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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

Every time I do an album, I say, 'That's the last one.'

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.

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.

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 blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.