Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.
They're putting cement dust into cattle feed to make the cows heavier; the FDA knows all about it.
I thought of Gene Krupa's drumming, his staccato drumming. I went and put 'Misirlou' to that rhythm.
You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.
I'm not one of these guys who is dedicated to playing or performing - that's just one facet of my life.
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.
As I'd go out learning to surf, I'd feel the power of waves coming over my body. It's like you're with God.
I don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.
I've never followed a list in my life, and that's probably what has created so much nervous energy in my body.
I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.
I blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.
I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.
I can play every instrument there is, every horn, I've played all the saxes and trumpets and everything and keyboards.
In the Shao Lin temple, they never allow you to touch the skin of a drum until you can tongue what you're going to play.
I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.
People ask about love. Real love. I was never in love; the people around me didn't love me. They were just along for the ride.
What I play now isn't surf music. It's too powerful. I used to go through paper bags; now I go through brick walls. I play hard.
Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
People who have witnessed all the years of me playing, they bring their kids and say, 'I used to see this guy when I was fourteen!'
I'm going to make people happy. I'm going to make them forget about their cancer. I'm going to make them forget about their diabetes.
Earthlings are confused, insecure. And some Earthlings have no heritage: that's what leads them to kill each other and rob 7-11 stores.
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.
Music is an attitude. It's a sensation to the average person, to the human being. And keep it simple, stupid. That's always been my theory.
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.
If you ask me what I'd rather be doing, well, I'd rather be home in California, watching TV, polishing my tools and working around the ranch.
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 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.
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.
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 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've been performing since 1955. I'm going to have to keep performing till I die because I'm not going to die in some rocking chair with a big ol' beer belly.
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.
I've never taken a lesson in my life, and I can play every instrument there is. I play by ear, but I can fool anybody into thinking I went to some conservatory of music.
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!'
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.
I smashed my tailbone and couldn't sit for five years, and I broke my clavicle because I thought I was a great surfer, and of course, I could be a great snowboarder, too. Man, was I wiped out!
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.
When I first played the guitar without plugging it into an amplifier, the people at Fender were blown away. They couldn't believe the sound. I said, 'See, gentlemen, the world is no longer flat.'
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.
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.
What we perceive things to be when they come out of our mouth is not what the listener perceives it to be. They think it differently. They're not your blood. They're not your mind. You get in an argument.
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.
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.'
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.
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 was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.