The FENDER FOUR

The Fender Four, led by guitarist Randy Holden, were one of the toughest, futuristic, and original surf combos ever comitted to vinyl.
Their five instrumentals, "Everybody Up!", "MarGaya", "Highway Surfer", "Little Ollie", and "Malibu Run", and their lone vocal garage masterpiece "You Better Tell Me Now" stand out as true genre-defining works of genius.
Relocating to Southern California from Baltimore, Randy & the boys caught the surf wave relatively late in 1964. Holden would go on to play in seminal early garage/psych groups The Other Half and The Sons Of Adam before joining Blue Cheer in 1968.
Here he is, in his own words, interviewed by Richie Unterberger, the author of Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll:


Q: How did the Fender IV get started?

R: It might have gone through some name changes, but [the group] left [Baltimore] called that, simply because there was this love affair with Fender guitars and amps, and we had all Fender. It was like we were state-of-the-art technological equipment at the time.

Q: How was it that you got into surf music?

R: The surf element had a mideastern quality to it, in what I call the true surf music, and Dick Dale brought that out. But his past, my understanding, is he's Lebanese. So he was brought up with that kind of melodic sense, and he just applied it to an electric guitar, which [was] brilliant, I thought. But in my early background, I was exposed to things like flamenco, just via radio, and I loved it. So it had a similar influence with regard to the melodies.

I eventually turned more towards the staccato picking style, because I really enjoyed it. I adored Dick Dale. I thought he was just magnificent when he played. And it was fun to play that. And I could do it better than anybody (laughs).

I was a very strong and powerful guitarist, still am. I played with a lot of volume and strength. It was just what made me tick. So it's a driving force inside of my own self. I had to do it that way. Because that's the way it sounded good. It made people move. It moved me. Hitting that guitar string on a voluminous amp was just heaven. And people felt it.

To me, the equipment was always key. The state-of-the-art technology at the time was always key. And the reason it was, was because some of it was incredibly good. Like Fender, for example. Fender, he was a brilliant man. He was so far ahead of his time, it was incredible. So what he was able to take and do with guitars and magnets and tubes and circuitry and speaker configurations, it did some unbelievable things. He took military technology and turned it over into a use that was suitable for another purpose. Pretty amazing, when you think about it.

Every time Fender would develop new and bigger [equipment], I'd go into debt and buy the thing on credit. I had a music store that was--the guy loved what I was doing. Basically, I went to school in the basement of a music store, instead of going to school. I don't know why he did that, but he'd extend me credit on anything I wanted. I was in debt for years. I had the first Bandmaster in Baltimore on the East Coast, the first Showman, the first Dual Showman. So there was the high level technological edge. Most guitar players, where I came from and developed out of, were more into rhythm and blues, where the guitar didn't play a major role. But the guitar for me was a total, full-blast, full-on love affair. The louder and clearer that baby was, the more beautiful it was. So that's where it came from.

Listen to the Fender Four's surf guitar classic "Everybody Up!"