I traditionally go through a phase every July when I get heavy into surf music. And when I get heavy into surf, a few artists always end up on repeat. Jamie released Surfin' by Duane Eddy and the Rebels in 1963 - while it's his older stuff repackaged for a different sensibility, the record sounds really good. In 1964, Duane Eddy released Water Skiing, which was all original material. Water Skiing is an exceptional album that, to me, feels like Duane Eddy and surf entered this feedback loop where they had all been inspired by each other and Water Skiing was the inspiration showing what he had been inspired to do. That's some gnarly logic; I better go catch a wave. But if you're into the Beach Boys, Water Skiing feels like a point around the Wilsons listening to Duane Eddy and crafting their sound... then Duane Eddy being inspired by sounds he helped inspire.
With Duane Eddy in particular, it's important to mention the role of sessional musicians. Duane Eddy had been working with the Rebels - Surfin' was a Duane Eddy and the Rebels release. Early members of the Rebels became some very reliable and well-known sessional musicians in Los Angeles, and some later worked with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. So in the case of Duane Eddy, you not only hear this feedback loop where he helped inspire a sound, others refined it, surf developed its own musical language, and then Duane Eddy wrote an album with that language. But you also hear a lot of the same musicians appearing on different recordings. So sometimes it's musical influence... other times it's a sessional musician trying to make a mortgage payment by showing up when and where they're told.
And then there's Dick Dale. I absolutely love Surfers' Choice by Dick Dale and his Del-Tones. The version of Sloop John B is a real standout. Let's Go Trippin' is an excellent song and is a great intro to the rest of surf for people who got into it through the Beach Boys. I feel sad that Miserlou Twist is not the version that Quentin Tarantino made famous again on Pulp Fiction because it's a fucking banger - it's this massive speaker-destroying track. And if you know much about Dick Dale and how he teched his guitar or about his relationship with Leo Fender, it's a really good track to explain why they had to coexist in such a way.
Leo Fender actually built the first 100-watt amplifier for Dick Dale. Miserlou Twist was a massive speaker-destroying track, but that was a pretty good way to describe Dick Dale in general. Between using strings that he could have taken from a suspension bridge to hitting amplifiers as hard as he could (and needing Leo Fender to build him amps he could hit harder), Dick Dale had a sound. He definitely had a style that was just as distinct, but his sound is equally recognizable (and a very interesting story).
The more I learn about this era, how sessionals worked on a lot of the same albums and about how instrument builders worked alongside musicians and producers, the more this sounds like a startup community. If you think of Duane Eddy's early experiments in a water tank and how those experiments informed his relationship with space, it sounds a lot more like software development than a traditional guitar player. That big echoing twang that he was known for was engineered as much as it was played - it required a very talented guitar player with an interest in experimenting. Dick Dale experimented in similar ways, though for him it wasn't so much about space. I would describe Dick Dale as being about how badly he could abuse a signal chain before his amp would catch on fire.
It's neat because when I look at the other guitar players I love, I could describe them all as being equally into their tone. Greg Sage is an excellent example; his guitar tone was absolutely incredible and at the same time he built an entire system called Wipers. I know Wipers was a band, but their output was so good despite so many personnel changes that I have an easier time figuring them out if I look at them as a system. J Mascis is similar in that pursuit of tone - his guitar playing is so distinct that he's really easy to pick out of a mix. With J Mascis, it's a lot of how to use things like fuzzes and the like to hit amplifiers harder. Between how he plays and uses pedals, his sound has a lot of layers of dynamics. Carrie Brownstein is an incredible guitar player and also gets just amazing tone out of her guitar. If you listen to Sleater-Kinney, you'll hear how her guitar is sometimes this really beautiful, almost ethereal thing in the mix, and other times it's a menacing weapon. A lot of that is in tuning and playing style, but also in pedals.
It's a shame that the breakup of Pantera and his murder have really overshadowed this fact, but Dimebag Darrell was a deadly guitar player whose tone and technical prowess combined into something really special. You don't even have to be into thrash or groove; if you're into guitar or if you like how Greg Sage makes you feel, listen to Far Beyond Driven. The artists I mentioned before were nowhere near as heavy as Pantera. But a lot of the tone of Pantera came down to a lot of the same lessons just applied far deeper - it was a deep understanding of amplifier behaviour, clipping and deliberate signal abuse as legitimate compositional tools. And while it is very hard to make the musical leap from Dick Dale's Sloop John B to anything by Pantera, that concept that signal abuse itself is a compositional tool, not just an artifact, prevails through a lot of incredible guitar players spanning countless genres.
While the artists I have mentioned in the last couple of paragraphs have little in common musically with Dick Dale and Duane Eddy, I can sure hear the same pursuit of tone. In a lot of cases, the modern artists I mentioned benefited from the engineering innovations that Duane Eddy and Dick Dale were an early part of. Artists like Duane Eddy and Dick Dale helped inspire (and in some cases directly develop) early versions of technology that my favourite artists have all used. The basic ideas, though - of working with space, of abusing signals and of creating beautiful-sounding noise - they're all there. Heavier music rewards the systematic abuse of signals, and these artists are part of that system.
And so there are a lot of different ways to look at music. You can directly follow musical influence because most musicians are big music fans, and so there is always a lot of material to learn about what inspired them. But it's also possible to look at music from a more technical perspective as well. As technology has been developed and refined, musicians have access to different kinds of equipment. They can use different kinds of technology in the pursuit of whatever tone they dream of. And it's just as valuable to me to trace the tech as it is to trace the artistry.
So every July when I get into surf music, I always reach for Dick Dale and Duane Eddy on vinyl. And while I enjoy the music, I am aware that they both struggled with fundamental problems that helped shape the future of music. For Duane Eddy, his need for a really big echo led him to experiment in the quest of how to make a sound. Dick Dale's problem was slightly different - he could make the sound, but amplifiers would melt, so he had to experiment in the quest of how to make that sound exist. Their pursuits are mirrored in other artists who not only got to use some of the technology that Dick Dale and Duane Eddy inspired, but got to make their own contributions in a similar kind of feedback loop to what happened when Duane Eddy started making surf music.