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- They asked me what I do.

I said, well, I play the guitar.

They said, well, are you in a group?

- Ladies and Gentlemen,

here are The Ventures.

- I love The Ventures.

- I know you do. - This is like

one of my favorite groups in history.

- Certainly for us guitarists, Jeff Beck, myself and Eric,

we've all played Ventures material when we were kids.

- The Ventures.

In the sixth grade in grammar school,

every boy in my class could play "Wipeout" on his desk.

- "Wipeout".

- Those instrumentals led the way.

- They have recorded 3,000 songs.

They have written 1,000 songs.

- They took other people's songs and made them way better.

- All we have to do is hum "Hawaii Five-O"

or "Walk Don't Run"

and the person's instantly like, oh yeah, I know that.

- Of course I know that.

- They're the number one song instrumental group

in the history of the music.

- There was no language barrier.

It was just movement.

- The guitar has arrived

and The Ventures are the messengers.

- None of the rest of us would be here

without The Ventures.

- I think like every band in the world

had Walk Don't Run in their set.

- Everyone wants to get that sound.

It just speaks to you directly to the soul.

- It just as magic to me.

- This is surf music

and The Ventures were a really important part of it.

- This was like everything I was aspiring to.

- The Ventures always made me feel like I wanted to dance,

pick up a guitar and just look really cool.

- When I was younger I wanted to learn

how to play the trombone.

I thought the trombone had such a mellow sound, you know.

It was Tommy Dorsey that I really liked.

I started playing it in junior high school.

Then when I went into the Army,

I went to Germany.

They said, I see you play the trombone.

Would you like to go into the band?

No, i don't think so.

Biggest mistake I ever made in my life.

Use to wake you up at three or four o'clock in the morning

for a 20 mile hike.

Then we'd go out on what they call biv-wack.

You would march and you'd stay out for about a week.

And I'm talking winter time.

After about three months

I'm thinking I'm going to try to get in the band.

I'll be darned if I didn't have my orders cut

to go to the band.

They called me out and said,

I guess you're going to the band.

We got the orders that your request came through.

So, then I was in the band.

And it was really good.

I really enjoyed that.

And I did meet a guy that was in the band.

He played the glockenspiel,

which is bells.

And he played a guitar and he was kind of jazzy

and I played a few chords on a guitar

that I learned from my mom, believe it or not.

He was with some trio that you might know,

the Page Cavenaugh Trio.

So, he taught me some kind of jazzy chords

and stuff like that.

I never did pick up a guitar

for awhile until I met Bob Bogle.

I was working in my dad's car lot

and I was considered to be the lot boy.

Bob Bogle came in one time.

I didn't know him at all.

And he wanted to buy a car.

He said, how about that car over there, he'd point to.

And I said, nah, you don't want that car.

You know, I was a terrible salesman.

A good salesman would say yeah, that's the car for you.

He and I got to talking

and we got along real good.

And so, I asked him.

I said, what do you do.

He said, well, I'm in the bricklayer trade.

He got me a job.

The first thing I did was I was a hod carrier.

As a lot of people know,

it rains a lot in Tacoma and Seattle,

so a lot of times, if you're working outside

replacing the mortar between bricks,

a lot of times you can't work.

Bob and I, we thought what are we going to do.

You told me you play a little bit of guitar and so do I.

Why don't we buy a couple of guitars

and when we're not working out of town

we have nothing to do anyway.

Might as well try to learn how to play the guitar.

In 1959 we bought two guitars

in a pawn shop in Tacoma, Washington

and we probably paid $10 or $15 a piece for them.

And the strings were, I don't know,

half and inch from the neck.

Those guitars were so hard to play

but we bought chord books and things

and learned everything we could

and then we thought we'd step out

and pay a down payment on some Fender guitars,

which we did.

- I think something that really

set The Ventures sound apart from other groups

is how they utilized two guitars

to really fill out their sound.

- Normally, you think of there's the lead guitar

and the rhythm guitar.

And the lead is always in the front

and the rhythm's in the background

and thought of as not as important

but in The Ventures both guitars

were always just as important.

- There was only two of us to begin with, two guitars.

I tried to make up for not having a drum

and he tried to make up for not having a keyboard.

You know, by using the whammy bar.

Make it wavy.

- The guy playing the lead,

which I believe was Bob Bogle

but I didn't know that then,

but the guitar was really twanging.

It was going .

- The lead was great

but the rhythm parts were always just as interesting.

- Don Wilson is a really interesting rhythm player.

I looked at his amp settings.

He's got the high end cranked all the way

and he's got the low end cranked all the way off

and he's playing it

and it's a percussive sound.

- Just the rhythm man.

- It was just straight ahead.

- Mostly downstrokes.

Not

I never did that.

- That kind of rhythm was unheard of.

And when I was a kid, nobody played like that.

- I mean, I just really beat hard.

- He didn't just strum a chord.

He didn't just play Apreggios.

He always made it interesting by muting,

adding reverb and making it a little more percussive.

- Me playing real hard rhythm

and him playing that kind of style,

when we got a bass and drummer,

it just stuck.

We thought we were hey, versatile,

so we called ourselves The Versatones.

And we went to register the name

and by god, it was already taken,

otherwise we'd be The Versatones.

For about two weeks,

we called ourselves The Impacts.

I remember that.

And then my mom said, you know,

you guys are venturing into something new.

Why don't you call yourselves The Ventures?

I said, well, that's pretty corny.

But anyway that kind of stuck

and we said, well, okay.

We'll call ourselves The Ventures.

We'd play for anybody that wanted to hear it.

If somebody's having a party,

can we come and play?

We weren't quite good enough to play for clubs

and there was only the two of us.

So, we entered a lot of talent contests,

which are really a popularity contest.

In those days you had to do something more

than just play music.

I mean, a lot of times

a drummer would put on some gorilla mask or something

and act like a fool,

which that just wasn't our way.

We played some pretty rough places.

We worked at a place called the Blue Moon.

We worked there probably for a month

and then we worked at the Java Jive for,

I don't know how long,

maybe a month, month and a half something like that.

At night I'd be at the Britannia every Saturday.

The Britannia, boy that was a rough place.

That was where they had a lot of soldiers from Fort Lewis

and Canadian soldiers that were training at Fort Lewis.

There must have been five fights a night,

beer bottles flying.

They had actually a police car out in front.

When a fight broke out,

they would go get these people, put them in the car.

They'd just wait until they got about five of them

and then they'd take them all to jail.

When we played there,

we played from noon until midnight.

It did us a lot of good though,

because we had to have quite a repertoire

and not keep playing the same things over and over again.

We saved enough to go into the studio

and we were $25 short.

I asked,

I went to my dad.

I said, can I borrow $25.

I can't remember the exact phrase he said

but he said, not only am I not going to give you money,

I don't want you wasting your time

trying to play that guitar.

But my mom was a big, big supporter.

- Josie had been a singer earlier in her life

and appreciated music,

saw a talent.

- I thought well, I think they probably deserve a chance

to see maybe if they can make a record.

- And she was a pioneer in the music business.

She produced and promoted The Ventures

with the original Blue Horizon label.

- She said, you know, if no body wants you guys,

why don't we start our own record company?

So we did, Blue Horizon.

My mom wrote "Cookies and Coke".

That was our first record.

- There was a woman involved in the beginning of their band

and she worked really hard for them

and she was really smart

and she made decisions and pursued the radio station.

She really pursued things for them

and I think that that's really special for us as women too.

- Yeah.

- There was no women in the business at that time,

especially producing.

I'm sure she was unique and maybe the first one.

- She paved the way for other bands to do it on their own.

- She started the fan club and she worked it

while she was doing production and everything else.

- As a little kid I would write to Josie

and ask her questions about

when's the next record coming out

and all this stuff.

And she would write me back.

She would send me a personal letter.

- Josie was influential,

stood behind The Ventures,

gave them every opportunity.

She was the biggest fan.

- To measure what she contributed

is immeasurable, really.

- Don's mom was awesome.

- So, then we found a song

that was on a vinyl record of Chet Atkins

called "Walk Don't Run".

And he played it in a jazzy finger-style.

We'd only been playing for six months.

We couldn't do that.

- We weren't professional enough

to play the song the way it was written.

It was too complicated for us.

- So, we Venturized it.

- Written in 1954 by Johnny Smith,

recorded in 1957 by Chet Atkins

and regarded by Rolling Stone magazine

as one of the hundred greatest guitar songs of all time.

I give you "Walk Don't Run".

- We'd have to always do that song

three or four, five times a night

because people just loved hearing it.

So, we decided to record that.

- I did take them to a studio in Seattle.

Joe Boles Custom Recorders.

- It was a two track.

The bass and the drum on one track

and you did the rhythm and the lead on the other.

I remember his echo chamber

was a microphone hanging on the shower in his shower room.

He said, I'm going to try something with you guys.

I'm going to put a microphone right there

where you're picking

and I want to see if I can't get the pick sound,

you know picking the strings.

Anyway, he got a great sound out of us.

- Bob Bogle played lead.

Don Wilson played rhythm.

And Nokie Edwards played bass.

- I was working with a country artist, Buck Owens.

Don and Bob came in the club where I was working

and saw me play

and liked the way I played.

And asked me if I wanted to join up with them.

- He was just outstanding as a guitar player.

We asked him if he'd play the bass

and he said that he would and he did.

- If you're a real geek

then you know that there's two distinct versions

of The Ventures in the 1960s.

There was the early period

where Bob Bogle played lead guitar

and that was definitely more rooted

in sort of a '50s rock and roll feel

but then at some point, Nokie Edwards who was playing bass,

switched over to lead guitar.

And Bob went over to play bass.

And then it became a completely different band.

- Don was a great rhythm guitar player.

Has his own sound, his own style, his own touch.

Bob had his own style too as well.

Very much like a guitar player on bass.

Nokie was a brilliant lead guitar player.

- Nokie had been playing the guitar

since he was five years old.

He was a king around Seattle, Tacoma area.

- Nokie had his roots in country.

There was no question about it

but he evolved into more of a finger-style picker

after he came in with The Ventures.

- Now, he was a country player

but he was obviously listening

to a lot of current music at the time

and so he was bending a lot of notes.

- I asked him one time why he played this way

and he said he just wanted to play more notes.

Not to overplay,

just to make his arrangement a little bit fuller.

- Chet Atkins and Les Paul were Nokie and Bob Bogle's idols,

especially Nokie.

- He really likes mellow music.

When he sits at home he just sits

and plays mellow finger picking music

but everything kind of came together

at that point in the mid '60s

where he sort of became this snarling, punk rock,

crazy, violent sounding lead guitar

and it sort of worked with everything

that was going on at that time in the music scene.

- You know a funny thing with Nokie too,

Les Paul sped up his playing

and Nokie says he never knew that.

So, he would try to play that as fast as it was sped up

and I got to tell you,

sometimes he did a pretty good job.

- Bob Bogle loved the lead guitar

but he knew that Nokie was the better player.

And Nokie was on bass right from the beginning,

so Bob decided to switch with Nokie

and said, you know, we need to feature you more.

Bob mentioned though that he didn't know how to play bass

and Nokie said,

well, it's just the four strings of the guitar.

Nokie was not pretentious

but he always helped his fellow players play

and that's what made The Ventures great.

They supported each other.

- Anytime I saw The Ventures live,

my favorite part of the show

was when Bob would switch to guitar for a couple of songs.

But then, at the same time,

Bob was also a wild man on the bass,

which was kind of strange

because he didn't have a wild man personality

but man, on the bass he was amazing.

- The drummer that played "Walk Don't Run"

was somebody that we had done these talent shows with

and he was a different type of a drummer.

He would make some drum rolls

that were quite different from anybody else.

He would belt on it.

There were rim shots in between the different things.

He happened to be absolutely perfect for "Walk Don't Run".

I said, we'll either give you a percentage

of what it makes or $25.

He said, I'll take the 25.

That's the last we heard of him.

And you know, he never cashed that check.

Then we got Howie Johnson.

He was with us for,

I guess maybe a year and a half, two years.

And he got in a terrible car accident,

so he couldn't really travel much.

And so, we needed a drummer.

So, we happened to be at the Palomino club

in North Hollywood.

They said, why don't you get up and play?

And I said, well, I don't know

they maybe not know "Walk Don't Run".

Mel, he said, I know your song very well, yeah.

Sure come on, get up here.

So, we did and he did it well,

so we hired him.

- Mel Taylor was a slamming drummer.

- The bar is set very high by Mel

because "Wipeout" is no easy task.

- To hear that kind of music

with a drummer who hit the drums that hard,

that excited us, you know.

- When I saw them live,

the dynamics of Mel Taylor,

the drive that he put behind those guys in front

that just took it to another level.

- It's definitely sort of like the epitome of surf drumming.

- The Ventures came

and they played their first record for me

and I said, you know, I think you're very good.

But this is not,

this isn't it.

- Everything was no.

It was not a hit.

A guy named Pat O'Day, who was the,

became one of the,

probably most famous disc jockey in Seattle.

We got to be friends.

And I said, do you think you could play "Walk Don't Run"?

And he said, well, you know,

I'd have to ask the program director.

- If Pat played your record,

all the other stations did too.

It's like he made us into these little mini superstars

in Seattle and Tacoma.

- So, he said, well, the only thing I can do is to play it

as what they call a news kicker.

- Every hour they had news

and before they put on the news program,

they played what they called a news kicker.

Pretty soon they announced over the air,

please don't call.

Please don't call anymore.

Our phone lines are jammed.

We will play this record in its entirety.

- Well, we were working.

There was another guy there

and we had a little portable radio.

And we started listening to it.

I said, that's our song right there playing on the radio.

Sure it is.

- I heard on KJR radio in Seattle

this remarkable instrumental.

And I said, well, they're bending notes in there

and they're flat, their sharp deliberately.

- We had been to Bob with the tape before

and he turned us down.

Well, then bob contacted me again.

- And I said, this is going to be a big hit.

Do you know that?

She said, really?

And I said, this is going to be possibly number one.

- I think the smartest thing I'd ever done

was to take him on as a partner

because he had the contacts.

He had had a number one recording the The Fleetwoods

called "Come Softly To Me".

I knew that he would have the knowledge of what to do

and he already had a contract with Liberty Records.

- So, he sent it down to Liberty Records

and the president of Liberty Records says,

no, i don't think it's a hit.

Although it was climbing the charts in Seattle

but only Seattle.

Mr. Reisdorff said, well, I'll guarantee it.

If it doesn't make it, I'll pay the cost of the promotion

and pressing and whatever else was involved.

And it wound up going to number two in the nation.

- As soon as I heard "Walk Don't Run" I bought a copy of it.

- I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

The drums were great

but the sound of the guitars, the melody,

everything about it.

- I was hearing a song

that was being played,

being sung on the guitar.

- It sounded innovative.

It sounded modern.

It sounded explorative.

We had never heard anything like that before.

- It has a feeling of adventure

and you want to go on this trip with them.

- I can't imagine what it would have been like

to have heard that music for the first time.

- At that point in time, we were going,

how are they doing that?

- I mean, there was so much going on on that record

that I didn't understand.

Had this incredible, now I know it's called reverb,

but I didn't know what it was then.

It was just guitar music.

- Who found "Walk Don't Run" for them?

How'd they find that tune?

I was growing up playing jazz.

I had a million Johnny Smith records.

I even had that song on one.

- I never got a chance to ask Don and Bob,

how in the heck did you pick a bebop song like that

and turn it into what you made into a classic rock tune?

- Every band in the world had "Walk Don't Run" in their set.

Not the Johnny Smith or the Chet Atkins version.

It was The Ventures version.

- I think The Ventures made music that was,

maybe wasn't accessible to the average person.

They took like a jazz,

a complicated jazz tune like "Walk Don't Run"

and made it into a simpler arrangement for rock,

like a rock and roll arrangement,

which made a lot of kids go, I want to learn that.

- The chord progression to the rhythm guitar part

on "Walk Don't Run"

was the very first thing I ever learned on guitar.

- When we would listen

and we were trying to play note for note.

We'd try to pick it out.

Wait.

Do that again.

And they'd lift up the needle and go .

And you'd do it again.

Lift up that needle one more time.

I think I might have it this time.

Nope, that's not it.

Until you got the little parts.

- I would write all of the chords down

and I would make the sheet music

and I would sell it to the local bands.

- They were probably the first guitar teachers

most of us ever had.

- The great thing about it was everything was hearable

because there were only four people

and there wasn't singing

and a bunch of other stuff in the way.

You could hear everything.

- People were saying, you're going to go in

and record it without a piano or a saxophone?

- A lot of people said it's too empty.

You know, you need an orchestra.

- We didn't know any piano players or saxophone players.

And probably was fortunate that we didn't

because you know, it was just four pieces.

Two guitars a bass and a drum.

- The Pacific northwest, the Seattle, Tacoma area,

in the late '50s,

it was just the beginnings of rock and roll.

- We were at the crossroads from an old era.

The big band era moving into the new era of music.

- This was new, modern, exciting electric guitar rock.

- It's called electricity.

And when you're messing with electricity

weird things happens sometimes.

And if you can catch it, you go, hey, that's cool.

- The Ventures were a rock and roll band

and they had a lot more roll than they had rock.

I mean, The Ventures swing.

They really swing.

- But if you go back and listen that initial album,

it's stands up against anything today.

It's tight.

It's musically correct.

And it's infectious.

- The early days were, to say the least,

tough.

Any rock and roller will tell you the same story,

that their family suffered because of their work.

I was on the road sometimes for six months at a time.

You know, that was just,

took over everything.

You know, trying to make a living,

which I thought, you know, well, I'll support them

and I'll send them money and all that

but it's not enough.

Your presence is worth more than that.

You're dad.

- I remember playing with Little Bill and the Blue Notes,

The Whalers.

All these guys were like 17 and 18 years old.

We were 25.

Our dressing room was right through the dance floor

and I remember when I walked by

some guy said to his girlfriend,

he said, boy, these guys are old.

We were playing not big halls like Elvis

or somebody of his stature would play.

We saw a place with chicken wire on the windows

and I said, wouldn't it be funny if we were playing there?

And it turned out that we were.

If we made $300 or 400,

we each got 100 bucks.

Then we had to pay our own expenses besides that.

When people see you,

they see you get up on stage and play,

oh yeah, boy, they've got it made.

That's an easy thing.

They don't know about getting to and from.

We carried our own amplifiers and guitars

and stuff and drums

and we had to set them up ourselves.

We had this station wagon

and we pulled a Uhaul trailer

with all of our equipment in.

And we had an old friend of mine

that wanted to be the road manager.

And we did have a saxophone player for a while,

on the road.

And so, there's six of us.

Three in front and three in the back.

And you know, you're like this

everytime I hit a little thing.

Because we really couldn't afford it

and we wanted to go home with some money,

we had a motel room.

All five of us stayed in one room.

- They had agents booking them across the country.

And they get there and their next gig would be in Texas.

They're in Chicago.

They have to call ahead to get some money

to pay for the gas to go to do the job.

- Promoters had a system.

If they had,

you were out, let's say for ten shows,

and one was canceled,

they wouldn't call you.

They knew it.

But they wouldn't call you until the day before

that cancellation.

They'd call the day before and say,

tomorrow night has been canceled.

So, you've got 500 miles to drive.

And then we were naive at the time

and we'd take a check and we'd bring it back

and you know, take it to the bank.

They say, well, that's no good.

We learned after awhile that you better get cash

or nothing.

Surf music got very popular.

Of course, with "Wipeout" and "Pipeline"

it was really getting a foothold.

So, we thought "Walk Don't Run" in a surfing style

would be maybe something.

And it was still that wonderful melody of "Walk Don't Run".

To our surprise, it made the top ten.

I was watching Casey Kasem on TV

in the top 40 countdown, you know.

He said, who was the very first artist recording

that had this same song with two different arrangements,

both hit the top ten?

And I'm sitting there saying, I don't know.

I wonder who it was.

And he came back and said, it was The Ventures

with "Walk Don't Run" and "Walk Don't Run '64".

- The Ventures are musicians and scientists

of what it is surf music

before surf music was even predicted.

- We have been labeled as a surf group

but that term wasn't coined yet, you know surf music.

- People that define a genre,

very rarely consider themselves of that genre.

I'm sure Elvis didn't think he was a rock-a-billy singer

or rock and roll singer.

I'm sure he thought he was just like Frank Sinatra.

- Probably the reason that they got

thrown into that surf hopper

is because they played Fender guitars

through Fender reverb units,

through Fender amplifiers,

had a very clean sound.

- This was all new technology in those days.

A Fender Stratocaster was a new thing.

A Jazzmaster Fender basses we exciting times

and they incorporated these sounds

in the records that they made

and they were unique.

- The Ventures, I've heard, love Fender.

And Fender is that mass produced guitar

that everyone uses

and they're great work horses.

But the mystique lies in the Mosrite guitars,

which they had their names on.

And I think a lot of people think,

everything was done with Mosrite guitars.

- Nokie introduced The Ventures to the Mosrite guitar

because he was friends with Gene Moles and Semie Moseley.

- Semie Moseley approached us

and said, I'll make a Ventures model guitar

and we'll pay you a royalty.

We picked up the Mosrite

and played it for about three years, I guess.

- I always wanted a Mosrite

because The Ventures played them, you know.

- Well, it was that unusual guitar.

It was like a Stratocaster upside-down.

- Mosrite guitars are unique

because they're very frail.

They have a very slim neck.

- If you're trying to play blues

or rock and get sustained notes,

you're trying to push a note up and hold it,

on the Mosrite it would hit the next string

and it would cancel each other,

it'll craple out your sustain.

Eh-uh.

And it would suddenly stop

because you're hitting the next string.

- And they have something called a zero fret.

And in fact there's a zero fret guitar behind me here.

Not a Mosrite

but the advantage of a zero fret,

it's usually the trademark of a very cheap guitar

but it's a trick you can use

to get the stings lying flat against the fingerboard,

which means they're easy to play.

And if they're easy to play,

it's easy to play fast and clean.

- Wilson Brothers Guitar Company was set up by Tim Wilson,

Don Wilson's son, to honor his dad.

- They're one of the first bands, if not the first band,

to have their own signature guitar line.

And of course, they started with Mosrite.

When that ended in the '70s

they went with Aria in Japan.

They had some Fender guitars.

And now they have the Wilson Brothers.

And all those guitars,

what's really the most important thing

is that they were accessible to the average fan.

They weren't super pricey.

The average fan was able to buy one

and feel like there were part of The Ventures.

- When you hear the word Ventures,

you hear the word guitar.

And if you say guitar,

you say The Ventures.

- It's like the backbone of guitar music, you know.

- And even if they weren't the first guys

who played electric guitar,

they're the ones that we associate it with.

- There weren't a lot of people playing guitar.

I mean, now a days, there's millions of guitar outs

and millions of people that play guitar.

When I was young,

if you just owned a guitar, that was a big deal.

- The guitar can be played in any style

and it's portable.

- When troubadours who were going with portable instruments,

ancestors of the guitar,

mankind started to be able to play anywhere.

Walk or take a horse or a car,

go anywhere and play.

It's true.

I cannot do that with a piano.

- Beethoven described it as a mini orchestra.

It's one of the few polyphonic instruments

that you can play.

It's relatively easy to learn.

Three chords and you can do a lot of your favorite songs.

- Or you can take it to the Andres Segovia style

and become a concert artist.

- I think it's always been a rebel instrument

because,

just because of the volume you can achieve quite easily.

And there's nothing like plug it in,

turn it up to ten and just,

it makes great things sound amazing.

- The guitars helped.

But it's always the player that makes the sound great.

- Bob Bogle and Don were very, very, very precise players.

That's what impressed me the most.

I wanted to sound like that.

Most guitar players connect the idea

of the use of the vibrato arm on an electric guitar

with The Ventures.

- The whammy bar creates a pitch bend

that gives a sense of like a shimmering wave, if you will.

And it sound something like this.

- Don said, okay, you do the melody with the tremolo arm

and I'm going to do the rhythm.

- Tremolo is similar to vibrato

but it's not the same thing.

And people get this confused all the time.

Instead of frequency,

this is an amplitude or a volume change.

The one that's built into the amp

sounds a lot like something I can do

with just the volume control on the guitar.

- Don and I would have a contest

to see who could put the most reverb on our guitars.

It was just like little kids.

- The sound of The Ventures,

I think it has a lot to do with the reverb.

It sounds like the sea.

If you bang the reverb chamber,

it sounds like crashing waves.

- In the case of The Ventures,

it was mostly spring reverb.

For all you techno geeks out there,

the Hammond reverb pan, long spring.

- So, this is what the reverb sounded like back then.

This is from the reverb tank.

- This is a reverb mechanism pulled out of an amplifier.

The guitar sound is fed in through here.

It goes through a spring.

And it's picked up here and fed back into the amplifier.

And by the waving of this spring, the vibration,

it vibrates,

it modifies the sound in a immediately recognizable way.

- Surf bands claimed that it sounded like

they were in the pipeline of a wave.

- It's a sweet sound

and it takes a lot more skill

to play a guitar cleanly.

- They call it the drip.

I'm a rock-a-billy guitar player

but I incorporate some of that stuff.

But the real purist want to get the drip

and that's achieved by putting the reverb tank

before the amplifier.

- Back in the '60s, effects were generally created

with some pretty big boxes.

So it wasn't such an easy process to incorporate them.

- I can't understate how many hours

I stared at the album cover or the back cover,

looking at their guitars

and wondering how they got certain sounds.

- The engineer was experimenting too

with trying to get different sounds and everything.

They put speakers on the floor

and they cut speakers

and they would turn things around.

- We did "Walk Don't Run '64"

and you know,

it sounds like it's a keyboard playing in there

but actually what it is,

and people are surprised at that,

it's a saxophone played through a Leslie speaker.

- If you look at "Silver Bells" off the Christmas album,

there's a vocoder being used for the first time.

These things were just remarkably innovative

and experimental for their time.

Nobody else was doing that.

- The beginning of the song "Telstar",

in order to recreate what Joe Meek had done

on the original with The Tornadoes,

Don used a fire extinguisher to get that sound

of the satellite taking off.

- The Ventures were one of the first bands

to use the fuzz box,

although other people had used fuzz before.

I think Paul Burlinson

from Johnny Burnette's Rock 'n Roll Trio

punched holes in his,

either punched holes in his speakers

or rattled a tube in the,

he rattled a tube in the back.

But to reproduce that in a controllable environment

is from a fuzz box.

- It was created for them by a guy named Red Rhodes.

He was a electronics wizard,

as he was a steel guitarist.

- If you never heard anything like that before,

like we hadn't,

then you're thinking what does that sound like?

And we thought, hm, sounds like a 2,000 pound bee to me.

And so, we did parts one and two

of "The 2,000 Pound Bee".

- VH1 went on to state

that it was the first song ever recorded

using a fuzz box guitar.

- I mean, that's a really, really early use of a fuzz tone.

I mean, there's one or two right around the same time

but The Ventures were right on that cutting edge

and you're talking about five or six years

before the psychedelic groups started using the fuzz tone.

- Part B of "2,000 Pound Bee" became the first single

to hit the Billboard chart using this fuzz tone.

- The echo is great.

The reverb is great.

They don't really even use a vibratos really, you know.

They were just playing.

- When we first started,

after about three years we had a record producer

that was helping us produce the records.

We told him that we were,

felt like we were running out of ideas

and he said, well, one idea

is to find more sounds in that guitar.

He said, there's sounds in that guitar

you've never found yet.

He was right.

We kept trying and finding more techniques.

- A lot of stuff was just Nokie and his hands.

I mean, Nokie did all kinds of what you would call tricks

but to the people in the audience it was like,

whoa, how are you doing that, you know.

There's a record where he's doing this with his pick

- In "Diamond Head" that little sound you hear,

is Nokie rubbing fingernail on the strings.

- In "Wooly Bully" he would pick behind the bridge

where you're not suppose to play over here

and he would

- Probably one of the reasons

why they influenced surf bands so much

is because they were good at playing

quarter notes and eighth notes

in very, very, very strict time.

You can't drive a song

unless you have a rhythm guitar player like Don Wilson,

who can play very, very, very straight ahead eighth notes.

- And he would do double picking

or really fast picking

but with he reverb sound

he had sort of this percussive thing

that he loved so much.

- So, they actually created the sound,

I believe,

that surf bands then reached out for

and it became their own.

- Growing up in southern California

in my early teens, I had a surf board.

And when you're riding the waves, man,

that was the sound track that's going through your head.

- The Ventures will be remembered forever

for creating a culture in southern California

of surf music

and they started it.

Not consciously.

It was a happy accident.

- You know, I like surf music.

I think it's exciting

and I like to play it.

It's fun to play on stage.

- One of the staples of surf songs

is the so called rundown.

And it sounds something like this.

- Bob on the bass actually came up with that rundown.

You know, that was the .

- I don't think anybody had ever heard

that.

In the solo of "Barracuda" by Heart

I do that.

- We decided that we're going to move

to Los Angeles and Hollywood

because we wanted to be where it was happening.

And we stayed in a motel

right across the street from Liberty Records.

They had a lot of studios there

and we wanted to record.

And Bob Reisdorff said,

you've got such a good sound with Joe Boles,

I want you to go back up to Washington

and record there.

So, we did.

And then he said it again the second time

and we're thinking, oh, I want to record here.

But he said, no, go ahead and go up there

because he's got your sound down.

You don't want to change too much of you sound

from what "Walk Don't Run" sounds like.

So, we did it again.

- Back in the '60s they would do four or more albums a year.

- We put so many albums out

that we had five albums on the top 100 at one time.

- They were the sixth best selling band

behind The Beatles, Elvis, Frank Sinatra,

Johnny Mathis, Herb Alpert.

- Yeah, Bob Reisdorff said, most artists,

you're probably good for, at the most,

maybe three, four albums and that's about it.

He says, I suggest

that you really put your money in the bank

and save whatever you get.

And of course, we didn't.

To prove his thinking,

he sold The Ventures after about maybe six albums

or something like that,

to Liberty Records.

I've never heard anything about his complaining about that

but we kept on selling and selling and selling

and it was a bad move on his part.

We were responsible for 25%

of Liberty's total volume of record sales.

That's when we kind of knew,

hey, maybe we're going somewhere.

They had some pretty good artists, you know.

They had the Chipmunks.

I mean, come on.

- For decades they were just like this machine

that could not be stopped.

- They recorded so many records, it's insane.

I don't even know if anyone's done that before,

have they?

200 records?

- And the thing about The Ventures is,

they'd have a surf album.

They would have a soundtrack album

where they're doing movie soundtracks.

One of my favorites is The Ventures country and western.

- I think one thing that resonates with The Ventures

is they're a versatile band.

They can play anything they want to play.

- Whatever kind of my that I wanted to play,

you could sort of get the origin of that

within a Ventures' instrumental.

You know, if you wanted to play rock-a-billy,

if you wanted to play country,

if you wanted to play blues,

if you wanted to play psychedelic rock,

there was some Ventures' instrumental that you could learn.

- Probably the third or fourth album we did

was "The Colorful Ventures".

And we had songs that had color.

- Well, they'll be remembered in our house

with their Christmas record

because we know it's Christmas

when we put that Ventures' record on for Christmas time.

- We had a classical album.

And we had 35 musicians playing behind us.

One time we thought, you know,

we're going to do a disco album,

which, I mean as far as I'm concerned,

Venture fans really scoffed at.

- Oh yeah, they did disco.

So, we won't talk about the disco era.

- They permeate every aspect of life.

I mean, there's something

for every emotion that they've got.

And I think that their songs will live on for that reason.

- When we just,

like what I said before,

we kind of ran out of ideas.

We thought, let's get a keyboard in there.

And so, we had a girl playing keyboard for us to begin with.

We hired Hal Blaine,

which he was with The Wrecking Crew

and he got triple scale

and we had him play the tambourine.

Can you believe that?

Carol Kaye also played the bass one time.

I had a neighbor in the '60s a couple of houses away from me

and his name was Glen Campbell.

And I got to know him

and I said, would you like to play some music with us.

And he said, oh, I'd love it.

So, we used him three or four times.

Tommy Allsup was the guitar player

for Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

He played a couple songs too.

- I performed "Secret Agent Man" with The Ventures

on the anniversary show.

And it was amazing to be part of that.

I felt like I was in with the guys.

I was part of the gang,

the surf gang.

If there's such a thing.

- Billy Bob Thornton was a big, big fan.

- I was about to make an album.

It was before the Boxmasters.

We were doing a solo record of mine.

I'd had this idea.

I said, why don't I just use The Ventures

to make the record with?

It was such an honor getting to know those guys.

Since then, I've kept up with them a lot.

I still have all of that stuff.

So, one of these days I'm going to put it together

and maybe put it out, you know,

as me with The Ventures.

- Gerry McGee joined the band in the late '60s

when Nokie went on his sabbatical.

- Gerry was a real well-rounded guitar player.

I mean, really good.

- Gerry played with greats like Bobby Darin,

Delaney and Bonnie, Kris Kristofferson, Elvis.

- He did an album with The Monkees.

Before they played instruments themselves,

he did a lot of the guitar work.

- His sound was different.

But it was always within the bounds

of what The Ventures sound was

and it always has worked.

- I'll never forget sitting in the control room

with Gerry McGee.

He was about to play something

and I said, where's your whammy bar?

He said, I never used a whammy bar in my life.

I said, you can make that thing

jiggle that much without one?

He said, oh yeah.

We always did it that way.

So, I learned little things about them,

about their guitar technique and all that kind of thing.

- Somebody came to us with an idea

called Guitar Phonics.

And they said, you know,

there's a lot of people learning off of your music

and I think you guys should put out an instruction album

where you play the song

and you explain what you're doing with it

and the notes that you're playing.

The first one hit the charts, the Top 100s.

We decided we'd do a couple more

and those two hit the charts too.

So, we had three instruction albums

on the Top 100 of Billboards.

We had some kind of magic.

We wanted it.

And you've got to want it.

There's not that many instrumentals

that you can take and put on an album,

so we use to take vocals and Venturize them.

- The Ventures are known for,

not being a cover band,

but for being interpreters of a generation.

Every time a musical genre would change,

they would do their own version of the songs.

- They were imagineering, you might say.

So, let's say they were doing

a song that had been a hit on the radio

that had saxophone.

Rather than imitating the lines that the saxophone played,

they would figure out some other interesting thing

to play there,

like arpeggio with chords

or maybe

doing a rhythm thing with the chords.

- When you're a musician,

to play a cover of someone else's songs,

you better be damn good.

You better be damn good

because you've got to be better then the original.

- All the cover songs that they did,

as well as their own,

really have their own stamp on it

and I think it's such a unique sound.

- If it was "Snoopy and the Red Barron" or a disco track

or a film soundtrack,

anything that was popular,

they'd do their own version.

- So, people kind of thought that songs

like "Pipeline" and "Wipeout" were Ventures' songs,

even though they weren't, originally.

In that regard,

The Ventures kind of road the crest

of this instrumental music wave

as the best known group in America

that did instrumental songs

and became almost like a generic term,

like Kleenex, you know.

- When they covered film soundtrack stuff,

it becomes almost the iconic version.

- I have to congratulate them

because they captured the energy and the vigor of my music.

- We had an engineer

and he came to Mel one time

and he said, I just did some engineering

to do the music for "Hawaii Five-O".

And he said that the writer,

who is Mort Stevens,

only has a 30 second version of it just for the show.

And he does not plan on doing a longer version

or putting it out.

And so, he said, I think you guys should put it out.

We did the "Hawaii Five-O" video

and we did it out in the Mojave Desert

on a dried up lake.

That was kind of our last hurrah, let's say,

in the U.S.

"Hawaii Five-O" was a single hit.

But we continued to sell albums,

especially in Japan.

- America seems to go in and out of trends

and then they come back to them later.

But The Ventures have been popular in Japan

since the beginning.

Still are to this day.

- We started going to Japan in 1962, was the first time.

We were the opening act with Bobby Vee

and a girl named Joanne Campbell.

And they were more listening to their own music,

which was a the time call enka.

- Enka is Japanese Blues.

Something like .

So, it was easy for Japanese people to understand

and easy to feel the melody.

It almost sounds like Japanese people are playing the music.

- And when we came about with guitars and electric guitars

and we started a guitar boom.

- When Don does his rundown,

it's ticky ticky ticky san.

- The second time we came there was in 1964.

We landed in Haneda Airport.

There were people on the roof of the terminal

and all, you know.

I thought for a second,

who is on this airplane for God's sake?

It must be the President or the Emperor or somebody.

We get closer and they had all kinds of signs

that said, welcome The Ventures.

They wanted to pull us into a room

for radio and TV and all that right away first thing.

Then when we left to go out to get in the car,

our fans were out there.

They were ripping at our clothes and everything, you know.

You couldn't leave the hotel room.

Maybe 100 people out there waiting.

- The Japanese were just developing

an interest in American culture

and at that time, English was not as common as it was today.

- The Ventures music had no language barrier.

It was so simple for Japanese people to just listen.

- They were attracted to the feeling.

- "Walk Don't Run" doesn't say walk don't run in the lyrics.

So, you just make up your own interpretation of that.

- Music is a universal language.

- It was Venture mania then.

And a lot of mothers and fathers

tired to keep us out of the country.

All that did was make the kids want to see us more.

We turned out selling about 40 million records

in Japan alone.

Our same record company had The Beatles

when The Beatles came out.

And so, I know this for a fact.

Not only did we outsell The Beatles in Japan,

but we outsold them two to one.

- They went to Japan in 1962 for the first time.

This is before The Beatles.

They went to Japan in 1966.

Then all the bands started going into Japan,

Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and so on.

- The success in Japan was incredible.

- We did 108 shows in 78 days

without a day off.

- It's been 60 years ever since The Ventures came out.

And The Ventures did more than 22,000 shows in Japan.

- We started writing songs strictly for Japan.

Really listening to what they did in buying their records

and listening to them

and seeing what kind of sounds they had

and what appealed to them.

- The Ventures did collaborations with the Japanese singers

and also, they came up with the Japanese titles,

such as "Ginza Lights",

"Hokkaido Skies" and "The Kyoto Dolls".

- You know, they toured Japan

and you see people who were fans of theirs

when they were kids

but you also see people who,

young people there who know the legend of The Ventures.

- They'll never die in Japan.

- Japanese people love The Ventures.

- Playing in front of a Japanese audience

I got to feel what The Ventures felt.

They were super enthusiastic.

- I love The Ventures.

- Teke teke wah.

- I love The Ventures.

- The Ventures performed at Kohaku back in 1991.

Kohaku is a major music event.

It happens in the end of the year.

In order to to perform for Kohaku

you have to have a hit song

or you have to be very popular.

The Ventures were not just popular

but it is part of our Japanese culture now.

- There were no guitar groups in Japan.

And now, when we go over to Japan,

and have been for the last 20 years,

there's The Hiroshima Ventures, The Tokyo Ventures,

The Osaka Ventures, The Sapporo Ventures.

Every city in Japan has a Ventures.

- Not just the big cities like Tokyo or Osaka.

You just go to any cities in Japan

and you're going to always find Ventures tribute bands.

- When I see them I get a kick out of it.

They watch us so closely,

even on stage,

that they're doing whatever we do.

- So, the Japanese took The Ventures into their hearts

and no matter what was going on in the rest of the world,

The Ventures always were welcome in Japan.

Welcome is an understatement.

- When they become your fan,

it's your fan for life.

So, I look at it like,

if they're my,

they're loyal to me.

Now I'm their fan too.

- John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd

created the unforgettable killer bee characters

on Saturday Night Live in the '70s.

The story goes that one day they were walking along a beach

and talking about their debts.

And at the same time they were listening

to a tape by The Ventures,

"The 2,000 Pound Bee".

- So, they made a pact, whoever dies first,

the other one will play

"The 2,000 Pound Bee" at the funeral.

John Belushi passed away.

Dan Aykroyd held up a portable radio

and the sounds of The Ventures filled St. John's The Divine.

We've had a lot of things in movies, our songs,

and on TV, commercials and things.

- Tarantino decided to put a song in "Pulp Fiction".

- And that song was called "Surf Rider".

- It was something that

when he was a kid learning to play guitar,

he learned that song.

Well, it stuck with him all those years.

- There's me as a 20 year old

as a gun toting surfing bad girl.

- Our fans were use to seeing pretty models on our covers.

We had quite a few.

And I like those too.

- The vinyls appealed to me

because they had really groovy looking

hot chicks on the cover,

colorful, happy.

- The females on the album covers for The Ventures

were rad.

They were so sexy and self-contained and confident

and they were absolutely a part of the music.

- Half the time I'd pick out the records by the covers.

And The Ventures had the coolest covers.

Once I started seeing covers like this,

and then when you opened it up like this,

I mean, this was like everything I was aspiring to.

- Back then in the early '60s

there was no social media.

The way that you discovered who they were

and how they created that music

were the album jackets.

- I think it was a really neat and fun way

to market themselves.

And it's super fun to collect all of their albums

because of this.

- Yeah, I think pretty unique for the time too.

- Grab the eye, you know,

and once they played what they played

it grabbed the ear,

so that was good.

- In the 70s, rock n' roll itself

kind of died a little bit.

It had gone from being something really cool and really fun

to these '70s rock stars with their excessive habits.

- In the '80s a lot of people

started to reinvestigate their early tones

because some of those clean guitar tones were,

there's a purity to it, an honesty

that got lost with all the effects and distortion

and some of the over technical playing.

- Rodney Bingenheimer started basically, KROQ,

as Rodney on the ROQ playing new bands in 1976.

The radio station would say,

you can't play music from the '60s anymore.

- The Ventures had never stopped

because of their popularity in Japan,

so they were still around.

- Some kids, like punk rockers,

started calling into the radio station to say,

who's that new wave group called The Ventures?

And these are kids that had never heard of us

or didn't know at all.

But they thought we were something new.

- They would send these letters saying,

we're like The Ventures meets this meets this

but we're also like punk rock.

- Punk rock kind of brought rock and roll back,

the original spirit of rock and roll.

- The punk bands loved The Ventures for the simplicity,

the do it yourself mentality.

- Oh yeah, Ventures signed my guitar.

- I think that's how a lot of people learned to play.

So, that's why they loved them.

And it was very simple to play.

It's very hard to get right

but it's simple to play.

- The rapid fire rhythm of punk

was very reminiscent of Don Wilson's

punk rhythm playing on 1960.

No one was playing bar chord like that.

Other people were jazz guitarists

playing finger-pick style and bar chords and all that.

Don Wilson was doing a punk style rhythm guitar.

- A bar chord, for people that don't play guitar,

as oppose to the cowboy chords,

which are what you learn when you play classical,

it's a chord that can be played

with one finger, two fingers underneath

and it can be moved up and down the neck of the guitar.

So, if you want to play G, A and B,

you don't have to learn all this complicated Segovia stuff.

You play the same thing but you move it.

The Sex Pistols, The Ramones,

all of the kind of iconic 101 punk stuff

is based around bar chords.

Johnny Ramone used a Mosrite guitar

but that that was by design or not,

I have no idea.

I never asked him.

But that's definitely a Ventures' style guitar

and there were Ventures' style guitar chords

all the way through all The Ramones stuff.

- We were big fans of The Ventures.

We loved the instrumentals they did.

They were the best at what they do.

- The Ventures sounded dangerous.

They sounded "hoodlum-y".

Their music just sounded like,

like it would befit the kind of people

that would show up in hotrods to the beach

in leather jackets

and then just hang out there,

not right on the sand

but on the beac. like, "hoodlum-y" smoking a cigarette

and watching the girls in their bikinis go by.

- The Ventures live in Japan,

it has the most aggressive, amazing sound, I think ever.

I mean, I think that the Sex Pistols

were getting a run for their money there.

- I actually got my job

because a guy who had been the road manager

was about six two, six three

and he got his nose broken at Disneyland

at a gig at Disneyland.

I asked him,

I said, how come you're willing to give this gig up?

He said, too crazy for me.

And at that time The Ventures were all in their mid 40s

and this was too crazy.

The mods and rockers were showing up

having a war with each other.

- Oh yeah, because we had slam dancers,

if you ever remember that.

I mean, they were just rough on each other.

Do we appeal to them?

Wow.

- We played CBGBs in New York.

We played The Mudd Room in New York.

The 9:30 Club in Washington, DC,

Peppermint Lounge in New York City.

I had kids doing swan dives off the stage.

They'd get past me and run out

and just to a swan dive into the audience.

I mean, there was some,

they were seriously crazy times.

- Even though we all had our roots in punk rock,

we were really, really super informed

by that whole early '60s mod beach party aesthetic.

That led to Go-Go's to write "Surfin' & Spyin'",

which was actually influenced by The Ventures.

She wrote this next song.

The Ventures recorded it,

so you'll be hearing it soon.

It's an instrumental.

It's called "Surfin' & Spyin'"

and it's also a dance song.

- And they came down to our studio

where we were recording and they recorded with us.

We recorded their song

and they played along.

- There's a pretty straight line that you can draw

between The Ventures and all this guitar music

that came later on.

Whether you're talking about punk rock with The Ramones

or new wave with the B-52's

or you know, even heavy metal

was some of the crazy sort of violent leads

that Nokie would play.

- Somebody sent me a CD of Anthrax

and they said, so many people just don't know

what a contribution Don Wilson and Nokie Edwards

did for thrash metal.

- Both surf music and heavy metal

are the province of the electric guitar.

To hard rock of the 1970s, classic metal of the '80s

and into today's massive guitar tones

that form the backbone of modern extreme metal,

on behalf of all of us metal guitar players,

thank you Ventures.

Horns up.

- The Ventures have always been known

as the band that launched 10,000 bands.

- Rodney Bingenheimer, he believes that pretty much

almost every band was inspired by The Ventures.

Whether they know it or not.

- In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I was backstage and Billy Joel was back there

and he came to me and he said, you know,

one of the very first songs that I ever learned on the piano

was "Walk Don't Run".

There's a lot of people that give us credit

for a lot of things that they play,

which would not be our style.

A disc jockey we're very good friends with,

his name is Mark Christopher,

and he does a lot of work in the Seattle area

with KBSG Radio.

- Do you think they've earned a nomination yet

for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

- We got a petition together

and had people sign it

that wanted us to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

- It was an incredible moment this morning

in the state capital.

First time I know of, ever

when a rock and roll band was invited

to appear before the state legislature

to receive what was called

the proclamation of a resolution of support

for something that all the Senators

voted unanimous and believing in

and that the The Ventures

to somehow get a nomination

to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

- We got the legislature, the Senate and the House

and everybody together in Washington state.

- Great job.

We were rocking in Olympia today.

You know, I kind of set down a little protocol that I have

that requires that everything be handled

with dignity and decorum.

And we put on The Ventures

and we rocked on the floor of the Senate.

They recorded over 3,000 songs,

released over 250 albums.

They are ambassadors to the world.

- The Rock Hall has very strict criteria on who they accept.

First of all, you have to have 25 years of playing time,

you need a body of work

and your significance in the contribution

and perpetuation of rock and roll

is also a key criteria point.

- We were eligible for 22 years.

- They were preeminently qualified

but they needed a push to get them in.

- There are many artists

that are nominated for the Hall of Fame

but they don't get in.

And I think there are some

that have been nominated three times

and they still didn't get in.

So, when we were nominated,

we got in the very first time.

- It all started about 50 years ago

when Don Wilson and Bob Bogle got together

and talked about maybe getting some guitars

and starting a band.

With the help of Don's mom,

they formed their own record company

and they cut an instrumental

that they'd heard on a Chet Atkins record.

It gets picked up nationally

and makes it all the way to number two.

That record kicked open a whole movement in rock and roll

and empowered guitar players everywhere.

The Ventures have gone on to record over 250 albums.

Now days, some of us would be happy to sell 250 albums.

The Ventures are the most popular

instrumental rock and roll band of all time.

It is my honor to induct The Ventures

into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

- I've had the opportunity to work with this great band

and I got the honor tonight to play "Walk Don't Run"

for a friend and a mentor, Mr. Bob Bogle,

the co-founder of The Ventures

and a truly innovator of guitar and bass guitar.

Bob wanted to express his profound thanks

for his induction and The Ventures induction

into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

- I want to thank our fans all over the world.

May God bless you and keep you safe and healthy.

- It was a whirlwind five day period in New York City

surrounding the event.

- This is our display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

It happens to be right next to Madonna.

- It's really great

that they're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

They absolutely are so worthy of that honor.

- To see The Ventures honored in a forum

that's very eclectic,

did my heart really good.

- I want to compliment The Ventures

on their 50th anniversary.

They certainly,

they're certainly in the blueprint of rock.

- The induction ceremony, the after glow party

and all the events the day of

were pretty special, obviously.

But there was a surprising thing that we did the day after

and that was the ringing of the bell

at the New York Stock Exchange.

- So, The Ventures in April of 1996

were honored with putting their hand prints

at the Rock Walk Hall of Fame,

which is in Hollywood at the Guitar Center.

And it's since kind of become a must see stop

for music tourists.

We knew the manager of the House of Blues

and he got us on the bill.

They played that night.

When we got to the House of Blues

they were very generous.

Their back stage door was open

and they answered my dopey questions.

And you could tell they really enjoyed what they were doing.

- I've had just amazing experiences and memories

with all these guys.

- You know, they were rock stars

without being rock stars.

You could just walk right up to Nokie or Don or Bob or Mel

and they would talk to you.

- They were just good people, you know.

You could,

you felt good knowing them.

They weren't out doing crazy things or anything.

- They're all such regular guys

that they put you at ease right away.

- What was interesting about that

is later on when you'd get attitude from rock stars,

I always remember how accessible these guys were

and how nice they were to their fans.

And I think that's been a big part of their success.

- I have some letters here from Japan.

Our Japanese fans are really true.

I mean, they start with you, they end with you.

Anyway, this one says,

thanks a lot for your nice band all the time.

I'm so happy to listening your music.

Hello, my name is Susumu.

I ride in a wheelchair.

I have a lot from different countries.

Some from England, Germany, you name it.

There was somebody that sent me a letter

that was totally deaf.

And what he use to do is play the

our record and put his hand on the speaker

and the vibration,

he could understand that.

Yeah, that's really amazing.

- I was a kid.

I was 11 years old.

I wrote a letter to The Ventures' fan club.

I wrote a letter to Bob Bogle

and he sent me back a letter.

I said, what kind of guitar should I buy?

And he said, thank you for your letter

and you should go buy a Fender Jazzmaster.

So, I went and bought a Fender Jazzmaster.

- In Seattle one time, it was just after a show

and a young man came up in a wheelchair.

He was pushed up by his brother.

And he wanted an autograph or something signed by the guys.

So, I went down and I told Bob what was up

and he says, well,

why don't I just come out there and meet him?

So, he did.

And the look on this guys face was just,

it was priceless.

And Bob was so gracious,

signed some things,

gave him some picks

and spent time with him.

And I just thought that this was a truly great man here.

- He was a very pensive man,

very introspective.

Before he would answer a question,

he would stop for a minute and think about it

and really give it some thought

before he gave you an answer,

which means number one, he cared about what he said

and he cared about what he was saying to you

because it was important to him.

- Nokie would talk, talk and talk and talk

until you put a microphone in front of him.

Then he couldn't say anything.

- I liked to call him the Nokester

because he's such a funny guy.

He's always telling jokes.

He taps me on the back, I turn around

and he's got two symbol felts in his eyes

and they're kind of like raccoon eyes.

And he's just got this look on his face.

It was priceless.

Don was always fun to be with.

He just was always joking about things

and always good spirited.

- Don's a lot of fun.

He's always got great stories.

- Fans come up and talk about the same thing.

He's probably heard it so many times

but he is genuinely thankful and gracious.

And that says a lot.

- Don and I became really good friends

just because we're both a little nuts

and when we were on stage,

it was just like a couple of kids.

- Don, in addition to his set list,

had this thing called his pattern.

And his pattern were really bullet points

for all the jokes he wanted to tell.

- A good looking girl sit next to me, of course,

and I says to her, do you think you could get interested

in an older man?

She looks at me and says,

why, you got a son?

I learned some impressions,

impersonations of different actors.

I had a hat rack

and I put on a different hat for different impersonations.

I did James Cagney and Ed Sullivan.

Use to be rock and roll to me then.

But at my age now, it's rock and Rolaids.

- Thank you very much.

We're going to feature our singer

- What?

- at this point.

- Wait a minute.

What'd you say?

- We're going to feature our vocalist over here.

- I thought we were an instrumental group.

- Yeah, we're basically an instrumental group.

We don't often sing

and you're going to find out why.

- I went down to a University of Washington seminar

where Don spoke

and it was so interesting

hearing him talk about some of the stories from the road

and he kind of demonstrated how a group could be successful

and have incredible longevity

while maintaining integrity.

They maintained a touring schedule over all these years.

It's just a very inspiring thing.

- I had worked now for 56 years in a row.

That's a lot.

I mean, most people do 20, 25 years, they retire.

I didn't want to.

My last show was in Japan in 2015, believe it or not.

Now, with me retiring,

the group still goes on.

When Mel passed away his son took over, Leon Taylor.

And he had learned the drums

when he was a little kid, from his dad.

- Bob Spalding and Lucas Griffin

head up the new version of the group.

Bob's been there 30 years or more.

And Lucas is the new bass player.

And I got to jam with them at Venturefest,

which occurs every year in October in Pennsylvania.

- They, like I said, go to Japan.

They play locally.

They've had offers to go to Europe.

I'm very happy about that.

I would hate to see The Ventures die on the line.

So, they will keep The Ventures name alive and going.

- Here they are still playing

all these years later.

I mean, they just keep on going

and keep their fans happy.

- They were the ones.

They put out so many great albums.

- It speaks for the integrity of music in general too

that you can tour the world

and speak to all these different languages

in the single language of music.

- There's never been an instrumental band

that's been as popular.

- The Ventures will always be known as, I don't know,

the Godfathers of guitar instrumentals.

- They're like the Cadillac of instrumental bands.

- I think The Ventures ability

to make melodies stick in your head

and keep those songs going for as long as possible

is what every songwriter's goal and aim is.

- There were a lot of instrumental records out in those days

but they all kind of bordered on novelty records.

The Ventures had a degree of sophistication.

They were playing more advanced chord forms,

advanced melodies.

This was well considered, well thought out music

that didn't insult your intelligence.

And it wasn't like the were playing down to kids.

- They made the idea of playing a melody

a really cool thing.

- It wasn't just licks.

It was something that was totally accessible

to my ear and to my spirit.

- The sound just didn't effect one

in a sense of just a note on a guitar.

It literally effected you,

and effected me in my heart

and in my inner being.

- I would be inspired by the feelings I would get

and that inspired me as a songwriter.

- It changed people's lives, you know.

It's music that has totally inspired us

and we're not the only ones.

There's millions of people.

- We're always just consciously,

pretty much asking ourselves, what would The Ventures do?

And then that's what we do.

- There's going to be bands copying them for ever more.

There's going to be tribute bands

when we're all dead in the ground.

Even if it's only Guitar Hero type thing

on a video game,

everyone wants to get that sound.

- They changed the sound of psychedelic.

They changed the sound of mod, punk,

new wave, even heavy metal.

- It all started with The Ventures.

- There's no tellin how many people The Ventures influenced

to go out and get a guitar

or bug the hell out of your parents til they got you one.

- To become a better player,

you don't just listen to your influences,

you listen influences influences

and you just dig as deep as you can.

- In my travels for Fender musical instruments,

I go many corners of the Earth.

When you're talking guitars with other musicians,

undoubtedly everyone points to The Ventures

as far as their stepping stone.

- You will hear musicians say, give me a Ventures lick.

Right in the middle of a session the producer might say,

can you give me a little of that "Walk Don't Run" fill

or something of that nature

and they know immediately what they're talking about.

- A lot of music becomes very dated

and as the decades go along,

it doesn't age well, you know.

To me, if I put on a Ventures record from 1965,

to me it just sounds like something

that could have been cut yesterday.

- They still sound fresh.

They still sound great.

- It doesn't really sound like it's trapped in time.

It sounds like something that is timeless.

- Timeless.

- Timeless.

- Timeless.

- Timeless.

- Timeless, completely timeless.

- It's not something where I remember when

but it's not popular now.

It's forever popular.

- It's like meatballs and spaghetti.

You know, it's just there,

always going to be there.

- Maybe when we're on Mars

people are going to be listening to The Ventures

and twisting in antigravity.

The Ventures in space takes on a new meaning.

- There's a new generation of kids

that are discovering them as well.

And there probably will be until the end of time.

- I ask young kids do they know about The Ventures.

And a lot of them go, yeah, yeah, Ventures "Walk Don't Run".

- In fact, I just met a young girl today,

18 years old who's into surfing.

She knows all about The Ventures and she's 18.

- All the kids would be learning Ventures songs

right now in Japan.

It carries on throughout the generations.

- So, the good news is

they're immortal.

- If younger generations

get to know the music of The Ventures,

then in the future we'll have bolder and better music.

- I think it's all fate.

Whatever happens is going to happen and that's it.

And timing and whatever just has to all come together.

- Well, you know, in 1960

when we first recorded our first hit "Walk Don't Run",

we were hoping that it would come to this.

Thank God we made it.

- Many thank yous to you people.

You people have kept us going

and what a reward that is for us.