There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.
I'm constantly being influenced by the soul that's directly in front of me.
I've never followed a list in my life, and that's probably what has created so much nervous energy in my body.
I try to read the audience, see what they're in the mood for.
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.
Nothing could capture the sound of Dick Dale - he was too loud.
I used to surf up in Ventura County at Silver Strand; plus, I've played up there many times.
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.
The ultimate guitar players can play every scale in the book.
I have all the rhythm in my left hand, and I use the rhythms that Gene Krupa did on his drums.
I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.
The Musicians Hall of Fame is chosen by thousands of your peers. So it's the real thing.
Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.
You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.
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.
I'm going to make people happy. I'm going to make them forget about their cancer. I'm going to make them forget about their diabetes.
My mind never left 20, because once it does, that's when you start to die.
I answer number one to myself, because I know myself. I answer to my fans, because they know me. My mother knows me and God knows me, and that's where it's at.
I thought of Gene Krupa's drumming, his staccato drumming. I went and put 'Misirlou' to that rhythm.
I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.
Drums were my first instrument.
