Quotes from Dick Dale

Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.

They're putting cement dust into cattle feed to make the cows heavier; the FDA knows all about it.

I enjoy living like a hermit, but I cannot live like a hermit.

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.

I blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.

I refuse to bring my son up in a world corrupt as it is now.

I've got holes in my guitar.

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'm dedicated to touring the rest of my life.

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 almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.

I'm constantly being influenced by the soul that's directly in front of me.

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.

Drums were my first instrument.

I like to say, 'I hit every type of music in a show, and I play the people, not the instruments.'

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 make jokes because humor is the greatest healing factor that there is.

Surfers were the ones who named all my songs. They'd yell out the names, and we just kept 'em.

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!

People just loved the sound because I kept it simple.

I can play every instrument there is, every horn, I've played all the saxes and trumpets and everything and keyboards.

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.