So exactly, how did all of this come about?
The story begins in 1964 with one 15-year old who decided to form a rock group, yours truly, Rick Fulton. I was then a student at Richard Montgomery High School, in Rockville, Maryland.
I can't say exactly what inspired me to form a surf rock group. Maybe partly in revenge for having felt compelled to study the clarinet for the three or four years prior, and also no doubt due to my increasing fascination with the Link Wray-surf sound transition of the very early '60s.
It's a fairly established law of music that most musicians gravitated toward whatever instrument with which they became associated in the process of fleeing from some other instrument they had been induced into playing as a child. For me it was an escape from the clarinet. I believe our rhythm guitarists, Glenn, was fleeing from the accordion. I'm not sure from which instrument our drummer, Mac, was fleeing. Maybe the cello or something.
In any event, my parents bought me a guitar. Perhaps they sensed an increasing frustration with my clarinet efforts. Although I was not half-bad, I was clearly NOT going to pose a threat to the established legacy of the likes of Pete Fountain or Benny Goodman.
I don't recall with what type of guitar I started, but I am fairly certain it was a hollow body. It was not long, however, until they gave me the "dream machine," at least for the times, a solid-body, baby-blue Hagstrum. I fell in love with this guitar and it fell in love with me, so we decided to take professional guitar lessons together.
I was into my third guitar lesson when it had already become more than obvious that this was the instrument of my potential future in music. At this point in time, I decided that I wanted to form a band. I had already drafted a number of songs before going into my third lesson. Establishing a band before completing my fourth or fifth guitar lesson simply struck me as the thing to do (I was young then, don't expect me to explain the logic).
