Who made you pick up a guitar?

  • Good evening all,


    I recently posted a reply in which I mentioned my inspiration to picking up a guitar over 30 years ago.

    Mine was the Edge from U2 as I was blown away by the Joshua Tree album. I went on to playing in bands with an echo here there and everywhere!

    It seems strange now as I barely listen to them anymore, (their best stuff is behind them in my opinion). Nowadays i'm much more into Hendrix, SRV and more modern players like Philip Sayce and Joe Bonamassa.


    Anyway it got me wondering who was/is your guitar hero? lets face it we all have at least one I'm sure?

    'You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead' - Stan Laurel

    Edited once, last by Crookster ().

  • Nice one Crookster - The Edge is one of my big influences from the early years as well. So much as 100 other guitar players out there, the world is fortunately full of interesting and great talents. To just mention some which influenced me quite a lot over time (from rather different musical styles) which does not say that I am necessarily playing their style (but still love their feel, tone & attitude) 8o


    1970s: Ritchie Blackmore & Rory Gallagher

    1980s: John Sykes (Thin Lizzy / Whitesnake) & The Edge

    1990s: Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains) & Chris Whitley

    2000s: Clint Lowery (Sevendust)

    2010s: Mark Tremonti

  • Dave Murray and Kirk Hammett. Don't know a single DM solo but Live after death was such an inspiration. Learned every KH solo up until the black album.

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  • nice thread :thumbup:

    my musical Big Bang were the Beatles, they made me playing guitar... ok, many years no solo playing, just chords...

    When I look back to the last 20, 30 years I must determine some other influences:

    Ritchie Blackmore, Jimi Page, Carlos Santana, David Gilmour... but no one after them on the timeline ;)

    Lemmy stated one day (don't know his exact words): "first things you hear and which really knock you out stick with you and you never gonna hear anything better than that" - for my person I agree ^^

  • ok, I will tell you the whole story but please don't laught at me:


    I've picked up my first guitar when I was 15 just Because.. I quit with drugs and Suddenlty I have a LOT of free time in my life and I have to find a way to fill it, so I say to me, Angelo let's try with guitar, it shuold be funny.

    It was february..

    I didn't have any guitar hero to emulate or to be inspired by, and I wasn't even sure about what kind of guitar would be good for me ..

    so meanwhile looking around I builted this:


    That thing was enought for me to play Smoke on the Water, and actually It Was Fun! So I was sure, I absolutely needed a real guitar, the most affordable. It was a really basic Classical guitar named Clash. It costed 150.000 Lire (75€)

    My parents, to incourage me, bought me a book of songs with Chords Diagrams and I started speding time on the instrument.

    That summer, during sea holydays, I met a boy, he was always listening to Walkman, always the same cassette,

    one day I asked him about and he reply: ''Listen! Theese are GUNS N' ROSES''.

    BOOM!!!

    I Need a Marshall and Les Paul

    End of the Story.

  • Randy Rhodes and Eddie Van Halen. I think I was 13 and I already knew I wanted to play guitar and even had an acoustic I played. One my birthday that year my grandfather gave me $50 and off to the record store I went. I bought Van Halen, Van Halen II, Van Halen Women and Children first, Van Halen Diver Down and Ozzy Diary of a Madman. I was hooked, got my first electric guitar that was really mine that next year and spent the following 10 years studying theory.



    Still have that electric today

  • Yngwie and George Lynch were the main guys... then it was a steady parade of all the 80's shredders, speed metal, and thrash guys. Once I discovered the Shrapnel label... my allowance money was pretty much shot from buying cassettes. :P

    Shred 'til yer dead,

    Jeff in Houston

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  • That's got me thinking... I was a huge Steve Vai fan (still am) in the DLR era which was just before I started playing guitar at the age of 12, Nuno and Slash as well, but Patsy Biscoe was the reason I wanted to play guitar since I was about 3 or 4, had to pretend on a toy ukulele for a few years

  • Some really great posts.

    Slash, now there another one, I love his playing. A far cry from the Edge.

    Mind you I blame him for me getting too into effects early on when I wish I'd developed my playing more.


    Yeah thats right, its all his fault ;)

    'You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead' - Stan Laurel

  • The first guitarist to really get me excited was The Edge. Under a blood red sky (the live album)... every time Bono shouts, “this is The Edge!”, the sound of the crowd going nuts gave me goose bumps. My older sister played a bit and had a Yamaha acoustic and a tele deluxe copy lying about and my next-door neighbour (who was also my best friend) started learning at school, so I got curious. I got my sister to quickly show me the chords to Hey Joe while she was on her way out to town. By the time she got back, I could play it, and it snowballed from there.

  • My first memory of wanting to play the guitar was seeing the edge on TV when I was about 6 and picking up a tennis racket to try and emulate him, which my parents must have seen because that Christmas I had my first guitar under the tree. Once I started, and really got in to it though (took me a few years...), it was Hendrix and Angus Young that had the biggest influence on me along with Page too. I'm not sure why I didn't really get in to U2 or the Edge specifically after I started playing. Maybe it was more the look? I dunno, but I'm glad that I saw it to start me on this journey

  • Ive seen documentaries and reviews saying The Edge is one of the worlds best guitarists, not sure I'd go that far, certainly not in the technical department, but in regards to him being innovative (in his day) and instantly recognisable, well then perhaps he is?

    He's still is one of my favourite guitarists but probably only because he made me pick up the instrument.


    U2 were great in the day though, that's before Bono lost the ability to sing and became a bit of a tool.

    'You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead' - Stan Laurel

  • Bernard Butler and Andy Miller, Stay Together and Staying out for the Summer respectively with very different takes on guitar music both launched the British indie scene into the limelight as well as launching Britpop just shortly before Blur came out with Parklife and Oasis with Life forever which cemented the scene along with Pulp's Do you Remember the First Time.


    I was at sixth form college at the time and had zero interest in the cheesy synth music that was what passed for pop in the UK throughout the entire 80's and early 90's. Hearing guitar, as played in a live exciting way, not overproduced till you couldn't even tell if it was real or a synth, or simply missing, hearing bands be bands and in some way relatable and achievable, well it was a revelation. Fortunately the VI Form I was at was very cool, had battle of the bands on their concourse and the friends I had hooked up with were also cool and showed me the ways of the guitar. My dad very kindly bought me my first guitar, an Aria Pro2 335 copy that I still have and that is still a phenomenal instrument, and that's how I got hooked on the whole guitar thing.

  • I visit a Nazareth concert in 1974 . In the middle of this concert the guitarist plays a long solo,followed by a light. As he lay down his guitar on a box ,fall to his knees and played the guitar from the floor i wish i could end up the same way :).


    So i start to play guitar. After a short time mostly Al Di Meola, Eric Gale ,Pat Metheney ,Jan Akkerman and Lee Ritenour affected me.


    Never reached one of them,but lay down many times on the floor ;).

  • Johnny Marr - my older brother was a smiths fan when he was a teenager and when I got to 11 he started my education and the guitar blew me away...it was the layers of guitar...


    He bought me an acoustic...and I got a four track tascam portastudio before an electric guitar or amp...I remember asking if there were any other bands with 3 or 4 guitarists in and he said no...its just johnny marr and he plays things on top of one another...so getting that four track was more important than anything else


    By 13 I had red converse, tight jeans and my hair I'd started growing to have a rockabilly hair-do had become a mullet...which became long hair as van halen, motley crue, ratt, wasp, rough cutt, dokken....became jason becker and marty friedman


    Now I play doom death metal...and I'm going bald.

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  • Excellent. And what a great player Johnny Marr was in the Smiths

    'You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead' - Stan Laurel

  • In my case it was Eddie Van Halen's smile in the 'Jump' music video.


    When I was 14 years old, I watched that music video for the first time and I thought to myself 'I wanna be happy like that guy. Can I be happy if I play the guitar? '


    Still i think so.


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