Ha ha ha ha ha, Wipe Out!

[luisam]

Wipe Out is by far not the first surf record but certainly, it's the surf anthem by excellence: it's the most famous of all surf tunes. Actually it is a simple twelve bar blues, essentially a throwaway instrumental composed by Bob Berryhill, Pat Connolly, Jim Fuller, and Ron Wilson to be performed and recorded by The Surfaris as a funny B-side of their feature single  Surfer Joe, who were elevated to international status with the release of the single in 1963.

The Surfaris were an American surf rock band formed in Glendora, California in the fall of 1962 by high school students inspired by the guitarist Dick Dale and The Del-Tones, whom they had seen at Harmony Park. Jim Fuller and Pat Connolly called friend and guitarist Bob Berryhill for a practice session at Berryhill's house. In 1960, when Bob was 13 he took a trip to the Hawaiian Islands and learned to surf and play ukulele. On returning to California, he began working seriously on guitar. The trio practiced for about 4 hours and met Ron Wilson at a high school dance later that evening, whereupon the band was born. Drummer Ron Wilson had told the others about a dream he had about a mythical surfer, and with help of the others, wrote a song about him titled Surfer Joe. The song was recorded on a cold night in January of 1963 at a small local studio.

To release the single they needed a B-side and initially they were for making a cover but as an afterthought, they decided to record an instrumental  with the sample they used to play when starting a session to "warm-up" and tune-up their guitars. They wrote the tune almost on the spot, as a suitable B-side for the intended "Surfer Joe" single.

"Wipe Out" is also remembered particularly for its introduction. In late 1962, while the band was in Cucamonga's Pal Recording Studio recording the single, one of the band members suggested that during the introduction before the music starts, a cracking sound, imitating a breaking surfboard, should be made. Therefore before the music started, Berryhill's dad broke a board, near the mic simulating a breaking surf board, followed by a maniacal witch-laugh and a voice babbling the words "ha ha ha ha ha, wipe out" spoken by band manager Dale Smallin, which he added just for fun. The term "wipe out" refers to a fall from a surfboard, especially one that looks painful.
 

 

Richard Delvy, who played drums in a band called The Challengers (a split-off from The Bel-Airs, authors of Mr. Moto), worked out a deal with The Surfaris to distribute "Wipe Out" on his label, Princess Records. The single was first issued in January 1963 then in February 1963. When they hit the charts in the Los Angeles area it was picked up for national distribution in April 1963. The track spent four months on the national Billboard chart in the autumn of 1963, reaching #2 and kept out of the top slot only by Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips". Becoming an international hit, it sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.

After the single took off they were quickly brought in to tape an album. It was in the can 12 hours later. Merely a week went by before it was out in the record bins. This was a big surprise for The Surfaris. They were even more surprised realize that aside from "Wipe Out" and "Surfer Joe" the remainder of the LP was not them! It was actually The Challengers who ended up recording most of the tracks for The Surfaris' debut album and received the performance royalties. DOT records was the national distributer of "Wipe Out" and the label quickly wanted to capitalize on its success, but rather than use The Surfaris they had The Challengers do covers of other instrumental hits.

When they confronted their manager (the laugh guy in Wipe Out's intro) he told them the producers had to add a few overdubs and to listen closer. The more they listened the more they doubted this story. Finally, the manager admitted that union musicians had been brought in to do the songs they had recorded. However as it turned out, the Union musicians (The Challengers) had recorded the album filler even before they did! Then on finding that they had no legal binding contract from DOT records they went off in a huff to Decca records and this time had their real debut LP, "The Sufaris Play". Unfortunately, they were required to re-record "Wipe Out" as DOT did have the rights to it!

Ahhh, the wiles of the record bizz!

The Surfaris had to later sue Dot Records for their share of those royalties. Another band, The Impacts, also claimed that it had recorded a song called "Wipe Out" prior to The Surfaris and that The Surfaris had stolen their idea. Music historians still debate the issue. Meanwhile, another band who called themselves The Surfaris brought suit against the boys over the name, and although that band lost the suit, it was allowed to perform as The Original Surfaris.

"Wipe Out" returned to the Hot 100 in 1966, reaching #16 in Billboard and #9 in Cash Box in its second national chart run, landing at #63 on the Year-end chart. This time it is said to have sold around 700,000 copies in the US to add to its original million-plus.

Meanwhile, original A-side "Surfer Joe", sung by Ron Wilson, only attracted airplay in the wake of Wipe Out's success, and peaked at #62 during its six-week run.
 

Wilson's energetic drum solo for "Wipe Out" (a sped-up version of his Charter Oak High School marching band's drum cadence, a drummer's practice exercise called a paradiddle) made "Wipe Out" one of the best-remembered instrumental songs of the period. According to band member Bob Berryhill, "Ronnie loved Scottish marches and played with our high school Tartan marching band. That came into play coupled with my suggestion of bongo rock-type breaks for an arrangement, a drum-solo type of song with a simple guitar melody. Ronnie started playing the famous Wipe Out solo and in about ten minutes we had the song together." Wilson would later set the world record for continuous drum soloing at 104 1/2 hours!

Over the years, "Wipe Out" has been featured in numerous national commercials and major motion pictures. The song – both the Surfaris' version as well as cover versions – has been featured in over 20 films and television series since 1964 and the count keeps growing. Advertisers such as Nissan, Pepsi, Kodak, and Wendy's Hamburgers and films such as Dirty Dancing, The Vanishing, and Sandlot are a few examples. It has also appeared in children's toys such as musical tops, mechanical bouncing balls and video games. The song's melody has become cultural musical language, not only for a surfing wipe out, but wiping out at any endeavor. The drum solo is undoubtedly the most famous in the world. Guitar World magazine declared "Wipe Out" as one of the ten most influential songs on rock guitarists in music history.

You can watch a very good interpretation of the drum solo by The Ventures, actually featuring a "drum duo".

 

Bob Berryhill currently performs worldwide under the Surfaris banner as " The Surfaris with Bob Berryhill". In 2015 he released a critically acclaimed album entitled "The Surfaris' Hurley Sessions." This is the video by Bob Berryhill's Surfari.

 

There is a weird hoax linked to "Wipe Out". Following the death of a television personality called Morton Downey, Jr., news reports and obituaries incorrectly credited him as the composer of "Wipe Out" (as well as The Chantays' "Pipeline"). As of 2010, Downey's official website continued to make this claim but it has been changed to state he "also played major roles in the production of the hit surf music era songs Pipeline and Wipeout." This is not true!

There are a couple of places online where is given incorrectly that Frank Zappa recorded The Sufaris doing Wipe Out. He recorded another surf group in his early studio: The Tornadoes.

Merrell Fankhauser, the guitarist for a group The Impacts still claims "Wipeout" was ripped off from a song of the same name that HE wrote. He told his version of the story behind this song, he was a guest of John B. Wells on Coast To Coast AM on the Saturday May 1, 2013 show. According to his version, the song was originally recorded by his group in 1962. He also told that the crashing sound effect at the opening was not "a half-broken 2-by-4 over the microphone" but came from a Fender Tube Reverb effects unit getting smacked, the resultant cacophony caused by its internal springs clanging together is a very familiar sound to anyone from back in the day! Merrell Fankhauser is a brilliant "unknown" guitarist as well as an airplane pilot and a UFOlogist. He went on to enjoy a long career and is still producing surf music. Also, later in the same broadcast, a caller related a story about a post-show comment made personally by Dick Dale, that his traditional reverb tone was invented by Merrell.

Here are the comments of Merrell Fankhauser about the issue: "Well, I wrote the original version, and it is slightly different than The Surfaris' version, but I recorded it before they did. And the interesting thing was that Richard Delvy, who was working with the Surfaris as a producer and sometimes as a drummer, was in the studio when we recorded our version of "Wipe Out." And what a lot of people don't know is that we recorded the first version that came out on the Del-Fi album, and it only had one drum solo at the beginning of the album, and the words "wipe out" were screamed. Then they had us come back in to try to make it a single about four months later, and had us do three more versions of it with drum solos in it. And, you know, we always knew that the guy that was from The Surfaris that was in the studio heard our version, and the same producer that produced us produced them, and he just got them to learn it and they just changed the song. Our version had a sax in it and they took the sax out and brought my guitar part more out to the front and put the drum solos in it, and they had a big hit with it. Ours never got put out on a single. So that was another kind of a thing where you're real close to grabbing the brass ring but just didn't quite get it."