Dick Dale Quotes

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Dick Dale

Profession : Musician

Birth : May 4, 1937

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.

Dick Dale

Every song is like a painting.

Dick Dale

You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.

Dick Dale

Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound.

Dick Dale

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

Dick Dale

Whatever you do, don't take shortcuts. It's great advice to take and live by.

Dick Dale

I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.

Dick Dale

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

Dick Dale

I don't play pyrotechnic scales. I play about frustration, patience, anger. Music is an extension of my soul.

Dick Dale

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.

Dick Dale

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.'

Dick Dale

I actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.

Dick Dale

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.

Dick Dale

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.

Dick Dale

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.

Dick Dale

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.

Dick Dale

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.'

Dick Dale

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

Dick Dale

Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.

Dick Dale

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.

Dick Dale