Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Dick Dale - Page 2

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.

I've got holes in my guitar.

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.

When I play, I don't cheat. I played for 490,000 in Berlin, and I'll play just as hard for 100.

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.

The Stratocaster is like the Rolls-Royce. It can never be surpassed.

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.

You know what the doctors call me? 'The Cancer Warrior.'

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.

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

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

I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.

When my guitar was growling, playing surf beat, you could hear it; you could feel it.

Little Richard, he'd say, 'Oh Dick Dale! You have luscious lips!'

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

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

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 don't claim to be a musician, I didn't go to Julliard.

Drums were my first instrument.

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

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.

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.

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

I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it.

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 may play the same songs night to night, but I never play them the same way.

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 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.

Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.

My aunt played the piano and I used to sit and listen to it.

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.'

The ultimate guitar players can play every scale in the book.

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.

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'm dedicated to touring the rest of my life.

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.

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 became stereotyped.

Springsteen - he's the Lord God.

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.

My father never put me on his lap and said he loved 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.

Music is nothing but a door opener to meet families and their children and the elderly.

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'll never die. I'll just explode, right there before your eyes, onstage.