I live like in the days of Daniel Boone, hauling water by hand. I used to have two Rolls-Royces. Now I got one. It's got four flat tires; the trunk is open, and a rat lives inside it.
— Dick Dale
You know what the doctors call me? 'The Cancer Warrior.'
I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.
I know what it's like to wash my clothes in a Chevron station.
I make my guitar scream with pain or pleasure or sensuality. It makes people move their feet and shake their bodies. That's what music does.
I have all the rhythm in my left hand, and I use the rhythms that Gene Krupa did on his drums.
Surfers were the ones who named all my songs. They'd yell out the names, and we just kept 'em.
My music is more native than intricate or technical.
Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.
Every song is like a painting.
I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it.
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 grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Earthlings are confused, insecure. And some Earthlings have no heritage: that's what leads them to kill each other and rob 7-11 stores.
I blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.
I've never followed a list in my life, and that's probably what has created so much nervous energy in my body.
My mind never left 20, because once it does, that's when you start to die.
I thought of Gene Krupa's drumming, his staccato drumming. I went and put 'Misirlou' to that rhythm.
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 actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.
You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.
I've got holes in my guitar.
Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.
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.
There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.
I don't claim to be a musician, I didn't go to Julliard.
I called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.
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 aunt played the piano and I used to sit and listen to it.
Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
Dick Dale don't surf no more.
Drums were my first instrument.
When I played with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in Vegas, the guys used to go, 'Dick, cut it out, man! You're moving around too much on this stage. You're making us look bad!'
The Stratocaster is like the Rolls-Royce. It can never be surpassed.
I learned everything by ear and played all the different instruments. So then I was able to find a guitar. That was, like, in the seventh grade. And then I didn't know how to put my fingers on all the different strings, so I had to figure out how to do it upside down and backwards, and I still play that way today.
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.
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 almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.
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'm a perfectionist. I'm not going to cheat the people.
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.
I always felt people should live with animals.
The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.
People just loved the sound because I kept it simple.
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.
I can play every instrument there is, every horn, I've played all the saxes and trumpets and everything and keyboards.
