Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
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.'
I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.
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.
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 met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.
Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.
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'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.'
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.'
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.
Kids don't see me as an oldies person when I go out on stage. They see me as an energy force.
Music is nothing but a door opener to meet families and their children and the elderly.
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 called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.
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 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 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.
