Orange County's Endless Summer Podcast: Dick Dale Transcript (part two)

AOCVCB:

You know, you’ve got this tremendous talent, this ability that has, no one has exploited the electric guitar like you have. Les Paul invented it, Leo Fender was making instruments and you had, you even had to develop an amplifier and a speaker to actually get your music out there. This was the beginning of Rock and Roll in a way, in a real way.

Dick Dale:
They say Les Paul invented the guitar and Dick Dale put the electricity in the guitar. And which is basically, you know you were saying a word that I was trying to figure out when they said “well what did Dick Dale do?” you know, beside being called the “King of the surf guitar,” you know, creating a style of playing, that’s one thing. But there’s something else, it’s like Einstein split the atom, you know, whatever. What did I do? And you said it. I’m responsible for the evolution, and I’m gonna write that on the palm of my hand from now on, responsible for what you were saying, the evolution of electronics for musical instruments such as, the beginning of time back in the fifties, early fifties, there were like ten, fifteen-watt output transformers. The output transformer is what creates the sound that comes out of that amplifier. And using it with tubes at that time, fifty-eight, eighty ones (5881), is what we created, and a speaker. So I tried to explain to Leo, “Leo I need a transformer that’s going to show off highs, mids and the lows of the sound.” Which transformers don’t do that, they either show off one or the other. Now Leo would say, “well why do you have to play so loud? Why do you have to play so loud?” And I was trying to show him, I was blowing up amp, I blew up fifty amplifiers, they’d catch on fire, the speakers would, because when you drive amperage and it heats up the wire in the coil of the speaker and it’ll smoke. I smoked the speakers at the Royal Hall in England, Albertson Hall. And my bass player is going, “look Dick there’s some fire, it’s catching on fire.” And I go, “shut up just keep on playing.”
And when I met Leo, I said, “my name is Dick Dale, I’m a surfer, I’ve got no money, can you help me out? I’m playing at a place called the Rendezvous Ballroom.” And he says “take this guitar and tell me what you think of it.” And it was a Stratocaster and so I grabbed it but I held it upside down and I started playing it upside down, backwards. And then Leo never laughed and he was always stern like Einstein, and focused. And all of a sudden he goes, he says “my God, he says, why are you are you holding the guitar that way.” And I says, “well Mr. Fender, the book, the instruction book never said turn the guitar the other way stupid, you’re left handed.” So I just kept on forcing my fingers and trying to figure out how to get a sound out of it because my rhythm was in my left hand from playing drums. And that’s how we started together and then I just started blowing up everything he had and then one day Freddy took Leo to see me in the middle of everybody four thousand people now at the Rendezvous Ballroom. And Leo said, “Freddy, now I know what Dick Dale is trying to tell me. Back to the drawing board.” And he called me up at about 3 a.m. in the morning one day and he said. “Dick, I’ve got it. I got it. He says. You’ve got to come and see at this output transformer.” And he built, the first eighty-five output transformer favoring highs, mids and lows, peaking a hundred watts with fifty eight eighty-one tubes. And he said, “now we’ve got to get a speaker that’ll handle it.” So we went to the Lansing Company, JBL Lansing, they were the brothers who I guess split up and you got Altec Lansing and JB Lansing we said “alright, we need a fifteen-inch Lansing speaker and not an eight or a ten-inch or a twelve-inch, nothing like that,” “we want a fifteen-inch in an alloy birdcage,” we called it the birdcage, which holds the speaker in it, “and we want a ten pound, twelve pound magnet on the back.” And I wanted aluminum dust covers so I could hear the click of the pick in it. And then they go “what are you gonna do with that, you gonna put it on a tugboat?” and Leo Fender said, “if you want my business, make it.” And that’s what he did.
So they made the speaker. We took the speaker and we built a three-foot high cabinet, two-feet wide, twelve inches deep, no portholes and we just packed it full of fiberglass and then we plugged, and he called the amplifier a “Showman” because he used to tell me, I used to leap off the stage, it was about five feet high. I used to leap off the stage and land on my knees and slide across the floor ending a song underneath the petticoats of all the girl dancers, my father used to go “you’re crazy, you’re not gonna walk when you’re twenty years old. You’re gonna blow out, you’re gonna kill your hips and everything like that.” But that’s the way I used to end the songs. So Leo would go “you’re such a showman Dick,” you know, like that. So that was the name of the amplifier, called the Showman. It was the Dick Dale transformer that was in it, we called it that.
And when I plugged it into that fifteen-inch speaker, it was like going from a VW into a Ferrari Testarossa or whatever, who knows, the Lamborghini. And that was the beginning of the evolution, I guess that’s what we would call it, the evolution of electronics of loudness. That’s why they call me the “father of heavy metal.” Leo gave me the last seven of those output, Dick Dale transformers. I gave four to a buddy of mine, three to a buddy of mine and I still have the others. But at the same time I’ve just got through creating, with my son, two acoustic guitars for Fender that is gonna be an evolution also in the acoustic guitar about how it’s made. And that’s another story in itself.

AOCVCB:

Miserlou is probably you’re most recognizable piece for the general public.

Dick Dale:
You know, the song Miserlou, it means, the actual, the word, well they call it an anthem. It’s been in sports, it’s been in the Olympics for years. It’s been in the World Series. I just heard it, cause I’ve been in martial arts all my life. And I was watching this one boxer, from Russia, coming from Russia and as he walked out into the ring, they were playing Miserlou as his entrance song. They call it an anthem now you know? But the word itself means, the Egyptian. That’s what it means. And it’s really, it’s an Egyptian, it’s an Arabic love song. Wayno habibi, wayno habibi ak fame, where are you, habibi is sweetheart, where are you my sweetheart? It was done for belly dancers. And it was done at a slower pace. It was (voicing the beat at a slow pace). It was played with a beat on a Dara Bakti,  Dara Bakti, an Arabic drum that you would hold on your lap and going (voicing the beat) like that. And then the dancers would come out dancing like that. Well at the Rendezvous Ballroom one night, this young fella, bout nine years old, of age, he came up and he said “God, I love the way you play guitar,” he says, “can you play something on one string?” “A whole song?”
And I says “oh, come back tomorrow and I’ll figure it out,” you know. So I went home that night man I was crying myself to sleep I go “they’re gonna find out I’m not a guitar player and I don’t know anything about the guitar, I can’t play the scale,” so what happened was, without making a mistake, so what happened was, I came and I thought of Miserlou cause my uncle used to play it on the OUD, which is a stringed instrument and my other uncle played the derebakti, which they taught me how and that’s on my father’s side and my mother came from Poland, they went to school in Russia so we were called us white Russians, so I’m from the dirt both ways. And what happened was, I tried playing Miserlou and I go that’s kind of slow. Then I just thought of how I play the guitar, I play the guitar like I’m playing a drum. (playing Miserlou). That’s that Miserlou. Yeah.

AOCVCB:

I don’t know what to follow that with. I think, I think the best thing is to say thank you Dick Dale for joining us.

Dick Dale:
Ok. I’ll leave you with some words of, the words of the wise that has helped me in my life. I will say these words and be careful.  Thoughts become words, words become actions, actions becomes habits, habits become your character and your character becomes your destiny.

AOCVCB:

And Dick Dale certainly influenced the destiny of American music.

AOCVCB:

And to find out the latest happenings in and around Orange County, make sure to check in with OC’s official visitor site AnaheimOC.org. That’s AnaheimOC.org. I’m Paul Lasley. And I’m Elizabeth Harryman. Join us next time for another look at Orange County.