Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Dick Dale
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Dick Dale.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
I blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.
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.
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.
Every time I do an album, I say, 'That's the last one.'
Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.
Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound.
I enjoy living like a hermit, but I cannot live like a hermit.
I make jokes because humor is the greatest healing factor that there is.
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!
They're putting cement dust into cattle feed to make the cows heavier; the FDA knows all about it.
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 actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.
I used to surf up in Ventura County at Silver Strand; plus, I've played up there many times.
I know what it's like to wash my clothes in a Chevron station.
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.
I always felt people should live with animals.
I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.
My philosophy is that on a scale of 1 to 10, I will go to 15. No matter what!
People just loved the sound because I kept it simple.
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.
With every problem comes a gift in hand.
Kids don't see me as an oldies person when I go out on stage. They see me as an energy force.
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 don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.
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.
You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.
Nothing could capture the sound of Dick Dale - he was too loud.
My music is more native than intricate or technical.
I do not play to musicians. I play to the people.
I thought of Gene Krupa's drumming, his staccato drumming. I went and put 'Misirlou' to that rhythm.
Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
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 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.
When I come onstage, I'm exploding.
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!'
The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.
I answer number one to myself, because I know myself. I answer to my fans, because they know me. My mother knows me and God knows me, and that's where it's at.
Whatever you do, don't take shortcuts. It's great advice to take and live by.
I don't like to use the word 'fans;' I call them 'Dick Dale music lovers.'
I'm not one of these guys who is dedicated to playing or performing - that's just one facet of my life.
For 20 years I've been screaming at these guitar companies, saying, 'It's abnormal to put your arm around an acoustic guitar that is about 6 to 8 inches deep.' Your arm reaches over, and you start to strum, and then all of a sudden you get a charley horse in your back. The older you get, the greater the charley horse.
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.
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'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.'
Every song is like a painting.
I called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.
Surf music is played through a Showman amp with a Stratocaster guitar.
I've been called 'the father of loud.'
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!'
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.
The Musicians Hall of Fame is chosen by thousands of your peers. So it's the real thing.
Dick Dale don't surf no more.
You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.
I have all the rhythm in my left hand, and I use the rhythms that Gene Krupa did on his drums.
I try to read the audience, see what they're in the mood for.
There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.
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 almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.
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'm a perfectionist. I'm not going to cheat the people.
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