It was summer 1969, I would be going into 7th grade. I started hanging around wih a neighborhhood kid named Matt Lynn. Matt played guitar and that is what we had in common. But he had a propensity for living on the edge. Knives, switchblades, fighting, smoking, were all on the table. Matt was kind of a big kid, I was always a little guy. We soon became best friends.
The biggest challenge was to find the right model - a “California Blonde.” Her look would be everything to pulling this ad off! RK had access to all the girls that went in and out of Playboy Studios but believe it or not, finding a hot blonde in Chicago was still a tall order. We exhausted every girl in the Playboy Modeling agency located in the Playboy building...
Well there we were. My good friend Keith and I at my aunt's house…the van loaded with everything we needed to pull off my first NAMM Show. The entire booth made of cloth covered pegboard panels, the Styrofoam Dean Winged logo sign, tools, our luggage, and now a bunch of Finish Cracked Dean Guitars.
Dean Zelinsky Written Up As Youngest Guitar Manufacturer
NAMM-Crisis Mode
FROM REPAIRMAN TO FACTORY OWNER
A TRIP TO THE GIBSON FACTORY
As long as I can remember, I couldn’t deal with school. I really started going off the rails in 5th grade. I spent most of that school year in the coat closet because I was so disruptive to the class... While middle school was no party, in high school I could somewhat create my own schedule which helped to mitigate the pain. However, I still look back at that period as the worst 4 years of my life.
Around the age of fourteen or fifteen I was playing a lot of guitar, however, tinkering on guitars quickly became a new fascination. Buying and working on guitars was going to become my new playground...
There was a local music store, called The Village School of Folk Music, and my mother signed me up for lessons. The more advanced students went to a guy named Gary Gand, a 16-year-old local, hotshot guitar player who just happened to be the storeowner’s son. The less advanced students got signed up with Gary’s band mate…are you sitting down…a guy named Paul Hamer. Yes, little known fact but Paul Hamer of Hamer Guitar fame was my first guitar teacher.
I was flying out to California to meet with Zakk, it was August 2008. It was about our third meeting…attempting to get him to leave Gibson and come over to my camp. I had made a few guitars for Zakk over the years, including a custom Dimebag Razorback which he played often, especially during his Tribute to Dime in his live shows. Darrell had asked me to make a Razorback for Zakk, which I honored after his death.
Dean Zelinsky Built the ZZ Top Spinning Fur Guitars