RIP Dick Dale!

The minute Dale picked up the guitar, Leo Fender broke into uncontrolled laughter and disbelief, he was watching Dale play a right handed guitar upside down and backwards, Dale was playing a right handed guitar left handed and changing the chords in his head then transposing the chords to his hands.

He’ll happily take credit for making rock and roll as loud as it’s become, too, with all those amp developments, which he says was necessary to overcome the muffling when 4,000 surfers would crowd into a Huntington Beach ballroom to hear him in the early ‘60s. "That’s why they call me the father of heavy metal: I’m creating all of that power. I was playing with 60-gage strings on my guitar, too; where people were playing 6, 7, 8, 9, 10-gage strings, mine started off with 16, 18, 20, and then 39, 49, and 60-gage." In other words, you could practically hang the Golden Gate Bridge with the broken strings from one of Dale’s guitars, which come very near to counting as percussion instruments.

Dale’s health concerns have become an unlikely viral sensation following the wide dissemination of a July 29 interview for the Pittsburgh City Paper that had the guitar hero declaring: "I can’t stop touring because I will die. Physically and literally, I will die." The 78-year-old’s road regimen has less to do with the love of satisfying oldies hounds and Quentin Tarantino fans (1962’s "Misirlou" having found a second life as the theme to 1994’s Pulp Fiction) than with paying medical bills involving diabetes, post-cancer treatment and other debilitating conditions. Suddenly, he’s the poster child for a generation that’s not too sick to work, but too sick to retire.

His is not a case of lacking health care -- he’s double insured -- but of insurers refusing to pay for the replenishment of supplies he says is necessary to keep his stoma infection-free. That’s why Dale says he has to tour, to make up for thousands of dollars of uncovered medical expenses every month. "My only income is what comes in when I’m on the road," he says (with "Misirlou" bringing in performance rights payments but no writing royalties).

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"If I had the money coming in, I’d stay home with Lana" -- his beloved wife, manager, and booking agent, who suffers from MS herself -- "and build a ship in a bottle," he tells Billboard. "But I’ve also got to realize I’ve been kept alive for a reason. People are not only coming to a concert, they’re coming to a way of life… where we’re willing to share what our lives are all about and how we make fun of [health issues]. It’s not ‘Oh, I’m suffering down here and you’re having a good time up there.’ I can tell ‘em how much goddam pain I’m going through ‘up there.’ I let them know: I’ve got the same crap you’ve got."