What made you play guitar?

    Yeah, my bro was getting all kinds of trim with his guitar playing lol. I wasn't an inspiring guitar player from a young age cuz I had nice trim anyways. I was better looking and played hockey hahaha! :P Seriously though, music was a big part of our family. My mom sang all the oldies and my dad played the guitar/sang at every party they had, hammered, sounded great as a kid. Everyone would come over for full on house jams and play whatever.


    I moved out of the house to work at a resort at 16 yrs old, just a few hundred miles this side of Alaska/Yukon border. I had my truck, a camper, my dog, and bought an acoustic guitar and a few music books. Didn't know a chord but knew I needed something to do for all those long days and night when I wasn't working in the middle of nowhere. The guitar was my best friend. First song I ever learned was House of the Rising Sun. I was pretty thrilled. Then I discovered SRV and it was all over! Between him and Clapton it was on. Of course ACDC, Zep, Jimi, Eddie, Maiden and Floyd were in there too. I got together with some "hot" tourist chicks in those three years LMAO!


    Then I thought I wasn't getting any better and sold the acoustic. I didn't play for a while but a few buddies were playing bar gigs all the time and I just had to have an electric. My first electric was a JV butterscotch Tele and the first song I learned was Little Wing on a small Roland amp with effects built in from the early eighties! Blew my mind, LOL. Good times.


    After a while of that I ended up selling that gear as I discovered classical guitar. Got a nice classical and played just classical (busking too), for a few years until one night my ex thought I banged her best friend and cut the strings off and gouged a big chunk out of the body. I was so pissed off and drunk I pulled a Pete Townsend and smashed the shit out it hahaha. I was devastated the next day, so stupid, I still miss that guitar but it felt great at the time. No, we ain't together anymore LMAO! I ended up scoring a good job, an even nicer guitar, :thumbup: and girl (my wife)! :thumbup:

    Quote from Psykohero

    To be honest, I saw that the guy playing guitar at night by the fire got all the girls.

    Another honest guitar player. :)
    I find it hard to believe that guitar heroes are the trigger for starting to learn guitar playing.
    Many of us were very young, and the decision to learn an instrument was made by the parents.


    But I do believe that from a certain ability an idol can be very inspyring to become better or to change the instrument.

    Quote from Sharry

    Another honest guitar player. :) I find it hard to believe that guitar heroes are the trigger for starting to learn guitar playing.
    Many of us were very young, and the decision to learn an instrument was made by the parents.


    But I do believe that from a certain ability an idol can be very inspyring to become better or to change the instrument.

    Hmm..how experiences can differ.. ;)


    I chased so many beautiful girls away with my sheer fanatism for music between 15-18 that I can't say that I really "did it for the pussies"..not really.I had some good sex after the gigs..I had long hairs reaching to my ass and indeed the girls loved that by this time in the late 80s. But I had no longer relationship in this time because all I did was music.All I wanted was paying guitar in my first bands.I got bad in school,my friends I grew up with got angry because I changed the "company" and so on..


    And I can say that I was not the only kid with this spirit.It is not all the same my friend.. even not in our teenage years.. :thumbup:

    I remember recording music out of german radio shows in 1980 when I still was a child (12 or 13 years old). I was more into ABBA these days, the way you are fan of something when still being a child. You like it but you don't know exactly why (nowadays I know exactly why I still like it). Anyway...by chance I recorded AC/DC's "Touch too much" and...hated it. But by listening again and again to that tape I couldn't avoid hearing "Touch too much" again and again too. And suddenly I loved it. This energy...this rawness...and of course Angus. But I still needed another 3 years before I started playing guitar around Christmas 1983. Even though I never practiced a lot (I mean practicing for hours and hours) me and some school buddys started a band called "The Servants of Rock" (what a ridiculous name) in October 1984. Each and every one of us was a total newbie to making music or playing an instrument. But in the end we stayed together for 30 years with only two short periods of changing the line up. Of course I had some hope for getting girls back in the starting days but gave up that hope very soon as I had absolutely no success. :)


    First guitar: A very cheap classical guitar as my parents wanted to see if I'm serious about playing guitar. Second guitar: Ibanez Roadstar. I still own both.

    I could have farted and it would have sounded good! (Brian Johnson)

    Like 3
    Quote from Nikos

    Hmm..how experiences can differ.. ;)
    I chased so many beautiful girls away with my sheer fanatism for music between 15-18 that I can't say that I really "did it for the pussies"..not really.I had some good sex after the gigs..I had long hairs reaching to my ass and indeed the girls loved that by this time in the late 80s. But I had no longer relationship in this time because all I did was music.All I wanted was paying guitar in my first bands.I got bad in school,my friends I grew up with got angry because I changed the "company" and so on..


    And I can say that I was not the only kid with this spirit.It is not all the same my friend.. even not in our teenage years.. :thumbup:

    Too true its all so different. None of my family are musical it never came from them for me.


    I did have a "Micheal J Fox" moment from back to the future....went int a music shop, plugged a guitar into an amp. Couldn't play anything but the noise almost blew me over...I thought, I gotta get me some of this!!

    Quote from Nikos

    I chased so many beautiful girls away with my sheer fanatism for music between 15-18 that I can't say that I really "did it for the pussies"..

    I think the idea of the thread is "what made you play guitar" .


    Personally I found out that it was probably not such a good idea to start playing guitar at the lake because of the girls.
    The practice was rather that most of the girls were no longer free when I stopped playing and only those who remained were left to me. ;)


    But at this time the virus had already gripped me and the motivation to play was something else.


    My musical background at first were early Beatles, Kinks , Hollies , Who, Stones , Spencer Davis etc. .
    I'd like to play and sing their songs.


    The way after starting playing guitar may differ

    My dad was my initial influence. Played in a country band in the 70's and 80's. Some of my earliest memories were watching his band practice in the house. He bought me my first Kiss album in 1978 and from there it was game on. I still have his 74 Fender Jazz, 78 Strat and mid 80's Carvin 612 double neck. Every gig I play with my rock cover band we do some Johnny Cash and I send it up to dad.

    Quote from Sharry

    Another honest guitar player. :) I find it hard to believe that guitar heroes are the trigger for starting to learn guitar playing.
    Many of us were very young, and the decision to learn an instrument was made by the parents.


    But I do believe that from a certain ability an idol can be very inspyring to become better or to change the instrument.

    Both my parents were, and are, musicians, but they never pushed me to start to learn an instrument. My dad bought me a cornet (a small trumpet) when I was 3 (!), but apart from that, there was never any pressure on me to take lessons or even blow that damn cornet, lol. In fact, the only instrument I’d ever got a clean note out of was the recorder back in infant school, the mandatory Christmas concert...


    Looking back, it’s actually quite odd that I started so late (I was 11), as my dad can literally play any instrument and there were always musicians and instruments around our house before my parents split.

    My earliest influences are something in between Clapton, Peter Frampton or Angus Young.
    But my greatest boost to start of learning to play guitar, happens with "Sultans of swing" and today its allways the same.
    There are a lot of great guitarists. Like Mike Landau, or David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, the marvelous SRV, or the Edge too.
    But nobody have touched me like Mark Knopfler. And still he does.
    I love everything of his awesome Music, and his tastefully way to create so many songs, which are still guiding me on a lot of gigs.

    Quote from Sharry

    Personally I found out that it was probably not such a good idea to start playing guitar at the lake because of the girls.
    The practice was rather that most of the girls were no longer free when I stopped playing and only those who remained were left to me. ;)

    lol Sharry...had a good laugh for a while after reading this.. :D


    Yeah it is tricky...
    Women have indeed a big heart for artists..but in the same time they are creatures which need "security" by nature and most of all (as ACDC put it nicely) "rhythm" to feel secure.


    All these things just do not fit with being with a partner who is an artist.It is a big Paradoxon.
    ^^

    Friend..I don't know if it has to do as much with being a "great artist" as it has to do with behaving like an ego-maniac @ss-hole in my 20s & 30s.I can only guess that for me personally the latter is not so unlikely ..


    Btw..50 years...unbelievable..congratulations my friend.. ;)

    Quote from Sharry

    Well, I guess I got lucky not to become a great artist.
    I neither lost the desire to make music nor my wife for almost 50 years. :)

    Congrats on the 50 years!! Was she one of the ones left after practice that really saw something special in you ;)

    You may laugh. I was a little kid and my aunt was playing Beatles records (c. 1965). I heard the feedback intro to "I Feel Fine" and it was the most amazing sound I'd ever heard. I've never wanted to play any instrument but electric guitar since.

    Such wonderful and varied replies so far!


    I got thinking more and more about the various stages of inspiration that made me 'kick on' and focus on getting better on guitar...and I've realised hardly any of them have been about learning anything on guitar....but actually becoming a more complete guitar player...and the pursuit of girls.


    Which means looking the part as well as being able to shred or shake that money making note!


    WASP - WASP....made me want to wear tight pants...and point at girls in the crowd.


    RATT - Out of the Cellar - made me want to wear tight pants and point at girls in the crowd - but with a little tigerskin print bandana hanging from my belt-loop.


    YNGWIE - ANYTHING - made me realise that acting like you ALWAYS play in front of 100,000 people by refusing to acknowledge how disappointing the crowd is in front of you and throwing plectrums out into the audience and head banging like f*ck....even when you are only in front of 6 people and a stray cat....convinces those 6 people in front of you that you normally play in front of 100,000 and helps you sell 5 CDs and 3 t-shirts.


    I am not a handsome man....but I have lived with and vigorously sexed one of Motely Crue's stage dancers for 3 years, was engaged to a girl who was on the front cover of Vogue magazine in Portugal and dated a professional maltese swimwear model for 2 years...because despite my man-boobs, poor fingering technique (on guitar) and my huge double/treble chin...I decided to live the lie that when I am on stage I am the greatest ever....it rubs off ya know!


    Can't play stairway to heaven...but guitar has given me so so much :)

    PRS Custom 22's - Fender Strats - Diezel VH4 - Carol Ann OD2 - Toneking Imperial MK2 - Colin the Kemper - CLR Neo ii.

    Like 6

    Musical family history here too. Grandmother was a piano teacher.


    I am a classically trained piano player myself. All 3 of my kids play the piano. Once we ran out of pianos / synthesizers in the house, I had to find something else. Always loved instruments in the lower range so I picked up the bass. I love it. Son now plays the guitar and all the kids luckily outpaced their old man in learning new instruments.


    I have to say, playing together with the kids is something very special. If you have kids I am sure you agree. Seeing (and hearing) my kids jam together on the piano, ukulele and saxophone after only declaring a key signature is an experience that I will cherish for the rest of my life. (Also in that list is hearing my son play Megadeth on the ukulele :D )