Dick Dale
I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.Collection: Morning
There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.Collection: Pet
I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.Collection: Romantic
You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.Collection: Music
Every song is like a painting.Collection: Music
I don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.Collection: Anger
They're putting cement dust into cattle feed to make the cows heavier; the FDA knows all about it.
Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound.
Whatever you do, don't take shortcuts. It's great advice to take and live by.
I became stereotyped.
The Stratocaster is like the Rolls-Royce. It can never be surpassed.
Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
I don't live with the 'right' people. I don't want to. I don't want to live with the rich in Beverly Hills or walk the streets of Hollywood. I want to go to K-mart and get good deals.
I called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.
When I start playing I'm just a rollercoaster of sound. I don't know what's coming next, I never do, and I sit and sign and talk to the people afterwards.
Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'
I'd rather be a Jack-of-all-trades than master of one. If I became an icon, where my whole life was music, I would probably have become a vegetable. I wouldn't be able to have all these talents I have today and be an interesting 'character.'
I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.
My philosophy is the thicker the wood the thicker the sound, the bigger the string the bigger the sound. My smallest string is a 14 gauge.
I can play every instrument there is, every horn, I've played all the saxes and trumpets and everything and keyboards.
You shouldn't even be writing this story if you haven't heard me play live. You can't write with the passion you receive until you see a Dick Dale concert.
I'm constantly being influenced by the soul that's directly in front of me.
I'll just tell you the way it is. You ask me what time it is and I'm gonna tell you how to build a clock.
Buddy Rich was one of the most incredible technicians in the world, on this planet, but the only people he could really impress, who knew what he was doing was another musician or another drummer.
My aunt played the piano and I used to sit and listen to it.
My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.
As a little kid I had a girlfriend, and her boyfriend used to beat me up, so then I used to sing these songs, and that's what it's all about. Country music is all about your heart and your people and things like that.
My son now is 22 months old, he's been playing since he was 12 months old and he gets standing ovations on the drums. He's been with us since he was 10 weeks old, he's been on the drums. He's got blisters on his fingers before he can even talk.
People just loved the sound because I kept it simple.
The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.
I don't claim to be a musician, I didn't go to Julliard.
I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.
I always felt people should live with animals.
Every time I went into the studio some engineer tried to impress me with how they're going to capture my sound with all kinds of tricks. But they limited the sound and never allowed me to play how I felt.
I told them if were going to do it were going to do it right, I'm not leaving 'til it's done. My wife, child and I slept in the studio. We cut these raw.
I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it.
I'm a perfectionist. I'm not going to cheat the people.
Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.
I used to be a mean maniac. Someone once threw a firecracker at a show and I jumped off the side of the stage and whacked 'em on the side of the head.
I've got holes in my guitar.
Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.
I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.
You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.
My music is more native than intricate or technical.
When I started surfing, you'd hear this neat rumbling sound when you took off and go for the drop, and when the wave is lipping up over the top of you, it makes this hissing sound.
I actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.
Surfers were the ones who named all my songs. They'd yell out the names, and we just kept 'em.
When I was 18 at the Santa Ana River Jetty is where I put my first board in the water that I ever got from Joe Quigg. I was just riding the whitewater in, and I was just in heaven.
That's what my music does for me. It makes people happy. When I play, I thank the Lord I've never seen someone walk away from a Dick Dale dance not having a good time. That's what it's all about.
I have all the rhythm in my left hand, and I use the rhythms that Gene Krupa did on his drums.