
boom and my God...
those waves were twenty-five
feet.
And, you know, you just get
jacked
out of your mind.
And so you started to
see a lot of
interesting things come about
from the filmmakers.
For instance, I remember a John
Severson in
a film sequence at Secos of a
hot
offshore morning, having Kemp
Aubrey
play Flamenco guitar.
I honestly think that Bud Browne
was
probably the first person to
connect
instrumental music to the surf
culture
because he acquired the
Fireballs music,
right when it came out in the
late 50s.
And he immediately started
playing those albums
with his movies.
Things were changing
Civil Rights Movement was
getting going.
Folk music was getting big
The Kingston Trio came along, so
they were all
these kind of hints at what was
going to
be developing culturally in the
60s.
It was still kind of in its
youth.
Kids weren't really paying that
much attention.
They were just doing their thing
but in
reality 1959-1960 was a pretty
bland
period musically.
What you were hearing on the
radio just
before surf music broke was
mostly teen idols in
heavily orchestrated material.
That was the era of Frankie
Avalon and Bobby Rydell.
What are generally regarded
as the
ones who tamed rock and roll
down to
where it was safe and the early
days of the
dangerous stuff were kind of
over and
it was still about four years
before
The Beatles came along.
With Elvis in the Army
and Chuck Berry busted by the
Mann Act
and Little Richard finding
religion
Jerry Lee Lewis getting busted
for having a
wife who was 13.
On the flip side of that
big rock and roll stars were
gone.
We started to hear instrumental
rock and roll
about 1956
with Bill Doggett and
Honky Tonk.
And then Bill Justis
had "Raunchy" in 57
And that had a really neat
little echoey
Nashville sort of guitar twang
to it.
And that was really exploited by
Duane Eddy
who came out with"
Rebel Rouser" in 1958.
On the flip side of that you had
Link Wray,
"Rawhide" and" Rumble", and
eventually" Jack the Ripper".
Then, there was Johnny and the
Hurricanes
with their full band, organ,
saxophone
guitar riffs...
The Fireballs were from New
Mexico
a little more Tex-Mex style
and starting to get a really
tough, rock and
roll sounds that were based in
guitar.
As a young guitar player, what
really held
the fascination for me and the
cool factor
was this new sound, this
instrumental
guitar led rock and roll.
I was particularly attracted
to the instrumental players
Duane Eddy, Link Wray.
That was probably the most vital
stuff that
was going on at that time.
It was spontaneous and
exciting.
And they pretty much started
the kind of music that evolved
into surf music in California.
And ultimately that
led to The Ventures.
The Ventures had "Walk Don't
Run" which was
like with Fireballs a straight
guitar sound
with no saxophone.
And that was like the shot heard
round the
world in 1960.
Walk Don't Run was a national
Top 10 record
that inspired and influenced,
thousands of
kids learning how to play guitar
at the time
myself included and all the
bands that we
played in, would play
Walk Don't Run
as well as all of the other
guitar dominant instrumentals,
that we were
hearing on the radio at the
time.
It was 1955
that I found, my dad went crazy
A 1941 WLD Flathead Harley.
It was like it just came out of
the military the way it was.
It was wild.
I lived in Southwest LA
My buddy Ray said to me, one day
Let's go down to Balboa, check
out the babes.
So we went on down there and
pulled into
that town and it was something
like
Alice in Wonderland.
It had the ferry that would
take you
across the channel to Balboa
Island.
You were on a peninsula
that was three miles long.
Because of our motorcycles I
guess we scared
some of the people maybe and the
police
invited us to leave.
So we left and came back in the
car
brought our guitars with us.
A couple of guitars.
Well, as you walk down Balboa
Boulevard,
you have the Fun Zone on the
left, which is
bordering the bay and you have
the
Rendezvous on the right after
you've passed
the Balboa Theater, you're at
The Rinky-Dink.
This is an area that was
populated with
people coming down for Easter
Break.
For the summer time. We were
playing
at the Rinky Dink on weekends
our audience, became primarily
surfers.
And these were people that heard
about us
from other surfers, from other
people
even from Dick.
Everybody that was there looked
at least like they were part of
the surf culture,
so this looked like a surf
culture happening.
The Vox was for adults.
The Prison of Socrates was for
folk music
so, the kids had no place to go.
So, when we moved to the
Rendezvous, we were
a magnet.
Dick didn't set out to be a surf
guitarist.
He wanted to be a country
western singer.
What happened was he started
playing at
the Rendezvous Ballroom, even
though he
wanted to be up there singing
the kids say: Play an
instrumental.
Next week, Dick Dale was playing
this song called
Let's Go Trippin'
, that he made up.
The kids used to say: Let's go
trippin' down to the
beach, to hear Dick Dale play.
So, he wrote a song about it and
it became
an anthem.
And from that grew another
instrumental,
that grew another instumentral
and Dick wasn't calling it
surf music, he was calling it
The Dick Dale sound.
We went to the Rendezvous, we
went there to
listen to the music and to dance
and to
just be part of the celebration
of all of
us having the common interest of
surfing
and surf music.
I was surfing with seventeen
surfers and I said:
I'm playing tonight at The
Rendezvous Ballroom
the biggest ballroom on the
peninsula.
Come on down, and have fun.
17 surfers.
That was my first audience.
They go: You're the king, man
You're the king. That sound on
your guitar.
Once we heard the Dick Dale
surfer thing
it was like there's no turning
back.
We had started surf music.
Miserlou was an Eastern
Mediterranean folk song
that had been around for
centuries.
But I took it, from listening to
my uncle playing
on an oud, the traditional way
where it goes:
Dong, da dong, da dong
dong, da dong, da dong.
And the belly dancers would come
out.
And I said: Well, that's too
slow to play.
So, what do I do the Gene Krupa
drumming picking?
Tickety tockety, tickety
tockety, tickety tah...
So, I went:
Yeeeeoh... Dockety dah dun dun,
dockety, dun dun dun
Diggity, dockety, diggity
dockety, dah!
That's how that came to be!
And this song comes on the radio
and I had never heard
anything like that before.
It really changed everything.
So all of a sudden kids were
talking about
who's going to drive this
weekend
to go down to the Rendezvous
to go to a Dick Dale stomp.
He was awesome.
Dick Dale was obviously a big
influence and we would
all go down there and watch him,
you know,
every Friday or Saturday night.
Everything was tight,
strong, with an attitude.
With the combination of the
bass, the rhythm guitar,
and the drums gave that animal
feel to it.
Dick Dale's sound was just
totally unique
from anything I'd ever heard
before.
This sound was intense
and it was big.
Our music was the template of
surf music in 1960
and we didn't have a name for
the band yet
and it happened that Dick's
sister Shirley
invited people to suggest names
and somehow
the name Del-Tones came out.
So we were called Dick Dale and
the Del-Tones
later it was changed to Dick
Dale and His Del-Tones.
We just started filling
up the place.
Playing with The Del-Tones was
just a gas.
It was like a dream come true.
I mean, I never thought in a
million years
that I would end up doing
anything like that.
And for a guy with all the
little surf girls
around here, the place being
packed
just seeing the lines of kids
around the block
waiting to get in.
I didn't care about getting
paid.
I didn't care about anything.
I just want to be a part of it.
We had a new sound, Dick
emphasized being loud.
I wanted that tribal sound and I
couldn't
find an amp that was powerful
enough
to sound like Gene Krupa's drums
until I met Leo Fender.
He was like Einstein.
He says: Here, I just made this
one trying
to get the bugs out of it
why don't you bang on it and
tell me what you think.
That gave me this big tribal
thunder where I'm going:
Dun-Dun-Dada, Dun-Dun-Dada.
Like that.
Leo used to say: If it can
withstand the
barrage of punishment of Dick
Dale, then it
is fit for the human
consumption.
Leo Fender listened and worked
with musicians at the time.
It was the work he
did with Dick Dale
that led to the revolutionary
development of the Showman
Amplifier
the most powerful amplifier at
the time.
He also worked with Dick to
develop the
Fender Reverb unit in 1961.
This was a device that gave a
wet kind of a
drippy sound to the guitar and
later that
sound became strongly associated
with the
sound of surf music.
As soon as we started playing
they were on the dance floor.
Everybody reacted to the music.
Obviously, or they wouldn't be
lining up to get in.
You could see that everybody was
feeling the music
not listening to it, but feeling
the music.
And thus, they started the
Surfer Stomp
that went along with it.
Of course you couldn't miss the
sound of the Surfer Stomp.
I remember the couples, facing
each other
just stomping away.
Kind of shuffling.
There was an old wooden floor at
the Rendezvous.
The floor would move up and down
you could kind of feel the whole
building
moving, you know, it's sweaty
it's hot, they're stomping,
it's loud, it was great.
It goes up to 4,000 people a
night and
I kept adding to my band,
bigger and bigger and bigger.
Our music, attracted some
attention with the
city officials.
They said the guitar music was
evil and
devil music.
There was a suggestion that we
leave town.
They fired me and they didn't
realize that
people were standing out in the
line coming
in from all these places to
watch us do
what we were doing.
And all of a sudden bands
started playing
this new style of rock and roll
that Dick Dale
and the Del-Tones were doing
this sound called surf music.
We were hanging around Torrance
Beach in the early
summer of 61 and I kept hearing
the surfers
they're talkin' about:
Hey man,
are you going down to the
Rendezvous this
weekend? We're going down to see
Dick Dale.
I had no idea what it was all
about.
We went down ourselves to see
what was
going on.
I was blown away.
I met this guy
Eddie Bertrand on a school bus
in 1959,
and we discovered that we were
both
fledgling guitarists.
Both Duane Eddy fans.
We got together and played
guitars
one day and went: Wow this is
really neat.
I developed a style of rhythm
guitar
playing that covered
it to sound complete with just
Eddie and I.
And that, ironically came to
sort of be
regarded as the surf-style of
rhythm playing.
The sound that we got
just fascinated us. So, we got a
drummer
and we got a sax player.
It became a band.
We just decided we needed to be
a band.
I was still learning my basic
chords and I
was just learning how to play a
bar
position B flat, and I was
switching back
and forth between that and the D
minor chord.
I started hearing this melody in
my head
to go with that.
Right about that time
there was this wrestler in LA
called "Mr. Moto".
That's the name for the song!
So, we titled it
"Mr. Moto".
"Mr. Moto" was one of the first
45 rpm records
I bought as a kid.
I really liked the chord changes
and the melody.
It was probably the first
instrumental
I learned how to play on the
guitar.
I did the musical arrangements
and Eddie
played the lead guitar and Delvy
was the business manager.
I said to them: Would you guys
like to make some money?
And they said: Sure.
So, I booked us a sock hop at
the high school I was going to.
The first dance we threw, we
passed out
flyers around the beach and sure
enough
We got about 200 kids to come.
Most of them were the surfers.
I remember one surfer came
up to me and
he simply said: Wow man, your
music sounds
like it feels out there on a
wave.
You oughta call it surf music.
I don't know if the Bel Airs
ever considered
themselves a surf band at first
I think people digging the band
kind of just
tagged us that.
The world of surfing claimed us,
so to speak
as theirs.
We went from 200 kids
begining of the summer, to 1500
kids at the
end of the summer.
We made an amazing amount of
money.
I couldn't believe it being a
kid making
all this money
everytime we did a dance.
That first dance we threw, I
remember going home
and we had about 600 bucks.
We threw it out all on a
mattress and we're
like you know doing this
with it.
We played at a party
and took that money and went to
Hollywood
and decided to make a record.
We rented some time at Liberty
recording studio.
Went in and spent about an hour
or two and recorded
five tracks.
"Mr. Moto" had two takes, 'cause
I didn't like how
I played the chorus.
Other than that, it was all
first takes
and we were out the door.
The record came out
and it didn't do anything for
like six months.
So, we started hyping the record
to the
radio stations.
We got our friends to call in
and request it.
And at that time, KRLA was
running
these things where they play the
top 10
from high schools every night.
Sam Riddle's show.
Came on at nine o'clock every
night and was called Topic Youth.
Every night, he would highlight
a different
high school and he would play
the top 10
records that that High School
submitted.
We started creating these phony
surveys.
So I sent him a list of the
top 10.
Of course, "Mr. Moto" was
number one.
I created a whole bogus top ten
for the
Redondo High School, where I was
going.
And that night, it was all about
Redondo High School and
"Mr. Moto" was number one on the
Redondo High School survey.
And then one night he plays the
top 10
from Palos Verdes High School
He says: I don't know who you
guys are, but good luck.
And there it goes and I went
just nuts.
If you saw the movie
"That Thing You Do"
you know exactly what it was
like
for a bunch of young kids to
hear the
song playing on the radio.
I got a... I got a big boost
every morning at 8 o'clock, as
I'm getting ready
to go to school
I could turn on the radio and
hear "Mr. Moto".
Big thrill.
After "Mr. Moto" became a small
hit, I'm getting phone calls
from parents in the group
trying to
tell me what their direction is
for the group.
Some of these people, I'd never
even talked to.
I got real upset and my mother
said:
Well quit the band.
Start another one.
I said: I can't do that.
I remember crying.
Something happened to kind of
split that
group apart and that something
that
happened was the Fender Reverb
unit.
Eddie Bertrand, decided he
really wanted to
start using that to modify his
sound in the band.
Paul Johnson, the other guitar
player,
really didn't want to go in that
direction.
So there was a separation of the
ways.
Eddie Bertrand left the group to
form
Eddie and the Showmen
and continue with his
powerful reverb, driven guitar
instrumentals.
"Squad Car" was written by Paul
Johnson but
Eddie recorded the most powerful
and
frantic version of the song that
became a
local radio hit.
It was kind of an easy
thing to do and it all happened
within,
probably, a couple... three weeks
after The Bel Airs broke up.
We played the Rendezvous
Ballroom in Balboa, and we just
kept
playing louder and louder and
louder.
By the end of the night that
speaker was shredded.
I thought, well I'll go to
Fender
he'll fix this.
Showed up, and he looks up, he
says "Now, how can I help you?"
I said: Well, I have
a Bandmaster piggyback and
I ripped the speaker to shreds.
I was just thinking, what if we
put two
speakers in there?
And he said: Tell you what,
you leave that stuff with me.
I'll give you something to play
out of until then.
Went back in two weeks
and here's this cabinet with two
speakers in it.
And I played it...
And I went: My God, this thing
sounds huge.
The last thing Leo said to me:
Whatever
you do, don't tell anybody what
we've done
because we don't produce these
amps.
Other musicians would come,
like, bam up to the stage.
What's that?
And I'd say: What's what?
Anyway, within probably a month
I'm guessing, it became the
standard
Bandmaster, had two 12s from
then on.
He wanted to model his sound
after Dick Dale's sound.
He was totally blown away by the
power of that Fender
guitar, reverb and amp
combination.
They really got a foothold
locally when
they became the house band at
the Retail Clerks Hall in
Buena Park
and started to attract
as many kids there, actually on
weekends as
Dick Dale was bringing to
Harmony Park.
In November of 1962, we came out
with an album
called Surfers' Choice.
A number of the songs
on the album were recorded at
the Harmony
Park Ballroom in Anaheim.
In 1963, Dick Dale and the
Del-Tones, were
having such success that they
booked a tour
up and down the East Coast.
Must have been 63, where we had
a small tour back East.
Mainly, we played at this
nightclub in
New Jersey.
Of course, it was a drinking
crowd
much different crowd than we had
in Southern California.
And when we went on stage and
played, it
was like we were from Mars, they
could not
relate to this music.
Now here's the youngster, you
read
about recently in Life Magazine,
here from
Boston and Quincy Mass and now
the coast
Dick Dale, Surfing'
and a Swingin'
So, let's have a fine hand!
It was a disappointment for
Dick.
We had to play behind a curtain
while
Dick was up front, probably
because they didn' t want
to pay us union scale or
whatever.
Let's have a nice hand for this
youngster.
Capitol in their wisdom had
decided that they didn't want to use
the Del-Tones on the records.
They want to use studio players,
big mistake, I think.
Dick said: Well if I can't have
my band, I
got to have at least one of my
guys,
and he chose me, thankfully.
While we were back East...
The Beach Boys
had like their first hit.
The talk around the beach was:
Who are these gremmies?
The whole feeling behind it was
that
these guys were just a bunch of
inlanders
who were trying to jump on the
trend
as it was developing. It only
sounded
vaguely like it related to the
kind of music
we were playing, there was a big
question mark
as to how authentic this was.
In fact, some of the surfers
were so annoyed
this was candy coating
and commercializing the sport.
And I remember hearing a bunch
of surfers
saying: Hey, let's go beat
those guys up.
This is my favorite sport next
to skydiving.
Look what just drove up.
Looks like a couple of senior
citizen drop outs.
The Beach Boys were booed
vegetables and fruit were
thrown at them on the stage
by the surfers because they
thought they
were quote: Rank .
Who wants to hear these stupid
lyrics?
It wasn't heavy duty, it
wasn't power.
I remember listening to the
radio and going:
How do they get to spread the
word about
surf music? And here we are
trying to do it
and here's Dick, the innovator
the father of surf music.
You know, he doesn't get to
partake
in spreading this word.
Dick Dale is the
originator, not one of the
originators
THE originator.
Here are The Challengers.
I just quit, walked away from
The Bel Airs
and I started The Challengers.
I was booking these little
Legion Halls
I call up the Pepsi company to
bring down a truck.
I call Brian Wilson, I have him
come down and
It'd be us and The Beach Boys
Next thing you know the place
was crowded and then
cops and fights would break out
and then that was the
last time we could use that
hall.
That happened to us
about three or four times.
The Challengers were
the hardest working band.
We backed more artists, made
more recordings
than all of the bands combined.
We were always the dependable
band that
could back you live and then do
our show
and draw a certain the number of
people to
the venue, so that really set
the stage for
credible appearances on
television and radio and we
would play the theme song for
Lloyd Thaxton's
TV show.
My name is Lloyd Thaxton.
So what!
The Lloyd Thaxton
Show was hugely popular
here in Southern California.
We would all rush home from
high school to
watch Lloyd Thaxton.
His was the only TV dance hop
that featured surf music on a
regular basis
including The Challengers.
In fact, they asked him to
endorse their
second album, Surfing
With The Challengers.
I played what I wanted to play
and it just so happened that I
liked
the music that the kids liked.
Here they are, The Astronauts!
Most shows came from New York
and they had
the New York look.
No one saw the surf music back
East. They didn't see this.
But, they could come to
California by turning on their
television set and watching
The Lloyd Thaxton Show.
That's what made surfing move
out of Southern California
to go all across the nation and
eventually, all over the world,
and it
happened because of the Dick
Dales
happens because of The
Challengers, they brought the
surf to me.
The Challengers gained a
national
reputation and became one of the
most
successful surf instrumental
bands by
virtue of their many appearances
on local
TV shows and syndicated TV shows
like
Hollywood a Go-Go and Shebang.
On behalf of myself
and the rest of the guys in the
group, we
would like to thank you all for
making our
song Pipeline such a big
hit throughout the nation.
We would like to play it for you
now.
What ended up becoming Pipeline
it was at one time
called 44 Magnum.
Next time, we called it
Liberty's Whip
but, we went to this Bruce
Browne movie
they showed the sequence of
Banzai
Pipeline, and we're going:
Whoa, this is cool.
Why don't we call the song
Pipeline?
The first time I heard the
opening glissando to
Pipeline, I was impressed.
It was the first time I'd heard
anything like that.
And as a result of
Pipeline, the glissando
became a standard technique used
by surf bands.
When Pipeline came
out, we were playing at the
Rendezvous Ballroom, we'd have
thousands of
people in there doing the Surfer
Stomp.
All the surfers will show up in
their huaraches
and the whole place would
start rocking
'cause everybody stomping on the
floor.
It was wild frenzied dancing,
you know
the people would just let
themselves go.
Every time I walked into that
Retail Clerks Hall
or the Rendezvous, either
one of those
giant places, I would have to
hold my ears
and it would take me ten or
fifteen minutes just
to get through the DB level,
that was being
pumped through that room.
Everyone sort of jumped up and
down
in unison to the music
and the building would move like
a wooden
gym floor and it was flexible.
And I think it bounced the
musicians on
the stage, from the crowd going
up and down.
The Rendezvous was a lot of fun,
but also
kind of dangerous.
But there were confrontations
between the
people from the beach and the
Inland people.
And I can remember, going out
dancing
and some big nasty looking biker
type hodad coming up to me and
saying:
You dance shitty.
A whole line of people would
link arms
and then facing them was
another line.
They would run up to the other
line. They
would come up like this and
go back...
destined for trouble.
This guy got into a fight with
this other guy
one of the fighter's
girlfriends got involved
and started mouthing at the
other guy
all of sudden
this guy pulled out a
switchblade and
stabbed at the guy and missed
him and hit
the girl, and it went into her
eye or something...
and my girlfriend and I just
fled, never went back.
Surf music was a male-dominated
cultural event.
And that's why
Kathy Marshall's presence on the
scene was
extremely significant.
She could have been a huge star
if the future
had unfolded a bit differently,
but she
does deserve a unique place in
the history books.
Kathy never released a
commercial
recording, but she went in the
studio with
Eddie and the Showmen
to record a demo of
Bullseye.
Being a girl and playing guitar
I don't know if I was good
enough to have
said: Come on in, let's play,
like a guy but
it also rubbed me wrong when:
be good for a girl.
I want to be as good as the
guys.
My grandmother had a little
get-together on
a Sunday afternoon and she
invited one of
her friends and he brought his
electric guitar.
I just was mesmerized.
The transistor radio was how I
learned
how to play the guitar.
I would come home from school,
turn on the
transistor radio, pick up my
guitar and
learn whatever song was on the
radio.
I was so devoted to it and I
think my mom
could see me getting
better at it.
It was her suggestion that I
take guitar lessons.
The first time I heard a surf
band live
was the time I played with one.
My sister was having a
graduation party at her
house and so, they hired a local
band
called The Blazers and my mom
mentioned that
I played guitar.
Their manager says: Let me hear
her.
So, I sat down and I played
Pipeline.
So, the day of the party I got
up and I
played with The Blazers.
When the party was over with,
their manager
said, to my mom: I don't think
I've ever
seen a girl rock and roll
electric guitar player before.
What do you think about her
playing with The Blazers?
And she said: Okay.
The Blazers
they were all surfers.
We'd get up at five in the
morning.
My mom would take us all down to
Huntington Beach.
They would surf
and we'd sit on the beach and
just
play our guitars.
It was surf music.
The Retail Clerks Union Hall
in Buena Park
it was like the mecca for all
the stars to go.
It's the first time I ever saw
Eddie and the Showmen play.
Eddie and the Showmen, to me
were like a huge step up in
musician quality
and I was kind of in awe of
them.
He's a good-looking guy.
What impressed me more, was his
presence.
Just before The
Righteous Brothers
were to go on, Eddie's dad came
to my mom
and said: Would she go on
with Eddie and the Showmen?
And my mom said: Yes.
I would play a lick and then
he'd play a lick.
It was like a battle going
back and forth.
Then, the next thing I know, he
starts stepping
on my licks and I walked up to
his guitar
like I was really going to watch
him play
and I just pulled his plug.
After that, I had a really good
following
because of this little rivalry
that went on between Eddie and I
from that point on.
I was fourteen.
Eddie was 18, or 19
our relationship was rocky at
times.
I don't want to say a love-hate
relationship.
I mean, I cared for him and I
think
he liked me and I liked him.
It seemed like he resented
me at times
but he always tried
to help me, too.
And he was the star, 'cause he
had the presence.
He was very patient with me.
Dave and the Marksmen
, Eddie and the Showmen
and Kathy Marshall, went out on
the road and toured California,
like a little review.
And it was just like one big,
happy family
having a great time on the road
like that.
We had some really great times
on those tours.
The first time I heard Dick Dale
play live was the day I played
with him.
I was not allowed to go to
Harmony Park,
which is where his venue was,
most of the time.
Harmony Park had a
reputation of being a kind of, a
rough place.
So, I never got to see him
in person.
My manager, booked me to play
with him at
the Huntington Pavilion.
And I was scared to death.
I had heard stories that he's
very rough
and he's not a nice guy and all
this stuff.
When they brought me up on
stage, he was
playing with me at the same time
he was
just like being a rhythm guitar
player
playing behind me and he stopped
what he
was doing and he walked over and
he stood
there for a minute in front of
the whole crowd and then
he threw his hands up
like he couldn't compete and
went over and
put his guitar down and stood
off to the side.
I gave her a title and I called
her
Queen of the Surf Guitar.
I never heard of another girl
rock-and-roll, electric guitar
player
at the time.
I was an anomaly, I mean, it was
something
very different.
I didn't think about being
well known, or
being even compared to someone
like Dick Dale.
My impetus was, I just want to
play guitar.
None of us really
could comprehend how big it was
going to get.
Within a short period
the large movie studios
saw an opportunity and started
producing
teen exploitation movies in the
form of
beach party films.
The mainstream jumped on it and
began to
merchandise the heck out of it.
It was just like in the movies.
Those depictions of fights and
stuff like that
those fights actually happened!
Beach Party with
Frankie and Annette.
That made more money
than Cleopatra did.
So, find the beauty in
commercialism.
The good part is, they woke up
the world
to the world of surfing.
And that blew it up into
a hula hoop
kind of fad, from which it never
recovered.
Thank you very much Keith.
Thank you, Mixtures.
And, um, just about ready?
Eddie and the Showmen
got to do the Hollywood Bowl
which in itself, was insane.
I'd like to tell you about
Eddie and the Showmen
I walked out and here's 10,000
plus people!
These boys come from the South
Bay, Palos Verdes.
The feeling I had was like,
whoa...
Allright Eddie, tell them what
you're gonna play...
Is surfing a fun sport?
There was a period of time that
you could
open up Time Magazine, Sports
Illustrated
and surfing was included as
part of mainstream America.
It just became an
industry, just like music
business.
And they got swept up into this
romantic wave
that if you go out west, it's
not movie stars.
It's the beach, it's blondes,
it's surf music.
It's all the freedom that you
could ask for
because there wasn't anything
else on the horizon yet.
The media just glamorized it
even more,
but it was glamorous.
There was this desire for
everybody to have
this identity with the surf
culture.
Suddenly you're bleaching
your hair
you had a flat top, with a
little bit of peroxide on it
so you look like you've been to
the beach
but you haven't been there, but
you look like it.
Kids would drive around in the
Midwest in the United States
with the half a surfboard
hanging out the trunk of the car
to emulate
being a surfer and they never
seen the ocean.
The surfing community
at the time wasn't
really thrilled
about going national
having surfing get that big.
Because, now it's bringing
a lot of people
who aren't really true surfers
into the field
but it happened, because of the
music.
In 1961, there was a literal
explosion of
bands and dances and 45 RPM
records
Within a short period
thousands of garages across
Southern California
began to fill with teenagers,
who were eager to form their own
bands
and jump on this new phenomenon.
The 45 RPM record became a way
for these
bands to market themselves and
their music.
The number of recordings
steadily escalated
and peaked during the summer of
But only a handful found their
way onto the
radio and even fewer were picked
up by
major labels and became hit
records such as
Pipeline by The Chantays
or Wipeout by The Surfaris.
Ronnie being the consummate
musician he was
starts this drumbeat and we go:
Well, we better put some chords
and a
melody to this, because it'll be
a drum solo if we don't!
Got a shingle from the roof.
Bob cracked it over his knee
sounded like a surfboard
cracking and then Dale had
this crazy laugh that he did at
parties.
Pretty soon, Wipeout
went worldwide.
So, we were having a really good
time.
Then...
When The Beatles came out
surf music suffered, a lot.
The Beatles changed everything.
I don't think people wanted to
sit and just
listen to instruments anymore
they wanted lyrics, and they
wanted voice.
The song, instead of being about
surfer girl
or your hot rod, it became
protest songs, and it just
became a very
unhopeful time.
The surf bands
for the most part, just sort of
like
one day, they were not there
anymore.
The marketing people were just
gearing up
to really cash in on the surf
culture.
When The Beatles showed up.
I had other bands after
The Bel Airs in the surf vein,
but it all was gone by 1965.
The folk rock thing was just
starting
and I jumped on that.
Lyrics tell you what to think.
Instrumental music doesn't.
It gives you the freedom to
think what you want
and go where you will.
That's why I loved instrumental
music.
To me, it was bubble gum
because, once again we were
doing this rock and roll
and rhythm and blues.
The artists that were just
breaking out
climbing up the charts
it was just like they hit a
brick wall.
In 1966,
the Rendezvous Ballroom, the
legendary home
to Dick Dale and the birthplace
of surf music
burned to the ground.
Surf music should never be
anything but fun.
It just happened
that it ended and it couldn't
support.
It couldn't pay its way,
anymore.
The music changed and the people
changed
and their attitudes changed.
And you'll never hear surf music
again.
Jimi Hendrix may have been
right.
Surf music experienced an
existential crisis,
the music of the 70's was
characterized by
long drawn-out solos,
overproduced
arrangements, conceptual album
music with
hidden meaning.
And there was disco.
I mean it just seems like nobody
was
interested in surf music anymore
but that wasn't true for me.
So it occurred to me one day,
that it might be
fun to put a band together and
make a surf record
which is something
I wanted to do
back in the 60s
but I never had the chance.
Surf music died a long time ago.
Nobody even knew
what surf music was.
There were no surf music crowds.
There was no such thing, unless
The Beach Boys
big-name bands, like that
Jan and Dean probably were
doing something somewhere.
As time went by
in music, in the 70s, everything
was overblown
overproduced, big guitar, big
hair
I think people started getting
tired of that.
I think the main appeal
of Jon and the Nightriders
It was just the pulse. It was
primal to the nth power.
This was recorded at a friend's
house in
Orange County on a 4-track
Reel-to-reel tape recorder, and
I took the
tape into Los Angeles, to have
it pressed up
by a record company and I asked
them to do it
on blue vinyl, because I thought
it looked cool.
I took this record and I drove
it to
K-ROQ, which were in Pasadena,
I walked
right into the control room and
I said:
Hey, you got to play
this record. And they put it
on and they played it
immediately right on the spot.
That's how cool the station was.
And then we booked a studio in
Los Angeles
and recorded
What eventually became
Surf Beat 80.
This album hadn't been out
longer than a couple
months when I had a phone call
from a
concert promoter, who
wanted to hire us to open
a big show at the Santa Monica
Civic Auditorium.
It's historically known as the
concert that revived surf music.
It was The Surf Punks and
Dick Dale
at the Santa Monica Civic and
we're the opening act.
Jon and the Nightriders,
we were like doing
lightning speed versions of... I
mean we were
like surf music on drugs or
something.
That just opened the door.
All the LA bands
like The Go-Gos and
Missing Persons
, they all wanted
Jon and the Nightriders
to open for them.
Alright, surf's up!
More and more people
were picking up on this sound.
I mean, in the 1960s, I don't
believe any
surf band ever played at
The Whiskey a Go-Go
and yet in the 80s
several surf bands played at the
Whiskey A Go-Go.
The only gigs they could even
get were
with areas of the punk rock
audience.
And if Jon and the Nightriders
came out and rocked
they'd slam dance to them, too.
As long as you ducked the beer
cans
It was fun!
A very exciting time in
Hollywood.
Lot of punk bands playing
LA Weekly and Bam Magazine, and
all these
trades were talking about the
band.
The punk scene had been given
birth, you had
X and The Germs, that
whole scene was going on.
People had just embraced it
again into
this whole era of the early 80s.
But when you got off into surf
punk world
we just found our little slot
right in that.
So there was a whole
instrumental revival
like nobody'd ever seen before,
and it started
happening all over the world.
All of a sudden John says: Ok
guys, we're going to Europe.
That was almost shocking.
Are these people nuts?
They want surf music in Europe?
That first show that we did in
Holland
was at a huge rockabilly
festival.
At the time
what was very current and trendy
and
popular in Holland, was the
Clark Gable movie
Gone With the Wind
. And they were all
like into the southern motif.
We were playing in a very large
Hall and
there must have been several
thousand
rockabilly fans there.
And I remember being constantly
booed
by the audience.
And then a bunch of German
rockabilly guys
were kind of yelling at us:
Rockabilly, man, rockabilly!
The promoter had told us before
we left:
You need to learn
the Song of the South
surf style.
So we flew right off into Dixie.
The moment we did that song that
crowd
erupted and loved us.
Everybody in the crowd, man
just started waving flags and
everybody
started cheering.
The crowd did a complete
180-degree change in their
attitude and we walked off that
stage
as heroes.
I think if we wouldn't have done
that, they
may have stormed the stage
Jon and the Nightriders
may have never
come back to America, you know.
I remember thinking on the
flight home that
European audiences, really
weren't that
much different than those in the
states.
It was obvious to me that surf
music
had a universal appeal.
There was a place for it in the
pop music scene.
We came home to do more tours.
Make more records and play
more venues.
Throughout the 80s new surf
bands continued to form.
Bands like The Surf Raiders,
Paul Johnson and the Packards
The Evasions, The Surf Punks
The Insect Surfers
and the Malibooz
were among a growing number of
surf bands
that all helped draw
attention to the music.
Dick Dale was featured in a
segment on KABC's
Eye on LA
He was interviewed at his home
in Newport Beach
when he felt he was ready for a
comeback
after battling cancer and being
absent from
the concert scene throughout the
1970s.
And he did come back to tour and
record again.
It was really great to see
somebody make a
comeback like that.
The Ventures, who toured
exclusively in Japan for years,
returned to US
stages after a decade of
absence.
Reunion concerts were held.
And people remembered the fun
again.
And then something happened in
1994 that
sparked the popularity of surf
music to a
greater degree than ever before.
For just sheer rock-charged
viscera
I think it would have to be
Miserlou.
Pulp Fiction really
cemented surf music into the
consciousness of the world.
As a result, surf bands started
forming in even greater
numbers all across the globe.
This time period became known as
the third wave.
All around Europe, the same
story is repeating
Pulp Fiction clearly presented
surf music to a wider audience,
instead of
using the words surf music, a
lot of people now
tell us: You're playing
Pulp Fiction music.
Founded in the late 80s, the
Huntington
Beach International Surfing
Museum
continues to support the surf
music
community with Sunday afternoon
concerts
during the summer.
For the last several years,
Livorno a small
Tuscany town on the west coast
of Italy has
been the location for a huge
three day
International surf music event,
called
The Surfer Joe Festival.
The Surfer Joe Summer Festival
was born from my idea
a few years ago, with the
purpose to put together
all Italian surf bands.
But people was thinking that I
was crazy
trying to put together shows and
push the
entire surf music movement in
Italy.
We had the first Festival in
2003 and the
festival was absolutely great.
Los Straightjackets have
recorded over thirteen
albums to date and have appeared
several
times on the Conan O'Brien show.
Not surprisingly, they're hugely
popular
in Mexico.
The first time Los Straitjackets
went to Mexico
We weren't sure how they were
going to receive us.
If they would have thought that
we were
making fun of them or something,
which we
weren't, we were inspired by
their culture.
There were two shows, one in
Mexico City and
one in Guadalajara and they were
both sold out.
It was a shock.
We had no idea we were that
popular there.
Dick Dale started to tour,
headlined in
Vegas and made records again.
And every so often I'd hear
about surf bands
popping up in some of the most
surprising
places like Japan, Finland,
Croatia. Countries
you'd never expect to hear surf
music from.
The appeal of the music was
cross cultural.
And even more diverse than
before.
Surf music had experienced a
full-fledged
revival.
It became obvious to me
that surf music was very much
alive with a universal
appeal that I hadn't imagined a
few years earlier.
Surf music is my life.
Unfortunately.
Surf music for me, it's a
religious
life form, it just gets in your heart it
gets in your soul, it gets in your spirit.
For me, it's my childhood.
Takes me back.
Its all in the melody and the
beat.
It's still all about escapism.
Enjoying the moment, dancing,
having fun.
Even though we're slowly
losing the
pioneers and the people who
first played
around with it, it's bigger than
it's ever been, by far!
The spirit of surf music fans
has not been dampened by the
test of time.
That spirit still represents
all of the things that made the
sound of surf
popular in the days before
The Beatles.
It's commonly assumed that when
Jimi said: You'll never hear
surf music ever again, that he
was saying: We're
here now and screw you, but he
apparently
was a really big fan of Dick
Dale and the
real reason he said it was
there'd been a
false news report at the time
that Dick Dale
was ill and dying.
I had collapsed.
And then I was at the hospital.
Jimi was recording at the time.
Hey, I heard Dale did a
no-show.
And his guitar player said:
No man.
He's dying.
And then Jimi said: Man, you'll
never hear
surf music again.
But he knew what a fighter I was
and he said...
That sounds like a lie
to me.
I have that on tape.
Somewhere.
The King of Surf Guitar has
passed away.
Dick Dale, led the way for
generations.
Dale performed
at blazing speed until the end.
Dick Dale was 81 years old.
You'll never hear surf music
again.
That's a big lie.
Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh
Da-nuh-da-nuh-da-nuh
That's about it.