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Sound Of The Surf 2022
Transcript
00:00:10and we're rolling all right here we go strange beautiful grass of green with your majestic
00:00:18silver seas your mysterious mountains i wish to see closer may i land my kinky machine
00:00:25with your majestic and superior cackling hand your people i do not understand so to you i shall put an
00:00:38end and you never hear surf music again those are the words of jimmy hendrix that have been cited
00:00:51thousands of times as if jimmy was saying surf music had died in the 60s
00:00:57and it couldn't be further from the truth hendrix was wrong
00:01:02so
00:01:04so
00:01:12so
00:01:41just like motel
00:01:43town for detroit and reggae for jamaica it was a local regional music that came out of the lives
00:01:49of you know young kids in southern california
00:01:55the growth of surf music was really quite phenomenal
00:01:59it started in 1961 in southern california with only a handful of bands and a handful of recordings
00:02:04and within a year or two there were hundreds of recordings by hundreds of bands across the country
00:02:10in the beginning it was just about the music and the surfers enjoying the music and embracing it and
00:02:15kind of claiming it as their own
00:02:21surf music is a bunch of kids on a beach around a bonfire and just having the best time without
00:02:29any social obligations or school pressures
00:02:31and there was no future and there was no future and no war and no economy and nothing to worry
00:02:36about
00:02:37i was attracted to the simplicity and the energy of it that's what rock and roll is and was
00:02:43was simplicity and energy i dropped the flute like a hot potato because i loved the guitar
00:02:56because there was no sound systems we knew that we couldn't hear the voice anyway
00:03:00and we were more interested in the melodic and in the power surf music truly is rock instrumental
00:03:10with a reverb tank
00:03:14there's something about the sound of instrumental surf music that flips a switch with people
00:03:18there's something magic that happens something magic that happens with the audience
00:03:25they regress they start feeling younger they want to get up out of their seats and dance
00:03:31we had those amps it was that kind of music where
00:03:35they didn't care it was the fun of the music because it was loud
00:03:41there's no pretension there's no hidden meanings there's no message it's just pure unadulterated fun
00:03:53in the early 60s my family lived in montclair southern california a little dry dusty town in the
00:04:00inland empire on the edge of the mojave desert montclair was removed from ground zero of surf music by 40
00:04:08or 50 miles
00:04:10but i got a transistor radio in 1959 and that opened up the world to me
00:04:23and one day in 1961 i'm listening to km en in san bernardino and they were the first radio station
00:04:29to actually play dick dale's first record
00:04:33once i heard my first dick dale record i was hooked on that kind of music and i started collecting
00:04:38surf records left and right
00:04:39and at the same time i was learning how to play guitar bands like dick dale and the deltones the
00:04:45challengers eddie and the showman and the bel airs they were like my teachers
00:04:49and a few years later i realized that i had several thousand records and i discovered that there had been
00:04:57surf bands from every state in the union and from almost every overseas country it was just an amazingly diverse
00:05:04form of music that had spread like wildfire
00:05:10and so i wondered where did this music come from to begin with what happened to it did it really
00:05:15go away
00:05:16if it did why
00:05:33the outside world didn't really view servers all that much at first because
00:05:36there was just so few of them and it was more or less seen as a he-man athletic pursuit
00:05:41that was very rare
00:05:42sometimes a dynamic romantic photograph or drawing of servers would appear on the travel magazines
00:05:50surfing as a culture kind of flew in the face of mainstream culture it was non-productive kind of hedonistic
00:05:58pleasure seeking responsibility avoiding kind of thing and no self-respecting parent would endorse their
00:06:06children pursuing that in exchange for school and career because our parents were all children of the depression
00:06:16for them it was security as a surfer you were getting the idea that maybe that was a false god
00:06:22maybe there was other things that were important there was a real high priority on having a job everybody
00:06:29wanting to have a job and be productive and be contributing to society and all of that kind of
00:06:35thing well if you said you were a surfer it was like you were a drop out of that and
00:06:40you were sort of
00:06:42by the time surf music exploded in southern california in the early 60s surfing culture had pretty much been
00:06:48firmly established here at least since the late 50s
00:06:52the surfers we'd drive to the beach and we'd get jacked up to the music on the car radio interestingly
00:06:59the music that we were surfing to at that time was probably jazz
00:07:06we'd get some beer go to some guy's house try and get some girls to come over and put on
00:07:11jazz records
00:07:11like herbie man at the village gate miles davis henry mancini the theme to peter gunn
00:07:18theme to black saddle in newport was a place called the rendezvous ballroom and my parents
00:07:24found out about the rendezvous and started taking me there when i was maybe 14 and during a wonderful
00:07:31several year period i heard every major big band that would come through
00:07:38gene krupa's band and les brown woody herman stan kenton tommy dorsey jimmy dorsey
00:07:44to be there on the bandstand and watching the band and the vocalists and the drummers and all
00:07:49that was god it was marvelous and then we start going down to the lighthouse in uh hermosa beach
00:07:55and there's a bunch of guys from the stan kenton orchestra that are playing there's shelly manz the
00:07:59drummer howard rumsey on bass connie condoli trumpet shorty rogers trumpet bob cooper sax bud shank sax
00:08:08and one of the more innovative filmmakers was bruce brown and bruce brown would go down to the lighthouse
00:08:15because that's where the jazz was played the reason that jazz was adapted to surfing by surfers was that
00:08:27it had kind of a lyrical flowing surf-like environment it created and surfing the wave was sort of
00:08:36improvisational and jazz was improvisational it was about virtuosity and jazz was about individual
00:08:44instrumental virtuosity so there were really lots of kind of symbiotic aspects of the two forms of
00:08:51expression these artists like henry mancini les baxter and martin denny were looking for an atmosphere
00:09:00and that atmosphere really gelled with beach culture and ultimately surf culture it really
00:09:06wasn't as much of an idea of a california culture it was like a transplanted hawaiian thing they had
00:09:12like kooky luau's down at the beach they kind of wanted to be like hawaiians in that kind of later
00:09:2050s
00:09:21time frame the fact that the board went from a hundred pound piece of dense wood to a light 30
00:09:27or 40 pound
00:09:28fiberglass balsa wood board surfboards became even more accessible when foam came out in 59 so they
00:09:34could make as many boards as they needed to to fill the demand this board had gone from maybe 500
00:09:411500
00:09:41surfers to five or six or seven or 8 000 surfers and that's where it was when the movie gidget
00:09:47came out
00:09:53one day i came to malibu and there was a shack there and i think harry stonelink and tube stake
00:09:58built it different guys would hang out there because there was some shade terry tracy who was living
00:10:03there was married and lived elsewhere like inglewood or something he was at the shack a lot and he would
00:10:09just be he would just hang there you know and hang out with guys and get them to buy him
00:10:13some beer and
00:10:13stuff like that he named gidget there was a girl midget that arrived on the scene and sets up
00:10:23headquarters what she does she goes home and tells her daddy all this stuff her daddy writes a book
00:10:32i remember the day that my father picked me up at malibu and drove me home it was in the
00:10:38dynaflow buick
00:10:40because my board was sticking out of the back and i turned to him and i said i'd like to
00:10:45write a story
00:10:45about what's going on at malibu and my father said why don't you tell me everything and i'll write the
00:10:51story for you i'm the writer so i started telling him that i was called gidget at malibu which meant
00:10:59girl midget i told him about terry tube steak tracy that lived in a shack with harry stone lake and
00:11:07i told
00:11:07him how incredibly interesting the lifestyle that i saw at malibu was it was all about what was outside
00:11:15and i thought the whole sort of lifestyle was fascinating that there were surfboards there were
00:11:20young men there was somebody living in a shack and we were waiting for the wave
00:11:29that book really was i don't know they're going bitch and rocket bombs and go gidget go shoot the curl
00:11:39god can you believe that i can't columbia studios bought the rights to the novel and in 1959 the
00:11:48hollywood version hits theaters nationwide the movie comes out everybody loved the movie except
00:12:03for guess whom surfers the movie gidget was was kind of interesting these days it would be pooh-poohed
00:12:10the surfers would sneeze at it but when it came out it was the first acknowledgement by the mainstream
00:12:16world of surfing the theme song to the movie was sung by james darren it became a top 100 hit
00:12:23record in
00:12:24the spring of 1959 when the gidget film comes out a teenage culture emerges in a completely different
00:12:32environment you're not seeing skyscrapers you're not seeing buildings you're not seeing metal microphones
00:12:37you're seeing a shack in the sand next to water and luminous waves that people are zooming in and out
00:12:45of
00:12:45with these little boards this is just unprecedented and no one's seen anything like this it made me
00:12:50cool and it glorified the surf culture even though it did it sort of in a dorky way every time
00:12:57hollywood
00:12:57touches surfing they goof it up even when surfers try to do surfing they don't get it right so when
00:13:05hollywood does it what are they going to get so surfers were listening to jazz and rhythm and blues
00:13:12but where was the surf music
00:13:17there was no such thing as surf music at the time i'd never heard that expression surf music
00:13:26that maybe somebody had a bongo drop when you're in the water and malibu is six to eight feet
00:13:35you're out there and here comes a set i guarantee you you're not going to sit there saying oh bro
00:13:43this is music to surf you don't do that you just take off on waves surfing films of the 1950s
00:13:50were not
00:13:50seen by all that many people bud brown had been making surfing movies from about 1942 or 43 and showing
00:13:59them just at you know lifeguard stations greg knoll was making little tiny films called search for surf
00:14:05just before gidget came out bruce brown was doing his first movie slippery when wet
00:14:10gidget gives the ability for these people to make full-length features and draw larger audiences
00:14:19once kitchen becomes popular teenagers that are into rock and roll start gravitating towards surfing
00:14:24in the surf movies they wouldn't have music sent on the footage itself it was just they turn on the
00:14:30projector he was just putting an album on and he put on the soundtrack to peter gun
00:14:43the mancini peter gunn thing was used for big waves at sunset beach we'd be looking at the screen and
00:14:49you'd see this wave and you couldn't really tell what was going on with it and all of a sudden
00:14:53you
00:14:53see a couple of ants sweep up the face and the driving boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and
00:14:58my god
00:14:58those waves 25 feet and you know you just get jacked out of your mind and so you started to
00:15:04see a lot of
00:15:05interesting things come about from the filmmakers for instance i remember john severson in a film
00:15:11sequence at sakus of a hot offshore morning having kemp auberg play flamenco guitar
00:15:27i honestly think that bud brown was probably the first person to connect instrumental music to
00:15:34the surf culture because he acquired the fireballs music right when it came out in the late 50s
00:15:44and he immediately started playing those albums with his movies
00:15:53things were changing civil rights movement was getting going folk music was getting big the
00:15:59kingston trio came along so there were all these kind of hints at what was going to be developing
00:16:04culturally in the 60s it was still kind of in its youth kids weren't really paying that much
00:16:10tension they were just doing their thing but in reality 1959 1960 was a pretty bland period musically
00:16:19what you were hearing on the radio just before surf music broke was mostly teen idols and and heavily
00:16:25orchestrated material that was the era of frankie avalon and bobby rydell what are generally regarded as
00:16:32the ones who tamed rock and roll down to where it was safe and the early days of the dangerous
00:16:38stuff
00:16:38were were kind of over and it was still about four years before the beatles came along with elvis in
00:16:43the army and chuck berry you know busted by the man act and little richard finding religion jerry lee lewis
00:16:49getting busted for having a wife who was 13. on the flip side of that big rock and roll stars
00:16:55were gone
00:17:01we started to hear instrumental rock and roll about 1956 with bill doggett and honky tonk
00:17:09and then bill justice had raunchy in 57 and that had a really neat little echoey nashville sort of guitar
00:17:16twang to it and that was really exploited by dwayne eddie who came out with rebel rouser in 1958 on
00:17:24the flip
00:17:24side of that you had link ray with rawhide and rumble and eventually jack the ripper
00:17:30then there was johnny and the hurricanes with their full band organ saxophone guitar riffs
00:17:35the fireballs were from new mexico a little more tex-mex style and starting this really tough
00:17:41rock and roll sounds that were based in guitar as a young guitar player what really held the fascination
00:17:49for me and the cool factor was this new sound this instrumental guitar led rock and roll i was
00:17:55particularly attracted to the instrumental players dwayne eddie link ray that was probably the most vital
00:18:01stuff that was going on at that time it was spontaneous and exciting and they pretty much
00:18:07started the kind of music that evolved into surf music in california and ultimately that led to the
00:18:13ventures
00:18:19the ventures had walk don't run which was like the fireballs a straight guitar sound with no saxophone
00:18:25and that was like the shopper around the world in 1960. walk don't run was a national top 10 record
00:18:31that inspired and influenced thousands of kids learning how to play guitar at the time myself
00:18:36included and all the bands that we played in would play walk don't run as well as all of the
00:18:42other
00:18:42guitar dominant instrumentals that we were hearing on the radio at the time
00:18:53so it was 1955 that i found and my dad went crazy a 1941 wld flathead harley it was like
00:19:04it just
00:19:04came out of the military the way it was it was wild i lived in southwest l.a my buddy
00:19:12ray said to me
00:19:13one day he said let's go down to belboa and check out the babes so we went on down there
00:19:19and pulled
00:19:20into that town and it was something like alice in wonderland i mean it had the ferry that would take
00:19:27you across the channel to belboa islands you were on a peninsula that was three miles long
00:19:33because of our motorcycles i guess we scared some of the people maybe and the police invited us to leave
00:19:40so we left and came back in the car brought our guitars with us a couple of guitars
00:19:50well as you walk down belboa boulevard you have the fun zone on the left which is bordering the bay
00:19:58and you have the rendezvous on the right after you've passed the belboa theater you're at the rinky dink
00:20:06this is an area that was populated with people coming down off for easter break for the summertime
00:20:13we were playing at the rinky dink on weekends our audience became primarily surfers and these were
00:20:19people that heard about us from other surfers from other people even from dick everybody that was there
00:20:25looked at least like they were part of the surf culture so this looked like a surf culture happening
00:20:31the box was for adults the prison of socrates was for folk music so the kids had no place to
00:20:39go so
00:20:39when we moved to the rendezvous we were a magnet dick didn't set out to be a surf guitarist he
00:20:45wanted to
00:20:46be a country western singer what happened was that he started playing at the rendezvous ballroom even
00:20:52though he wanted to be up there singing the kids say we'll play an instrumental next week dick dale was
00:20:57playing this song called let's go tripping that he made up the kids used to say let's go tripping
00:21:07down to the beach to hear dick dale play so he wrote a song about it and it became an
00:21:13anthem and from that
00:21:15grew another instrumental and grew another instrumental and dick wasn't calling it the surf music he was
00:21:20calling it the dick dale sound when we went to the rendezvous we went there to listen to the music
00:21:27and to dance and to just be part of the celebration of all of us having the common interest of
00:21:33surfing
00:21:33and surf music i was surfing with 17 surfers and i said i'm playing tonight at the rendezvous ballroom
00:21:41it's the biggest ballroom on the peninsula come on down and have fun 17 surfers that was my first audience
00:21:48they go you're the king man you're the king that's sound on your guitar once we heard the dick dale
00:21:54surfer thing it was like there's no turning back we had started surf music
00:22:00music
00:22:24miserly was an eastern mediterranean folk song that had been around for centuries
00:22:29But I took it from listening to my uncle playing on an oud, the traditional way, where it goes
00:22:36and the belly dances would come out.
00:22:44And I said, well, that's too slow to play.
00:22:48So why don't I do the Gene Cooper drumming picking?
00:22:55So I went...
00:23:02That's how that came to be.
00:23:04And this song comes on the radio, and I had never heard anything like that before.
00:23:09It really changed everything.
00:23:11So all of a sudden, kids are talking about who's going to drive this weekend to go down to the
00:23:16rendezvous
00:23:16to go to a Dick Dale stomp.
00:23:18He was awesome.
00:23:19Dick Dale was obviously a big influence, and we would all go down there and watch him, you know,
00:23:25every Friday and Saturday night.
00:23:27Everything was tight, strong, with an attitude.
00:23:30With the combination of the bass, the rhythm guitar, and the drums gave that animal feel to it.
00:23:37Dick Dale's sound was just totally unique from anything I'd ever heard before.
00:23:44The sound was intense, and it was big.
00:23:48Our music was identified as surf music in 1960, and we didn't have a name for the band yet.
00:23:53And it happened that Dick's sister, Shirley, invited people to suggest names, and somehow the name Deltones came out.
00:24:00So we were called Dick Dale and the Deltones.
00:24:04Later, it was changed to Dick Dale and his Deltones.
00:24:07We just started filling up the place.
00:24:10Playing with the Deltones was just the gas.
00:24:13It was like a dream come true.
00:24:16I mean, I never thought in a million years that I would end up doing anything like that.
00:24:20And for a guy with all the little surf girls around, the place being packed, just seeing the lines of
00:24:26kids around the block, you know, waiting to get in.
00:24:28I didn't care about getting paid.
00:24:30I didn't care about anything.
00:24:31I just wanted to be a part of it.
00:24:33We had a new sound.
00:24:35Dick emphasized being loud.
00:24:37I wanted that tribal sound.
00:24:39And I couldn't find an amp that was powerful enough to sound like Gene Cooper's drums until I met Leo
00:24:45Fender.
00:24:45He was like Einstein.
00:24:47And he says, here, I just made this, and I'm trying to get the bugs out of it.
00:24:50Why don't you bang on it and tell me what you think of it?
00:24:52That gave me this big tribal thunder where I'm going, dun-dun-da-da, dun-dun-da-da, dun-dun
00:24:59-da-da, dun-dun-da-da, like that.
00:25:00Leo used to say, if it can withstand the barrage of punishment of Dick Dale, then it is fit for
00:25:07the human consumption.
00:25:08Leo Fender listened and worked with musicians at the time.
00:25:12It was the work he did with Dick Dale that led to the revolutionary development of the Showman amplifier, the
00:25:18most powerful amplifier at the time.
00:25:20He also worked with Dick to develop the Fender reverb unit in 1961.
00:25:25This was a device that gave a wet, kind of a drippy sound to the guitar.
00:25:29And later, that sound became strongly associated with the sound of surf music.
00:25:35As soon as we started playing, they were on the dance floor.
00:25:38Everybody reacted to the music, obviously, or they wouldn't be lining up to get in.
00:25:43You could see that everybody was feeling the music, not listening to it, but feeling the music.
00:25:48And thus, they started the surfer stomp that went along with it.
00:25:58Of course, you couldn't miss the sound of the surfer stomp.
00:26:01I remember it as couples, you know, facing each other, just stomping away, kind of shuffling.
00:26:08It was an old wooden floor at the rendezvous.
00:26:12The floor would move up and down.
00:26:14You could kind of feel the whole building moving.
00:26:17You know, it's sweaty, it's hot, they're stomping, it's loud.
00:26:20It was great.
00:26:22It built up to 4,000 people a night.
00:26:24And I kept adding to my band bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
00:26:36Our music attracted some attention with the city officials.
00:26:41They said the guitar music was evil and devil music.
00:26:47And it was a suggestion that we leave town.
00:26:55They fired me.
00:26:57And they didn't realize that people were standing out in line coming in from all these places
00:27:02to watch us do what we were doing.
00:27:07And all of a sudden, bands started playing this new style of rock and roll
00:27:12that Dick Dale and the Deltones were doing, this sound called surf music.
00:27:16We were hanging around Torrance Beach in the early summer of 61,
00:27:20and I kept hearing the surfers there talking about,
00:27:22Hey, man, are you going down to the rendezvous this weekend?
00:27:25We're going down to see Dick Dale, you know?
00:27:27I had no idea what it was all about.
00:27:29We went down ourselves to see what was going on.
00:27:32I was blown away.
00:27:39I met this guy Eddie Bertrand on a school bus in 1959,
00:27:43and we discovered that we were both fledgling guitarists, both Dwayne Eddie fans.
00:27:50So we got together and played guitars one day and went,
00:27:54Wow, this is really neat.
00:27:56I developed a style of rhythm guitar playing that covered both the drums and the bass
00:28:00because I wanted it to sound complete with just Eddie and I.
00:28:07And that ironically came to sort of be regarded as the surf style of rhythm playing.
00:28:13The sound that we got just fascinated us.
00:28:17So we got a drummer and we got a sax player.
00:28:21It became a band.
00:28:22It was, you know, it just decided we needed to be a band.
00:28:31I was still learning my basic chords and I was just learning how to play a bar position B flat.
00:28:37And I was switching back and forth between that and the D minor chord.
00:28:41I started hearing this melody in my head to go with that.
00:28:45Right about that time, there was this wrestler in L.A. called Mr. Moto.
00:28:49That's the name for the song, so we titled it Mr. Moto.
00:28:53Mr. Moto was one of the first 45 RPM records I bought as a kid.
00:28:57I really liked the chord changes and the melody.
00:28:59It was probably the first instrumental I learned how to play on the guitar.
00:29:03I did the musical arrangements and Eddie played the lead guitar
00:29:06and Delvey was the business manager.
00:29:08I said to him, would you guys like to make some money?
00:29:12And they said, sure.
00:29:13So I booked us a sock hop at the high school I was going to.
00:29:18The first dance we threw, we passed out flyers around the beach
00:29:21and sure enough, we got about 200 kids to come.
00:29:24You know, most of them were the surfers.
00:29:26I remember one surfer came up to me and he simply said,
00:29:29wow, man, your music sounds like it feels out there on a wave.
00:29:32You ought to call it surf music.
00:29:34I don't know if the Bellers ever considered themselves a surf band at first.
00:29:37I think people who were digging the band kind of just tagged us that.
00:29:41The world of surfing claimed us, so to speak, as theirs.
00:29:46We went from 200 kids at the beginning of the summer
00:29:49to 1,500 kids at the end of the summer.
00:29:52We made an amazing amount of money.
00:29:54I couldn't believe it, being a kid and making all this money
00:29:56every time we did a dance.
00:29:58The first dance we threw, I remember going home and we had about 600 bucks.
00:30:02We threw it out all on a mattress and we're like, you know, doing this with it.
00:30:06We played at a party and took that money and went to Hollywood
00:30:10and decided to make a record.
00:30:11We rented some time at Liberty Recording Studio, went in, spent about an hour or two
00:30:16and recorded five tracks.
00:30:18Mr. Moto had two takes because I didn't like how I played the chorus.
00:30:22Other than that, it was all first takes and we were out the door.
00:30:25The record came out and it didn't do anything for like six months.
00:30:28So we started hyping the record to the radio stations.
00:30:31We got our friends to call in and request it.
00:30:34And at that time, KRLA was running these things where they played the top ten
00:30:38from high schools every night on Sam Riddle's show.
00:30:41It came on at nine o'clock every night. It was called Topic Youth.
00:30:44And every night, he would highlight a different high school.
00:30:47And he would play the top ten records that that high school submitted.
00:30:52We started creating these phony surveys.
00:30:57So I sent in a list of the top ten. Of course, Mr. Moto was number one.
00:31:01I created a whole bogus top ten for the Redondo High School where I was going.
00:31:08And that night, it was all about Redondo High School.
00:31:10And Mr. Moto was number one on the Redondo High School survey.
00:31:14And then one night, he plays the top ten from Palos Verdes High School.
00:31:18And he says, I don't know who you guys are, but good luck.
00:31:20And there it goes. And I went, just nuts.
00:31:23If you saw the movie That Thing You Do, you know exactly what it was like
00:31:27for a bunch of young kids to hear the song playing on the radio.
00:31:31I mean, I got a big boost.
00:31:33Every morning at eight o'clock as I'm getting ready to go to school,
00:31:36I could turn on the radio and hear Mr. Moto. Big thrill.
00:31:41After Mr. Moto became a small hit, next thing on,
00:31:43I'm getting phone calls from the parents in the group
00:31:46trying to tell me what their direction is for the group.
00:31:48And some of these people I'd never even talked to.
00:31:51I got real upset.
00:31:52And my mother says, well, quit the band. Start another one.
00:31:55I said, I can't do that. And I remember crying.
00:31:58Something happened to kind of split that group apart.
00:32:01And that something that happened was the Fender Reverb unit.
00:32:05Eddie Bertrand decided he really wanted to start using that to modify his sound in the band.
00:32:11Paul Johnson, the other guitar player, really didn't want to go in that direction.
00:32:15So there was a separation of the ways.
00:32:18And Eddie Bertrand left the group to form Eddie and the Showman
00:32:21and continue with his powerful reverb-driven guitar instrumentals.
00:32:25Squad Car.
00:32:28Squad Car was written by Paul Johnson.
00:32:30But Eddie recorded the most powerful and frantic version of the song
00:32:34that became a local radio hit.
00:32:36It was kind of an easy thing to do.
00:32:38And it all happened within, like, probably a couple, three weeks after the Bel Airs broke up.
00:32:43We played the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa.
00:32:45And we just kept playing louder and louder and louder.
00:32:54By the end of the night, that speaker was shredded.
00:32:57I thought, well, I'll go to Fender.
00:32:59He'll fix this.
00:33:00Showed up.
00:33:01And he looks up.
00:33:01He says, now how can I help you?
00:33:03I said, well, I have a bandmaster piggyback.
00:33:06And I ripped the speaker to shreds.
00:33:08I was just thinking, what if we put two speakers in there?
00:33:13And he said, tell you what, you leave that stuff with me.
00:33:16I'll give you something to play out of until then.
00:33:18Went back in two weeks, and here's this cabinet with two speakers in it.
00:33:23And I played it.
00:33:27And I went, my God, this thing just sounds huge.
00:33:31The last thing Leo said to me, whatever you do, don't tell anybody what we've done,
00:33:36because we don't produce these amps.
00:33:39Other musicians would come, like, bam, up to the stage and, what's that?
00:33:44And I'd say, what's what?
00:33:47Anyway, within probably a month, I'm guessing,
00:33:50it became the standard bandmaster had two 12s from then on.
00:33:55He wanted to model his sound after Dick Dale's sound.
00:33:58He was totally blown away by the power of that Fender guitar, reverb, and amp combination.
00:34:03They really got a foothold locally when they became the house band
00:34:06at the retail clerk's hall in Buena Park
00:34:09and started to attract as many kids there, actually on weekends,
00:34:12as Dick Dale was bringing to Harmony Park.
00:34:18In November of 1962, we came out with an album called Surfer's Choice.
00:34:24A number of the songs on the album were recorded at the Harmony Park Ballroom in Anaheim.
00:34:35In 1963, Dick Dale and the Deltones were having such success
00:34:39that they booked a tour up and down the East Coast.
00:34:45It must have been 63, where we had a small tour back East.
00:34:50Mainly, we played at this nightclub in New Jersey.
00:34:52And, of course, it was a drinking crowd,
00:34:54a much different crowd than we had in Southern California.
00:34:58And when we went on stage and played, it was like we were from Mars.
00:35:02They could not relate to this music.
00:35:05Now, here's the youngster you read about recently in Life magazine.
00:35:09Here from Boston and Quincy, Mass, and now the coast,
00:35:14Dick Dale a-surfing and a-swinging.
00:35:16So let's have a fine hand.
00:35:21Well, I looked at the heavies, they were moving in fast.
00:35:25I knew I'd better make it, cause they just don't last.
00:35:27I'm surfing.
00:35:29Yeah, swinging and a-surfing.
00:35:32It was a disappointment for Dick.
00:35:34We had to play behind the curtain while Dick was up front.
00:35:37It's probably because they didn't want to pay us union scale or whatever.
00:35:47Let's have a nice hand for the juncture to dissolve, aren't we?
00:35:50Capital, in their wisdom, had decided that they didn't want to use
00:35:54the Deltones on the records.
00:35:55They wanted to use studio players.
00:35:57Big mistake, I think.
00:36:00Dick said, well, if I can't have my band,
00:36:02I've got to have at least one of my guys.
00:36:04And he chose me, thankfully.
00:36:07While we were back East...
00:36:09Let's go surfing now.
00:36:11Everybody's running now.
00:36:12Come on, it's a party with me.
00:36:14Come on, it's a party with me.
00:36:16Early in the morning, we'll be barking now.
00:36:18The Beach Boys had, like, their first hit.
00:36:22The talk around the beach was, who are these Gremys?
00:36:26You know, the whole feeling behind it was that these guys were just a bunch of inlanders
00:36:31who were trying to jump on the trend as it was developing.
00:36:35It only sounded vaguely like it related to the kind of music we were playing.
00:36:39There was a big question mark as to how authentic this was.
00:36:43In fact, some of the surfers were so annoyed, this was candy-coating and commercializing the sport.
00:36:48And I remember hearing a bunch of surfers saying,
00:36:50Hey, let's go beat those guys up.
00:36:54You know, this is my favorite sport next to skydiving.
00:37:01Look what just drove up.
00:37:03Looks like a couple of senior citizen dropouts.
00:37:13The Beach Boys were booed.
00:37:15Vegetables and fruit were thrown at them on the stage by the surfers
00:37:19because they thought they were, quote, rank.
00:37:21Who wants to hear these stupid lyrics?
00:37:24It wasn't heavy duty.
00:37:26It wasn't power.
00:37:28I remember listening to the radio and going,
00:37:30How do they get to spread the word about surf music?
00:37:33And here we are trying to do it.
00:37:35And here's Dick, the innovator, the father of surf music.
00:37:38You know, he doesn't get to partake in spreading this word.
00:37:41Dick Dale is the originator.
00:37:44Not one of the originators.
00:37:47The originator.
00:37:49Here are the challengers.
00:37:52Everybody's talking about the seventh song
00:37:54In the whole wide world there is only one
00:37:57I just quit.
00:37:58Walked away from the Bellars.
00:38:00And I started the challengers.
00:38:02I was booking these little legion halls
00:38:05and I'd call up the Pepsi company.
00:38:07They'd bring down a truck.
00:38:08I'd call Brian Wilson and have them come down
00:38:10and so it'd be us and the Beach Boys
00:38:11and next thing you know the place was crowded
00:38:13and then cops and then fights would break out.
00:38:16And then that was the last time we could use that hall.
00:38:19That happened to us about three or four times.
00:38:22The challengers were the hardest working band.
00:38:26We backed more artists, made more recordings
00:38:28in all of the bands combined.
00:38:30We were always the dependable band
00:38:32that could back you live and then do our show
00:38:34and draw a certain number of people to the venue.
00:38:37So that really set the stage for credible appearances
00:38:41on television and radio.
00:38:43And we would play the theme song
00:38:45for Lloyd Thaxton's TV show.
00:38:48My name is Lloyd Thaxton.
00:38:49The Lloyd Thaxton show was hugely popular
00:38:54here in Southern California.
00:38:55We would all rush home from high school
00:38:57to watch Lloyd Thaxton.
00:38:59His was the only TV dance hop
00:39:01that featured surf music on a regular basis,
00:39:03including the challengers.
00:39:05In fact, they asked him to endorse their second album,
00:39:08Surfing with the Challengers.
00:39:13I played what I wanted to play
00:39:14and it just so happened that I liked the music
00:39:18that the kids liked.
00:39:19Here they are, the astronauts!
00:39:23Most shows came from New York
00:39:24and they had the New York look.
00:39:26No one ever saw the surf music back East.
00:39:29They didn't see this.
00:39:30Well, they could come to California
00:39:32by turning on their television set
00:39:34and watching the Lloyd Thaxton show.
00:39:36That's what made surfing move out of Southern California
00:39:40to go all across the nation
00:39:41and eventually all over the world.
00:39:43And it happened because of the Dick Dales.
00:39:45It happened because of the Challengers.
00:39:47They brought the surf to me.
00:39:48The Challengers gained a national reputation
00:39:52and became one of the most successful surf instrumental bands
00:39:55by virtue of their many appearances
00:39:57on local TV shows and syndicated TV shows
00:40:01like Hollywood Agogo and Shebang.
00:40:04On behalf of myself and the rest of the guys in the group,
00:40:08we would like to thank you all for making our song Pipeline
00:40:11such a big hit throughout the nation.
00:40:13We would like to play it for you now.
00:40:21What ended up becoming Pipeline,
00:40:23it was at one time called 44 Magnum.
00:40:26Next time we called it Liberty's Whip,
00:40:28but we went to this Bruce Brown movie.
00:40:30They showed this sequence of Bonsai Pipeline,
00:40:32and we're going,
00:40:33Whoa, this is cool.
00:40:35Why don't we call this song Pipeline?
00:40:37The first time I heard the opening glissando to Pipeline,
00:40:40I was impressed.
00:40:41It was the first time I'd heard anything like that.
00:40:44And as a result of Pipeline,
00:40:46the glissando became a standard technique used by surf bands.
00:40:50When Pipeline came out,
00:40:51we were playing at the Rendezvous Ballroom.
00:40:54We'd have thousands of people in there doing the surfer stomp.
00:40:57All the surfers would show up in the Hirachis
00:40:59and the whole place would start rocking
00:41:01because everybody was stomping on the floor.
00:41:03It was wild frenzy dancing, you know.
00:41:06People would just let themselves go.
00:41:09Every time I walked into that retail clerk's hall
00:41:12or the Rendezvous,
00:41:12either one of those giant places,
00:41:14I would have to hold my ears
00:41:16and it would take me 10 or 15 minutes
00:41:18just to get through the DB level
00:41:20that was being pumped through that room.
00:41:24Everyone sort of jumped up and down
00:41:25in unison to the music
00:41:27and the building would move like a wooden gym floor
00:41:30and it was flexible.
00:41:31And I think it bounced the musicians on the stage
00:41:34from the crowd going up and down.
00:41:37The Rendezvous was a lot of fun,
00:41:39but also kind of dangerous.
00:41:41But there were confrontations
00:41:43between the people from the beach
00:41:45and the inland people.
00:41:47And I can remember going out and dancing
00:41:50and some big nasty looking biker type ho-dad
00:41:54coming up to me and saying,
00:41:56you dance shitty.
00:41:57A whole line of people would link arms
00:42:00and then facing them was another line.
00:42:04They would run up to the other line.
00:42:07They would come up like this and go back.
00:42:10Destined for trouble.
00:42:15This guy got in a fight with this other guy.
00:42:19One of the fighter's girlfriends got involved
00:42:22and started mouthing at the other guy
00:42:23and all of a sudden this guy pulled out a switchblade
00:42:26and stabbed at the guy and missed him
00:42:29and hit the girl and it went into her eye or something.
00:42:32And my girlfriend and I just fled and never went back.
00:42:36Surf music was a male dominated cultural event.
00:42:40And that's why Kathy Marshall's presence on the scene
00:42:43was extremely significant.
00:42:46She could have been a huge star
00:42:48if the future had unfolded a bit differently,
00:42:50but she does deserve a unique place in the history books.
00:42:53Kathy never released a commercial recording,
00:42:56but she went in the studio with Eddie and the showman
00:42:59to record a demo of Bullseye.
00:43:08Being a girl and playing guitar,
00:43:11I don't know if I was good enough to have said,
00:43:13come on in, let's play like a guy,
00:43:15but it also rubbed me wrong when,
00:43:18oh, you're really good for a girl.
00:43:20Because I didn't want to be good for a girl.
00:43:22I wanted to be as good as the guys.
00:43:25My grandmother had a little get-together
00:43:27on a Sunday afternoon and she invited one of her friends
00:43:30and he brought his electric guitar.
00:43:34I just was mesmerized.
00:43:37The transistor radio was how I learned how to play the guitar.
00:43:40From the golden world of gas and the 1510 Music Man,
00:43:44here's a picket for you.
00:43:47I would come home from school,
00:43:49turn on the transistor radio, pick up my guitar,
00:43:52and learn whatever song was on the radio.
00:43:55I was so devoted to it and I think my mom could see me getting better at it.
00:43:59It was her suggestion that I take guitar lessons.
00:44:05The first time I heard of surf band live was the time I played with one.
00:44:11My sister was having a graduation party at her house
00:44:14and so they hired a local band called the Blazers.
00:44:17And my mom mentioned that I played guitar.
00:44:20Their manager says, oh, let me hear her.
00:44:23So I sat down and I played pipeline.
00:44:31So the day of the party, I got up and I played with the Blazers.
00:44:43When the party was over with, their manager said to my mom,
00:44:48I don't think I've ever seen a girl rock and roll electric guitar player before.
00:44:53What do you think about her playing with the Blazers?
00:44:55And she said, okay.
00:44:59The Blazers, they were all surfers.
00:45:02We'd get up at five o'clock in the morning.
00:45:04My mom would take us all down to Huntington Beach.
00:45:07They would surf and we'd sit on the beach and just play our guitars.
00:45:11It was surf music.
00:45:13Retail Clerks Union Hall in Buena Park.
00:45:16It was like the Mecca for all the stars to go.
00:45:19It's the first time I ever saw Eddie and the Showman play.
00:45:22Eddie and the Showman, to me, were like a huge step up in musicians.
00:45:27And I was kind of in awe of them.
00:45:29He was a good looking guy.
00:45:31What impressed me more was his presence.
00:45:34Just before the Righteous Brothers were to go on,
00:45:37Eddie's dad came to my mom and said,
00:45:39would she go on with Eddie and the Showman?
00:45:41And my mom said, yes.
00:45:44I would play a lick and then he'd play a lick.
00:45:46It was like a battle going back and forth.
00:45:49And then the next thing I know, he started stepping on my licks.
00:45:52And I walked up to his guitar like I was really going to watch him play.
00:45:56And I just pulled his plug.
00:45:58I was so mad.
00:45:59I just yanked his plug out.
00:46:01After that, I had a really good following because of this little rivalry
00:46:05that went on between Eddie and I from that point on.
00:46:09I was 14.
00:46:10Eddie was 18 or 19.
00:46:12And our relationship was rocky at times.
00:46:16I don't want to say love-hate relationship.
00:46:19I mean, I cared for him and I think he liked me and I liked him.
00:46:22It seemed like he resented me at times, but he always tried to help me too.
00:46:25And he was the star because he had the presence.
00:46:30He was very patient with me.
00:46:36Dave and the Marksman, Eddie and the Showman, and Kathy Marshall went out on the road and toured California like
00:46:42a little review.
00:46:43And it was just like one big happy family having a great time on the road like that.
00:46:51We had some really great times on those tours.
00:46:55The first time I heard Dick Dale play live was the day I played with him.
00:47:00I was not allowed to go to Harmony Park, which is where his venue was most of the time.
00:47:05Harmony Park had a reputation of being a kind of a rough place.
00:47:09So I never got to see him in person.
00:47:12My manager booked me to play with him at the Huntington Pavilion.
00:47:18And I was scared to death.
00:47:20I had heard stories that he's very rough and he's not a nice guy and all this stuff.
00:47:27When they brought me up on stage, he was playing with me at the same time.
00:47:32He was just like being a rhythm guitar player playing behind me.
00:47:36And he stopped what he was doing and he walked over and he stood there for a minute, you know,
00:47:41in front of the whole crowd.
00:47:42And then he threw his hands up like he couldn't compete and went over and put his guitar down and
00:47:48then stood off to the side.
00:47:50I gave her a title. I called her Queen of the Surf Guitar.
00:47:54I never heard of another girl rock and roll electric guitar player at the time.
00:48:00I was an anomaly. I mean, it was something very different.
00:48:03I didn't think about being well known or being even compared to someone like Dick Dale.
00:48:09And my impetus was I just want to play guitar.
00:48:12Gather on kids and I'll tell you a story on how you can become a blonde haired surfer boy.
00:48:18You grab yourself a surfboard, swimsuit and all, and hop into your woody and find them ten feet tall.
00:48:24None of us really could comprehend how big it was going to get.
00:48:28Giddy up, 409. Watch out for those stingrays in 427.
00:48:33Within a short period, the large movie studio saw an opportunity and started producing teen exploitation movies in the form
00:48:40of beach party films.
00:48:43The mainstream jumped on it and began to merchandise the heck out of it.
00:48:47It was just like in the movies.
00:48:51Those depictions of fights and stuff like that, those fights actually happened.
00:48:57Beach party with Frankie and Annette.
00:49:00Beach party tonight.
00:49:02That made more money than Cleopatra did.
00:49:05So find the beauty in commercialism.
00:49:09The good part is they woke up the world to the world of surfing.
00:49:14And that blew it up into a hula hoop.
00:49:18Kind of fad from which it never recovered.
00:49:22Thank you very much, Keith.
00:49:23Thank you, Mixtures.
00:49:25And, um, just about ready.
00:49:29Eddie and the Showman got to do the Hollywood Bowl, which in itself was insane.
00:49:34I'd like to tell you about Eddie and the Showman.
00:49:36I walked out and here's 10,000 plus people.
00:49:40These boys come from the South Bay Palace Verdades.
00:49:44The feeling I had was like, whoa.
00:49:47All right, Eddie.
00:49:48Tell them what you're going to play.
00:49:55Is surfing a fun sport?
00:49:58There was a period of time that you could open up Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and surfing was included as
00:50:04part of mainstream America.
00:50:06It just became an industry, just like music business.
00:50:11And they got swept up into this romantic wave that if you go out west, it's not movie stars, it's
00:50:17the bees, it's blondes, it's surf music, it's all the freedom that you could ask for because there wasn't anything
00:50:24else on the horizon yet.
00:50:26The media just glamorized it even more, but it was glamorous.
00:50:31There was this desire for everybody to have this identity with the surf culture.
00:50:38Because suddenly you were bleaching your hair, you had a flat top with a little bit of peroxide on it
00:50:41so you looked like you'd been to the beach, but you haven't been there, but you look like it.
00:50:45Kids would drive around in the Midwest during the United States with half a surfboard hanging out the trunk of
00:50:50the car to emulate being a surfer and they'd never seen the ocean.
00:50:53The surfing community at the time wasn't really thrilled about going national, having surfing get that big because now it's
00:51:02bringing a lot of people who aren't really true surfers into the field.
00:51:07But it happened because of the music.
00:51:11In 1961, there was a literal explosion of bands and dances and 45 RPM records.
00:51:18Within a short period, thousands of garages across Southern California began to fill with teenagers who were eager to form
00:51:26their own bands and jump on this new phenomenon.
00:51:33The 45 RPM record became a way for these bands to market themselves and their music.
00:51:38The number of recordings steadily escalated and peaked during the summer of 1963.
00:51:45But only a handful found their way onto the radio and even fewer were picked up by major labels and
00:51:51became hit records, such as Pipeline by the Shantaes or Wipeout by the Surfaris.
00:51:58Ronnie, being the consummate musician he was, starts this drum beat and we go, well, we better put some chords
00:52:04and a melody to this because it'd be a drum solo if we don't.
00:52:09He got a shingle from the roof, Bob cracked it over his knees, sounded like he had surfboard cracking, and
00:52:14then Dale had this crazy laugh that he did at parties.
00:52:20Pretty soon, Wipeout went worldwide.
00:52:24So we were having a really good time.
00:52:29Then...
00:52:38When the Beatles came out, surf music suffered a lot.
00:52:44The Beatles changed everything.
00:52:47I don't think people wanted to sit and just listen to instruments anymore.
00:52:51They wanted lyrics and they wanted voice.
00:52:54The songs, instead of being about surfer girl or your hot rod, it became, you know, protest songs, and it
00:53:03just became a very unhopeful time.
00:53:06The surf bands, for the most part, just sort of like one day they were not there anymore.
00:53:12The marketing people were just gearing up to really cash in on the surf culture when the Beatles showed up.
00:53:18I had other bands after the Bel Airs in the surf vein, but it all was gone by 1965.
00:53:23The folk rock thing was just starting and I jumped on that.
00:53:28Lyrics tell you what to think.
00:53:31Instrumental music doesn't.
00:53:33It gives you the freedom to think what you want and go where you will.
00:53:37That's why I loved instrumental music.
00:53:40To me, it was bubble gum because, once again, we were doing this rock and roll and rhythm and blues.
00:53:47The artists that were just breaking out, climbing up the charts, it was just like they hit a brick wall.
00:53:55In 1966, the Rendezvous Ballroom, the legendary home to Dick Dale and the birthplace of surf music, burned to the
00:54:04ground.
00:54:08Surf music should never be anything but fun.
00:54:12It just happened that it ended, and it couldn't support, it couldn't pay its way anymore.
00:54:21The music changed, and the people changed, and their attitudes changed.
00:54:26And you never hear surf music again.
00:54:35Jimi Hendrix may have been right.
00:54:38Surf music experienced an existential crisis.
00:54:41The music of the 70s was characterized by long, drawn-out solos, overproduced arrangements, conceptual album music with hidden meaning.
00:54:51And there was disco.
00:54:53I mean, it just seemed like nobody was interested in surf music anymore.
00:54:58But that wasn't true for me.
00:55:00So it occurred to me one day that it might be fun to put a band together and make a
00:55:05surf record,
00:55:05which is something I wanted to do back in the 60s, but I never had the chance.
00:55:20Surf music died a long time ago.
00:55:22Nobody even knew what surf music was.
00:55:24There were no surf music crowds.
00:55:26There was no such thing.
00:55:28Oh, it's the Beach Boys.
00:55:29Big name band like that.
00:55:30And Jan and Dean probably were doing something somewhere.
00:55:33You know, as time went by in the music in the 70s, everything was overblown, overproduced.
00:55:40Big guitar, big hair.
00:55:42And I think people started getting tired of that.
00:55:45I think the main appeal of John and the Knight Riders, it was just the pulse.
00:55:50It was primal to the nth power.
00:55:53This was recorded at a friend's house in Orange County on a four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder.
00:56:01And I took the tape into Los Angeles to have it pressed up by a record company,
00:56:05and I asked them to do it on blue vinyl because I thought it looked cool.
00:56:14I took this record and I drove it to K-Rock, which we're in Pasadena.
00:56:18I walked right into the control room and I said,
00:56:21hey, you've got to play this record, and they put it on,
00:56:23and they played it immediately right on the spot.
00:56:25That's how cool the station was.
00:56:27And then we booked a studio in Los Angeles,
00:56:29and recorded what eventually became Surf Beat 80.
00:56:33This album hadn't been out longer than a couple of months
00:56:36when I had a phone call from a concert promoter who wanted to hire us
00:56:39to open a big show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
00:56:42Well, it's historically known as the concert that revived surf music.
00:56:47It was the surf punks and Dick Dale at the Santa Monica Civic,
00:56:50and we're the opening act.
00:57:02John and the Night Riders, we were like doing lightning speed versions of...
00:57:06I mean, we were like, you know, surf music on drugs or something.
00:57:09That just opened the door.
00:57:11All the L.A. bands, like the Go-Go's and the Missing Persons,
00:57:14they all wanted John and the Night Riders to open for them.
00:57:16All right, surf's up!
00:57:18More and more people were picking up on this sound.
00:57:21I mean, in the 1960s, I don't believe any surf band ever played at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.
00:57:26And yet, in the 80s, several surf bands played at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.
00:57:43The only gigs they could even get were with areas of the punk rock audience.
00:57:50And if John and the Night Riders came out and rocked, they'd slam dance to them too.
00:57:56As long as you ducked the beer cans, it was fun.
00:57:58It was a very exciting time in Hollywood. A lot of punk bands playing.
00:58:02L.A. Weekly and BAM Magazine and all these trades were talking about the band.
00:58:07The punk scene had been given birth.
00:58:09You had X and the Germs. That whole scene was going on.
00:58:14People have just embraced it again into this whole era, the early 80s.
00:58:18But when you got off into surf punk world, we just found our little slot right in that.
00:58:23So there was a whole instrumental revival like nobody had ever seen before.
00:58:27And it started happening all over the world.
00:58:34All of a sudden, John said, okay guys, we're going to Europe.
00:58:37That was almost shocking.
00:58:39Are these people nuts? They want surf music in Europe?
00:58:42That first show that we did in Holland was at a huge rockabilly festival.
00:58:46At the time, what was very current and trendy and popular in Holland was the Clark Gable movie, Gone with
00:58:53the Wind.
00:58:54And they were all like into this southern motif.
00:59:00We were playing in a very large hall and there must have been several thousand rockabilly fans there.
00:59:07And I remember being constantly booed by the audience.
00:59:12And then a bunch of German rockabilly guys were kind of yelling at us like, rockabilly man, rockabilly.
00:59:22The promoter had told us before we left, you need to learn the song of the south surf style.
00:59:28So we flew right off into Dixie.
00:59:39The moment we did that song, that crowd erupted and loved us.
01:00:05Everybody in the crowd, man, just started waving flags and everybody started cheering.
01:00:09The crowd did a complete 180 degree change in their attitude.
01:00:14And we walked off that stage as heroes.
01:00:21I think if we wouldn't have done that, they may have stormed the stage.
01:00:25John and the Knight Riders may have never come back to America, you know.
01:00:29I remember thinking on the flight home that European audiences really weren't that much different than those in the States.
01:00:36It was obvious to me that surf music had a universal appeal.
01:00:41There was a place for it in the pop music scene.
01:00:47We came home to do more tours, make more records and played more venues.
01:00:58Throughout the 80s, new surf bands continued to form.
01:01:02Bands like the Surf Raiders, Paul Johnson and the Packards, the Evasions, the Surf Punks, the Insect Surfers and the
01:01:11Malibus were among a growing number of surf bands that all helped to draw attention to the music.
01:01:18Dick Dale was featured in a segment on KABC's Eye on L.A.
01:01:23He was interviewed at his home in Newport Beach when he felt he was ready for a comeback after battling
01:01:28cancer and being absent from the concert scene throughout the 1970s.
01:01:34And he did come back to tour and record again.
01:01:37You know, it's really great to see somebody make a comeback like that.
01:01:41The Ventures, who toured exclusively in Japan for years, returned to U.S. stages after a decade of absence.
01:01:50Reunion concerts were held.
01:01:56And people remembered the fun again.
01:02:10And then something happened in 1994 that sparked the popularity of surf music to a greater degree than ever before.
01:02:18The best picture of the Cannes Film Festival.
01:02:24For just sheer, like, rock-charged viscera, I think it would have to be miserable.
01:02:34Pulp Fiction really cemented surf music into the consciousness of the world.
01:02:40As a result, surf bands started forming in even greater numbers all across the globe.
01:02:46This time period became known as the third wave.
01:02:49All around Europe, the same story is repeating.
01:02:52Pulp Fiction, who really presented the surf music to a wider audience.
01:02:57Instead of using the word surf music, a lot of people now, so you're playing Pulp Fiction music.
01:03:03Founded in the late 80s, the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum continues to support the surf music community with Sunday
01:03:11afternoon concerts during the summer.
01:03:15For the last several years, Laborno, a small Tuscany town on the west coast of Italy, has been the location
01:03:22for a huge three-day international surf music event called the Surfer Joe Festival.
01:03:26Well, the Surfer Joe Summer Festival was born for my idea a few years ago with the purpose to put
01:03:32together old Italian surf bands.
01:03:34But people was thinking that I was crazy trying to put together shows and push the entire surf music movement
01:03:41in Italy.
01:03:42We had the first festival in 2003 and the festival was absolutely great.
01:03:55Low Straightjackets have recorded over 13 albums to date and have appeared several times on the Conan O'Brien Show.
01:04:01Not surprisingly, they're hugely popular in Mexico.
01:04:05The first time Low Straightjackets went to Mexico, we weren't sure how they were going to receive us.
01:04:10If they would have thought that we were making fun of them or something, which we weren't, we were inspired
01:04:14by their culture.
01:04:15There were two shows, one in Mexico City and one in Guadalajara, and they were both sold out.
01:04:20It was a shock. We had no idea we were that popular there.
01:04:32Dick Dale started to tour, headlined in Vegas, and made records again.
01:04:45And every so often, I'd hear about surf bands popping up in some of the most surprising places, like Japan,
01:04:53Finland, Croatia, countries you'd never expect to hear surf music from.
01:04:57The music was cross-cultural and even more diverse than before.
01:05:21Surf music had experienced a full-fledged revival.
01:05:24It became obvious to me that surf music was very much alive with a universal appeal that I hadn't imagined
01:05:31a few years earlier.
01:05:32Surf music is my life. Unfortunately.
01:05:36Surf music, for me, it's a religious life form.
01:05:39It just gets in your heart, it gets in your soul, it gets in your spirit.
01:05:42For me, it's my childhood. It takes me back. It's all in the melody and the beat.
01:05:49It's still all about escapism, enjoying the moment, dancing, having fun.
01:06:09Even though we're slowly losing the pioneers and the people who first played around with this, it's bigger than it's
01:06:17ever been, by far.
01:06:20The spirit of surf music fans has not been dampened by the test of time.
01:06:25That spirit still represents all of the things that made the sound of surf popular in the days before the
01:06:31Beatles.
01:06:32It's commonly assumed that when Jimmy said that you'll never hear surf music ever again, that he was saying we're
01:06:41here now and screw you.
01:06:43But he apparently was a really big fan of Dick Dale.
01:06:47And the real reason he said it was there had been a false news report at the time that Dick
01:06:51Dale was ill and dying.
01:06:54I had collapsed and then I was at the hospital.
01:07:00Jimmy was recording at the time.
01:07:03Hey, I heard Dale did a no-show.
01:07:06And his guitar player said, no man, he's dying.
01:07:14And then Jimmy said, man, you'll never hear surf music again.
01:07:20But he knew what a fighter I was.
01:07:23And he said, that sounds like a lie to me.
01:07:29I have that on tape. Somewhere.
01:07:34The king of surf guitar has passed away. Dick Dale led the way for generations.
01:07:44Dale performed at blazing speeds until the end. Dick Dale was 81 years old.
01:07:53You'll never hear surf music again.
01:07:59That's a big lie.
01:08:30You're doing great.
01:08:36He said, wow, it isn't fair.
01:08:39He is aRoad That was a bad guy.
01:08:43Deansèmections.
01:08:44I think there was a terrific band.
01:08:44He did it well.
01:08:47But I don't want to...
01:08:47But I should not know.
01:08:58guitar solo
01:09:28guitar solo
01:10:05That's about it.
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