Dick Dale Fansite
Dick Dale Quotes
• I'm going to start snowboarding.
• As a little child I used to listen to my father's big records, big 78's. I used to listen to guys like the big Harry James records and Gene Krupa. We didn't have a lot of money. My parents both worked, and I was born in Boston.
• 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.
• Gene Krupa was smart enough to study the natives... went into the jungle to study their fertility dances, what caused them to be mesmerized. He was the father of it all.
• I had rectal cancer. I was given three months to live and I went down to 98 pounds. I had never missed a show, but this time I was so sick that I did. Jimi found out about my surgery. Jimi thought I was dying, and that's why he said you'll never hear Surf music again.
• Dick Dale won all these contests using a simple, psychological approach of sensual, driving rhythm, and then one of the major contests was somebody playing like Elvis, and I won. I started drawing like 1,700 kids there.
• I had no bravado in my voice, and I wanted sustaining sound, so we took it out of a Hammond organ, put it in an amp and I put in a microphone and sang and got sustaining sound
• Don't even bother telling me about dirty music unless you can tell me what dirty music is. From then on I was a rebel.
• 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 song is like a painting.
• Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
• 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.
• When my mom and dad would leave in the evening I would take their canister set, their sugar and their cookies and all these little metal cans and I'd take these knives and I'd bang on them with these regular kitchen knives and I'd play the drums and that's how I developed all this rhythm.
• The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.
• Surfer's Choice sold 80,000 copies, which is like selling a million today. So when historians say the reverb's the Surf sound... they don't know what they're talking about.
• I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.
• I don't claim to be a musician, I didn't go to Julliard.
• I can play every instrument there is, every horn, I've played all the saxes and trumpets and everything and keyboards.
• I don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.
• I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.
• I called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.
• 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 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.
• I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it.
• Tex Ritter bought me my first gunbelt because I loved quickdraws.
• My aunt played the piano and I used to sit and listen to it.
• When someone's smoking pot in the front of one of my shows and it's bothering me, I'll make 'em put it out. Dick Dale has never had a drug in his life. I never drank. I wouldn't infect my body.
• I'm a perfectionist. I'm not going to cheat the people.
• 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.
• I'm constantly being influenced by the soul that's directly in front of me.
• Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.
• I've got holes in my guitar.
• 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.
• 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 aunt played the piano and I used to sit and listen to it.
• 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.
• People just loved the sound because I kept it simple.
• 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.
• Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.
• The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.
• The average person doesn't know an augmented 9th or 13th, so neither do I, 'cause I never went to school for music.
• The average person doesn't know an augmented 9th or 13th, so neither do I, 'cause I never went to school for music.
• The first 15 minutes we'd start out with Sugar Blues and Begin the Beguine, and the teachers loved it, and the kids would just be sitting there. Then the next 15 minutes we'd play our kind of music and the kids went wild.
• I went down to Balboa. This big ballroom was alive with people and sound. It was a giant horn band, they were playing Jazz, it was a big band sound. You'd never have a guitar group playing.
• There is a saying; He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak. Music is just one facet 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.
• There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.
• You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.
• 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.
• You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.
• There is a saying; He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak. Music is just one facet of my life.
• The night I'm gonna play they tell me someone really wants to play with me-Slash of Guns n' Roses. And I didn't know who he is, but my wife tells me. She knows all that stuff.
Dick Dale Discography
2006 - Surfer's Choice2001 - Spacial Disorientation
1996 - Calling Up Spirits
1994 - Unknown Territory
1993 - Tribal Thunder
1983 - The Tigers Loose
1965 - Rock out with Dick Dale and his Del-Tones: Live at Ciro's
1964 - Summer Surf
1964 - Mr. Eliminator
1963 - Checkered Flag
1963 - King Of The Surf Guitar
1962 - Surfer's Choice
Useful Links:
SurfMusic.com - A Place Where Reverb Is King!