‘Let’s Go Trippin’: the first-ever surf rock hit
The origins of rock and roll began as a vast melting pot of different genres. Before the likes of Little Richard and Chuck Berry came along, the closest thing to rock and roll tended to come from the blues or jazz, taking the lowdown and dirty sounds of life and twisting them into beautiful music. Of all the progenitors of rock and roll, one element commonly left out of the equation is surf music.
As the California sunshine started to become more identifiable with rock and roll, the jagged sound of the surf guitar brought a certain edge to the music, being a little rough around the edges and more about creating instrumental chaos most of the time. While songs like ‘Wipeout’ and ‘Surfin U.S.A.’ may have tried to take credit as the first major beach-themed rock and roll song, Dick Dale beat all of them to the punch with ‘Let’s Go Trippin’.
Compared to the original surf music, this is a far more tame effort than people were used to. While the guitar is still prominently in the front of the mix, most of the song relies on a fairly clean guitar sound and a rhythm guitarist playing basic chords in the background. Though there are hardly any lyrics to speak of outside of the title track, the instrumentation gives the listener the feeling of going out on a hot day and feeling the sand between their toes as they have their surfboards handy.
Although Dale relied on his guitar to do the talking, his approach to the instrumentation was much more primal than anyone else, playing it left-handed without changing any strings. A few months after ‘Let’s Go Trippin’ got on the charts, The Beach Boys would release their first single ‘Surfin’, which took a far more primitive approach to the genre.
Dale’s real shining moment from this rock and roll era came with his take on the traditional tune ‘Misirlou’, which would be a prominent feature of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Although ‘Trippin’ might not be that intense by today’s standards, the frantic sound of the surf guitar paved the way for new hard rock acts around the turn of the decade.
When talking about his approach, Dale mentioned his guitar wanting to have the same attack as jazz drummer Gene Krupa, telling Metal Evolution, “I’m not musically trained. I don’t know what an augmented ninth or a thirteenth is, and I don’t care. I just bang on that thing, and I get sounds of Mother Nature. People’s ears started to ring and then said, ‘Whoa, what is this?’”.
While Dale might not have been thinking in terms of influence at the time, acts like The Beach Boys would go on to make a career out of what he started, as Brian Wilson wrote mini symphonies all about the wonders of surfing and driving cars in sunny California. For all of the great tunes that have come out of surf rock, all the pieces for the genre are right here. From the sound of the guitars alone, it’s easy to picture the gentle, calming waves slowly calling the listener towards the coast.
