As part one of our 25 year anniversary salute to Dean Guitars. Musicians Hotline was fortunate to spend time talking shop with Dean Zelinsky. Here's the first part of a two part interview with the founder of Dean Guitars.

MH: Tell us how you first got your start in the business.
DZ: I had been playing guitar since I was ten years old and always building things with wood working machinery my father had in the basement. The first guitar I attempted to make was at the age of 12. I made it with masonite paneling left over from paneling the basement. I took apart the brass rails from my brothers HO gauge train track and used it for frets. If you look at HO train rails, it looks a lot like fret wire. I got my official start into the business when I was in high school. I used to buy guitars with broken necks (mostly Gibson SG's), put the necks back on, refinish and sell them. Then at the age of 16, I began doing repair work for a local music store. I asked the owner if I could do repair work for him. He handed me an SG that someone had swung into a concrete basement wall. The whole control cavity was gone. The neck was broken off and the head was in 3 pieces. I put it back together and brought it back to the store. The owner was amazed and that was the beginning of my professional career. Then my senior year in High School, I wanted out! I had done everything to make my life in high school easier including loading up on shop classes and bribing teachers to pass me even though I had missed half the year but I wanted out. The school had a program where you could go to classes until noon, get a job, work the rest of the day and get credit for school. I wanted to be in that program but I asked to be self-employed. When they told me no, I threatened to drop out. They decided to make an exception for me. I then rented a place and started my own guitar repair shop. I had to bring my checking statements to my school counselor as proof I was working. I graduated high school on time.

As soon as I graduated, I took a hard look at myself, considered my future and decided I didn't want to be a guitar repairman the rest of my life. Manufacturing guitars was the natural progression. I then rented a bigger facility, purchased machinery and started tooling for Dean Guitars. You see my father was in manufacturing. He had manufactured metal parts. He died when I was 12 and I always wanted to be like my father. But my thing was guitars. When I was in high school, I was the kind of kid that sat up all night designing tooling and machinery (in my head) to manufacture guitars. By the time I was ready to go into production, I had it all thought out.

MH: Can you recall the first guitar that you modified or built?
DZ: In my repair business, I did a lot of custom work on guitars. Even made a couple of double necks by sawing two guitars in half and putting them together. I never really made guitars one at a time by hand. Most people in my position start out as hand crafters. Build a guitar, then two, then three. After a while they start adding machinery to make things go easier. I was always a little more aggressive. For me it was straight into manufacturing.

MH: Who were your early influences, and were they instrumental in getting you started in this business?
DZ: My early influence in guitar playing was Johnny Winter. He was the best I had ever heard. Never made the greatest records but as soon as I was 16 and my friend Matt Lynn (ML) got his drivers license, we went to the Chicago Amphitheater, in the heart of Chicago's worst neighborhood and saw a Johnny Winter concert. The Amphitheater held about 20,000 people and housed indoor rodeos. Some of you older guys may remember the early days of wrestling, the days of Dr. X and Verne Gonya. It was televised all over the country coming from the Chicago Amphitheater. Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer sold the place out 2 nights in a row. They rocked like nobody rocked and I knew then that my life was in the music biz.

MH: When was the first instrument built that officially branded Dean on the headstock?
DZ: It was built in 1976. The first guitar was a V cherry burst. We never actually finished it. But Deans officially hit the market in 1977.

MH: Tell us about the early days. Where, When, Why & How?
DZ: Dean Guitars all started in a factory space in Evanston Illinois in 1976. About 3200 square feet on the second floor. We had to haul machinery up with a winch thru a hatch in the floor. I was 19 years old. My only "formal" education in guitar manufacturing was two tours thru the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo Michigan. They had regular tours every Wednesday. My friend and I ditched school our senior year and drove to Kalamazoo. The first time was just looking around but the second time, we were taking notes. My friend Keith was crawling under machinery when the tour guide wasn't looking and getting names and model numbers. I remember the second trip to the Gibson factory; I had a Cadillac Limousine at the time. I bought it at an auction and I used to have my friends drive me around in it. When we pulled up in front of the place there were two other limos parked in front. Turns out KISS was touring the plant the same time. They were on a private tour and I was on the public tour. Only caught a glimpse of them. Anyway, came back to Chicago and started buying the machinery I needed to manufacture guitars. Hired an experienced woodworker and the two of us started tooling for a V, Z and ML. Took the better part of a year before we were ready to manufacture guitars. I named the ML in memory of my best friend Matt Lynn. He died of cancer not long after that Johnny Winter concert.

I had a burning desire to succeed. Though I had no experience in business, no experience in manufacturing let alone manufacturing something as difficult as a guitar, failure was not an option. I thought I had a pretty good plan. Everyone wanted vintage Les Paul's at the time because they were made better, had flame maple and better sounding pickups. People were just discovering flashy stage guitars like Vs and Explorers but when Gibson reissued them, they made them cheap with all the parts installed onto a pickguard, slapped them onto a cheap thin mahogany body and hoped the body style would sell the instrument.

My concept was a hybrid. A cool body style with all the sought after components like ebony fingerboards, flame maple tops, binding, strings thru the body, abalone inlay... I had discovered DiMarzio pickups and was actually the first guitar manufacturer to put DiMarzio' s in a production guitar. We had the killer sound right off the shelf. I also created a neck designed for playing, not ease of manufacture. Gibson was owned by a conglomerate that was into aerospace and growing nuts in South America. They were busy redesigning their necks so they wouldn't break. I was busy designing a neck to play. We took the meat out of the neck where the meat was in your hand. Thus, the slightly V'd neck. We rounded over the binding for an even more custom feel. No one had experienced necks like this and everyone immediately thought Deans felt better. We are still doing this on our USA guitars. Dean players will tell you that to this day no other guitar company has been able to duplicate the feel of a Dean guitar. I came up with this idea while in the repair business. I started shaving necks on Gibson guitars for customers. Players loved it. Then their friends would feel the necks and bring in their guitars.

MH: Can you recall a turning point in the early days such as an endorser or special model that was instrumental in propelling Deans branding?
DZ: There were a few pivotal times I can recall. When I was first ready to bring the guitars to market, I went to a NAMM show at the Disneyland hotel. Took an order for the first 3 Deans ever from a guy named Jerry Ash who happened to own Sam Ash Music, the largest music store in the world at the time. Also sold another $40,000 worth of Dean's at the 3-day event. However, due to early manufacturing problems, we were not able to deliver any guitars for about 6 months. This took us to the next NAMM show in Atlanta, GA. We still had not shipped 1 of those 40k worth of guitars. But the 13 guitars at the show were production guitars and we told all the dealers that and we would be shipping shortly. They all stuck with us. There was one guy who came by at this show named Kerry Livgren. He was the guitar player in Kansas. There was hardly a radio station in the country that wasn't playing "Wayward Son" about every 3 minutes. Now Livgren was looking at the first production run of Dean Guitars. He left my booth; I went back to Chicago and received a call from Kerry the very next day. He stated, "Of all the guitars I played at the NAMM show, I like yours the best." He said he was leaving for a tour and needed it right away. I shipped the guitar he chose at the show and the 12th or 13th Dean ever made was on tour with the #1 selling band in America. This instantly put us on the map. It was also a pivotal time for me when I went to a KANSAS concert and saw my creation onstage for the first time. That is what it is all about.

There were additional pivotal moments for me. When the Doobie Brothers won 5 Grammy's and they were playing Deans live on the Grammy Awards show. Watching the first ever MTV Video Award show and seeing ZZ Top playing live Dean custom rhinestone guitars as they received the "MTV Video Of The Year" award for the Leggs Video with the unforgettable Spinning Fur Guitars we made for them.

But probably the turning point that had the most impact was a marketing idea. See we had a problem. People would go into stores, play a Dean Guitar, tell the salesman they like it better than a Les Paul and still purchase the Les Paul. This went against what I heard all my life as marketing 101. If you build a better mousetrap, people will create a path to your door. We had a better mousetrap! I realized the problem was Dean was not a household name. I had to change my marketing focus to making Dean a household name. The endorsements I was picking up along the way were helping but it just wasn't enough. I wanted to convey to guitar players we are not like the other guys. We are cool like you. These were not guitars built by a corporation but a guy in his young 20's just like you. A guy who lives it just like you. I knew the reason a guy wanted to be a rock star was because rock stars were cool and the cool guys got the chicks. I had to convey this in my advertising. Gibson's aerospace nut growers would never do this. I was flying back from the west coast reading an airline magazine. We didn't have laptops with DVD players in those days. I saw an ad for a liquor company with a girl standing in the water holding a drink. I said to myself... she should be holding a Dean Guitar! I came back to Chicago, called RK. RK was a Playboy photographer I knew. For you older guys, RK was Barbi Benton's brother. I explained to him the concept and we went right to it. First was to find a girl. RK had a big bucket of water at Playboy studios. I mean a BIG bucket. He did test shots with different girls in bikinis holding a guitar in that big bucket of water. Playboy photographers were always big on test shots. See it was the middle of winter in Chicago. The concept was to shoot the girl in the bucket and then superimpose it into a shot of the ocean. It didn't work and we ended up shooting the ad in an indoor pool and combining it with a shot of the sun rising over Lake Michigan. It ended up looking like a sun setting over the ocean. It took about 3 months to find a girl with the right look. RK called and said the girl we've been looking for is here. Her name was Sherri Shattuck, an Atlanta native who was in Chicago shooting a cover for Playboy magazine.

The ad hit and the play was unbelievable. We received letters by the thousands. In those days people used to have to write letters and put them in the mail. Guitar Player magazine went over the top with about 10 months of letters to the editor about using girls as sex objects. We followed up with more ads including the "Rock Your Baby" ad with a girl on a bed with the new Dean Babys. Sales people in music stores all over the country were busy showing their regular customers the latest Dean ads and overnight, Dean became a household name. Soon Dean's were even outselling "high end" Gibson at some of their largest dealers. This was all topped off by the Dean fashion shows held at the Dean booth at NAMM in 1984. Featured were Dean Girls walking down a runway wearing not much more than a Dean Guitar. It was such a success that NAMM executives actually took me into their office in the middle of the show and threatened to shut me down for blocking the aisles and causing such a disturbance.

MH: Can you recall your first major endorser and who was it?
DZ: As stated earlier, it was Kerry Livgren of Kansas. Shortly after that there was a rapidly growing list that included; The Cars, Heart, Doobie Brothers, Jefferson Starship, Dave Mason, Triumph, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Sammy Hagar, Nils Lofgren, John Mellancamp's Band, The Jackson Victory Tour, ZZ Top, Dimebag Darryl of Pantera and many more... Over the years we have seen several pictures of people like Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes and Motley Crue playing Deans early in their careers.

MH: Dean Guitars swept the imagination of guitar players in the early days with the patented "pitch fork" headstock. How did this design originate?
DZ: I had seen a guitar with an asymmetrical V head and thought it was kinda cool but weird. I played around with different headstock designs including one that was an arrowhead design with the wings of the V coming down past the nut into the playing area. When I put on the symmetrical V, I thought it looked killer and knew everyone would know from the back row in the biggest auditorium... the guy was playing a Dean!

MH: In my mind, the marketing of Dean Guitars in the 80's was the sexy "Dean Girls" and is still a concept today. Tell us how the Dean girls first originated.
DZ: I guess I already explained how it came about... although I never saw my ads as cheesecake, today we are a little more careful not to be construed as sexist. The newer Dean ads show more lifestyle and are likely to have a guy and a girl. The current ad we are running is with Hugo Ferreira, the voice of Tantric holding a Dean Exotica acoustic with a Dean Girl in the
background. While we have received some criticism in the past, sex has always been used to sell sexy products. Guitars are sexy products just like cars and fashion. Every kid at 13 picks up a guitar for at least a few months. It is not because at 13 guys are becoming aware of music. It is because they are becoming aware of girls. As I stated earlier, playing a guitar makes you cool, the cool guy gets the girl! The cigarette and liquor companies do this. Budweiser always has gorgeous women in their ads. They were clever at throwing a guy or two or even a Dog (Spuds McKenzie always had hot chicks around him) in the ad to disguise the fact that they were using women to sell product. The implication, hot chicks came with Budweiser Beer.

MH: The early Dean models are a hot topic for vintage collectors these days. Do you still have many of the early models in your possession, if so which ones?
DZ: I was never a collector of anything including my own product. My line has always been... "The World Is My Warehouse." I was always happy with a hot chick, and a fast car. Now a days, I don't even need the fast car. However, I do have a small collection of Deans including an early Cadillac that Peter Frampton had for a while. I have some old ML's. All the recent Time Capsule models (USA reissues) were modeled off of guitars from my collection. I also have two of the most rare Deans ever. The last guitar I designed before we closed the Chicago plant was called a Mach VII. We built 5 in the USA. I kept one in a tiger stripe finish. I just recently bought back one of the others in pearlescent white. This is the only Vintage Dean guitar I ever purchased.

Part II is coming in the December issue.

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