AH: So what do you love most about Orange County?

DD: Well, when I came here (laughs), Costa Mesa was called Goat Hill in 1955. Well actually 1954. 1954 is when I came to California and 1955 is when I rode my motorcycle down and there was only one road to get to Orange County. And I can remember Disney; in fact I’m in Walt Disney’s biography because I did the music to Space Mountain. And I stood on top of Space Mountain and played it for their big party for Eisner. But I go all the way back to Disney when I was looking through a chain linked fence. They were building Disney. And who would have thought I’d be standing on top of Space Mountain one day and they’d be using my music on the ride. So yeah… I lived at the beach. I came down and lived in a little beach house and payed $88 a month, downtown. In fact, I had to take a shower out in the alley because they had no shower inside the house. And I was raising my animals. My lions and tigers, (laughs) and mountain lions. And that’s how I got the noise on my guitar- I used to imitate the screaming of my lions. I used to raise animals to try to preserve them from going into extinction by the poachers. Even at the mansion – we call it the mansion where I finally ended up living in the 70’s at the wedge down at the end of the peninsula. It was over two stories high and I had everything from a Sumatra Bengal Tiger living with me along with my African lion. I had a jaguar in there living with me. (laughs) I used to take them out and teach them how to dive off my stairs into the water. And the helicopters would come down and say, “Hey, there’s Dick walking his Sam on the beach!” And everyone would come and pat my Sumatran Bengal Tiger.

AH: So how do you even get a tiger?

DD: Well I had hawks and eagles and falcons too. And I would catch them. I trapped them because they were ready to die out there. In the insides of their mouths, you could see all these white parasites and worms in them from this stuff they were using to spray the vegetation. In fact, bees right now have gone from 100% down to about 20-30%. They’re dying during pollination. I mean we’re creating stuff that’s worse than the H-Bomb. Um… in fact in the east coast, when Florida needs the pollination for the outdoor fruit, they get a hold of people in Massachusetts, where I was born in Boston. These people there have all these hives and they put the bees on trucks and take em down to Florida to do the pollination and then bring them back. Well now they’re not doing it because now their hives are down to 20% because the bees are dying of parasites coming from what we’re spraying. And we’re also starving them to death. You know we want to have a pretty lawn so we spray the lawn to kill the dandelions and the crab grass. Well you know what the food for honeybees is? It’s dandelions and the crab grass. And I just got through reading about a 16-page article about how they’re dying and we’re trying to stop it. And the only way to stop it is to make, you know plant new acreage of dandelions for food. So we got a serious problem going on. It’s crazy. And in fact the other day I saw on a science program, that in Greece there’s one island only, and they have this different type of honey. One of the types of the honey, you can’t eat it the way it is because it’s so thick, so they thin it down and they mix it with the other types of honey. This one honey was given to the laboratory and they showed that it contained all these things that make life. It has every single thing. And the people that live on that island in Greece, they live a hundred years! They don’t send it out. They just keep the life longevity honey for themselves on the island. And it only comes from this one island. Now when they showed the hillsides of this island, guess what was growing on the hillsides as far as the eyes could see? Dandelions. Just yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow. They had people from CNN come and test it and they said, “Yeah, this stuff prolongs life.” So these people mix it in everything they eat. But they won’t send it to anyone else…I love it (laughs). Anyways, with my hawks and eagles and falcons, I would give them special drops to cure the parasites in their mouths. I used to take them to the Fairview Mental Institution and the hospitals in Costa Mesa. I made a deal with the city manager at the time, McKenzie, in the 60’s. I said, “Can I fly my hawks and eagles over there?” because it was illegal to have all this stuff. And he said, “Well, I’ll make a deal with ya’. Bring your lions over for the kids.” So I started going over to Fairview and visiting the children with animals. It made them feel good. The same kids would be carrying my records everywhere they went, because the parents would drop them off and never would come back. They would just leave them. And I had letters from the different mayors saying that I could have these animals as long as nobody complained. So I did everything illegal anyways.

AH: Weren’t you ever worried they were going to go ‘Siegfried and Roy’ on you?

DD: That’s right. You’ve got to be very very careful because they are wild creatures. I used to take people’s animals. You know they’d get them as babies, and they wouldn’t know what they hell they were doing. No one knows what the hell they’re doing with these animals. They have wild instincts. And you know what really gets me upset is when people start sending out these emails to people saying, “Look at how they love each other.” The animal knows when you’re not looking at him and they’ll get you by the head and throw you down. An African Lion’s bite is 2200 pounds per square inch and it can go right through stainless steel. I’ve got pictures of me with my arms in their jaws, pulling on their fangs and everything else. Email me, I’ll send you a couple. That is a dangerous chance you’re taking so you better know and be aware of what you’re doing and how to keep their minds preoccupied. If a tiger starts in on you and he stares at you, don’t stare at him because they will jump you. And they’ll flip you over and play with you like a cat plays with a mouse. You know when a cat grabs your hand and pulls at you and plays with you. Well that’s exactly what happened with Siegfried and Roy. That tiger, if it wanted to kill him it would have bit him in half with one bite. It just grabbed him by the head and dragged him to the back to play with him. He wasn’t paying attention at that moment. If my tiger starts coming towards me and I don’t do something about it, such as, I’ll talk to him in his language. For instance, a greeting for a tiger is this kind of a sound – it goes like this, (makes a noise that sounds like someone clearing their throat). It’s coming from your guts and it’s an air sound. When a tiger comes at me and he’s going to pounce on me, I look at him and do this thing, (makes sound again) and he will answer me back and put his head down and he’ll just nudge me. It’s a greeting. I’ve called many animals to the bars in cages just by greeting them. So you’ve got to be aware. When someone is patting my mountain lion, I will always be talking to the tiger, going (makes sound) so he’s happy. So he just wants to greet. He doesn’t want to sit there and go, “Oh boy! Let me play with this person! And I’ll grab her right by the head because I know the head is the manager of the factory.” These are all silly stupid mistakes that people make and then they get nailed. I myself have been nailed because I went over the edge. I mean I used to lay down (laughs) with my African Lion and I’d be, I hate to say it, but I’d have… well I’ll say I had shorts on but I didn’t have shorts on (laughs) – but it was up in Riverside and it would get so hot. So I’d have them inside my mobile home and he’d come running down the hallway and jump on the bed and break the bed. I’d lay on the floor underneath the cool air coming down from the ceiling and I’d have my head laying on her stomach! I’d be dressed very sparsely, only a pair of shorts, sometimes I didn’t where any shorts and I’d be lying there. If I didn’t pay attention to every movement I could feel in my lions body, if I allowed her to think I was going to fall asleep, she would spin me over and she’d grab my whole head. I had both of her fangs on the top of my skull and two on the back of my neck so quickly. I was of course in the martial arts and the karate all my life, so I immediately shot my fingers right into her throat and surprised her. You can never overpower these animals but you can be psychological with them. And you gotta’ know tricks. So it shocked her and she released her fangs, but I had two nice little holes in my head and in my neck. She didn’t really want to kill me. She wanted to play.

AH: That’s-

DD: People shouldn’t even mess with these animals unless they know what they’re doing. I was doing it because I was protecting them. I had over 40 species, I had elephants, you name it. I’ve had black panthers that people thought it was so cool to have and all of a sudden the woman would go, (in annoying womanly voice)“Oh she loves me. And she’s so nice.” And the next thing I know she’d be screaming her brains out because the panthers going up her arm with its fangs. So people would illegally buy baby lions and they could handle them when they’re only about 20 pounds. But soon they get to be 250 pounds and they’re sitting on the couch and they won’t get off the couch. This one guy tried to sell me one. And I said, “I don’t buy these things. People give them to me because they can’t handle them.” And I said, “Do you want to see what a real lion looks like?” So I brought my lioness in my surf van over to the house. And when his wife saw how big it was she said, “Oh my God, get rid of that thing we got on the couch!” So goes, “If you can get it off the couch you can have it.” So I brought it home and gave it a life. All my animals were very healthy and they had babies. I would pull them out of the mother lions. But you can never let your guard down. One night I was sitting out at my swimming pool with my mountain lion that I raised from a baby – she was smaller than my Siamese cat (laughs) – and I’m sitting there and we’re looking up at they sky. And I was looking up and I said, “Wow ain’t that sky beautiful!” And because I talked to her, it thought I was saying, “Hey, let’s play!” And she just went and sunk her canines into my knee. And I banged her on the head and I go, “Stop it!” And I banged it even deeper. I dedicated my life to those animals for 30 years. But then when my son was born he would play with the tigers. He’d go, “Dad, I’m a lion trainer! Look, I got claw marks!” And I’d go, “Oh Jesus, Jimmie, they’re going to eat you.” It was a beautiful life. Now my son is my life. He’s performing and he’s on tour working hard for whatever comes in the door. So I said, why don’t you try opening for me and see if you can make the audience like you. They did. The audience dug it. When I die, it’s not going to be in a rocking chair, it’s going to be on stage in a big explosion of body parts.

AH: What are your three favorite movies?

DD: I really don’t have favorites of anything. There is a beauty in everything. All I can say is I like action movies, or I like where the boy chases the girl and they get together. I like movies to have a happy ending. I’ll go up to the manager at the movie house and go, “Why’d you let me watch this movie for?! The ending sucks! It was too sad!” I hate it when someone makes a movie and one of the principal actors is going to die just so that they can be sensational. There are movies that end happily every after and they’re great. I have many windows in my life. I’m not sucked into just one thing. I once asked a master of mine – I’ve been with the monks all my life from my teens – and I said, “Master, why can’t I be the best and be unbeaten in everything I do.” He said, “Grasshopper, you can’t. Or you must live it, eat it, breath it, and give up everything around you around the clock. Wouldn’t you rather be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, instead of master of one? Because if you are master of one, you’d be awfully dull at a gathering wouldn’t you?” Einstein couldn’t talk about anything except one thing. So if somebody only knows electronics and that’s it, how can you carry on conversations about art, photography, building houses, stuff like that. All my life I’ve reached out and I’ve got books on every single thing you could think of. I’ve got libraries up the ying yang. I don’t read any fiction whatsoever. To me it’s a waste of time. There isn’t a thing I haven’t tried in my life except drugs. I’ve never had alcohol in my body. I’ve never smoked cigarettes. I haven’t eaten red meat in 40 years. These things don’t belong in your body. Your body is your temple. If you walk in a market, and somebody leaves a can on the floor that fell over and they just walked away from it. What’s wrong with that picture? It doesn’t belong on the floor. So pick it up, because even though someone didn’t have the brains to do it, you pick it up! That’s the way I am. My dad taught me if you stay at someone’s house and you leave, never let them know that you were there. I look at life that way. I talk to anybody about just about anything because I’ve experienced it. If I’m gonna do it on a scale of 1-10, I’ll do it at a 15. So movies…as long as they end happily ever after. When I leave that theatre I want to feel good. I love documentaries and science fiction. With me I have some sayings that are my foundation. One of them is, “To experience is to know, to know is to understand, to understand is to tolerate, and to tolerate is to have peace.” It took me 18 years to understand that and another 18 years to apply it. How can you get mad at an idiot? They don’t know any better. Don’t try to change the world. Let them bang up their noses until they finally realize, “Gee, I guess I shouldn’t be doing this.” What destroys people, relationships, businesses, everything – its one word: perceivability. What we perceive things to be is not what they are. So you’ll say something to your mate and you mean one thing, and they get the complete opposite. Now you’re fighting like crazy because everyone perceives things differently. That’s why the monk became the monk, because they didn’t want to waste time talking to people because it’s a waste of energy. The only thing that is pure and true in this earth is a baby animal and a baby child. They only want to be hugged, loved, fed, and kept warm. There was another thing that is much more in-depth than the first one I gave you. It’s, “Thoughts become words, words become actions, actions become habits, habits become character, and your character becomes your destiny.” You could spend a lifetime trying to assimilate that into your system.

AH: Well thanks so much for talking with me Dick. It was so interesting!

DD: You got it. Thank you. Always remember: what you do with your talent, whether you’re a photographer, or writer, or whatever, try to stay away from sensationalism. Writers try to create sensationalism because they think it makes news. And boy I hate that. Always remember this when you write, you can either create with your writing, or you can destroy with your writing. You choose. See what I mean? Well I’ll see you at one of my concerts.

AH: Definitely. We’re going to head out to the Coach House.

DD: Oh that’d be great!

AH: I’ll try and catch you at the show.

DD: Alright hun.