“I said, ‘Mr. Fender, I’m Dick Dale. I’m a surfer and I have no money. Can you help me?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Here, try this guitar’”: How Dick Dale made the Stratocaster the ultimate surf-rock weapon

Dick Dale, wielding a Fender Stratocaster, performs onstage.

“I don’t know how to play a goddamned scale. I don’t know what a 13th is, or an augmented ninth. I could give a shit. All I do is make the guitar scream with pain or pleasure.”

So said the late Dick Dale to Guitar World's Alan di Perna a number of years ago.