Ailing Surf Guitar Legend Dick Dale Is Touring to Stay Alive -- Literally

Billboard ^ | August 13, 2015 | Chris Willman

[EveningStar]

Rock's original legends are aging into their 70s and 80s, but you rarely hear about the severity of their health issues, since an ongoing touring career involves maintaining the appearance of physical vitality, if not eternal youth. Count Dick Dale as the exception: The "king of the surf guitar" may just do for real talk about senior maladies what he did for reverb and amps in the early 1960s, being perhaps the one seminal musician of his generation who's eager to rock you like a hurricane and talk about extreme renal failure.

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.

[wardaddy]

Strange most of the first Rock and roll guys are gone including home I consider The First

The pride of Clarksdale

Ike

Now the junior class are dropping like flies....the first Rock guys are slipping away

Dale bridges those two

[wardaddy]

One day Keith will really die

It’ll be over

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks EveningStar. Surf on, Dick Dale!