Dick Dale

“I learned everything by ear and played all the different instruments. So then I was able to find a guitar. That was, like, in the seventh grade. And then I didn't know how to put my fingers on all the different strings, so I had to figure out how to do it upside down and backwards, and I still play that way today.”

“I'm a perfectionist. I'm not going to cheat the people.”

“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.”

“People just loved the sound because I kept it simple.”

“People ask about love. Real love. I was never in love; the people around me didn't love me. They were just along for the ride.”

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

“People who have witnessed all the years of me playing, they bring their kids and say, 'I used to see this guy when I was fourteen!'”

“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'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.'”

“Every song is like a painting.”

“I became stereotyped.”

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

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

“In the Shao Lin temple, they never allow you to touch the skin of a drum until you can tongue what you're going to play.”

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

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

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

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

“I thought of Gene Krupa's drumming, his staccato drumming. I went and put 'Misirlou' to that rhythm.”