How did you come to music/playing guitar?

My musical formative years (being born 1963) started with the POLICE.
Listening to the stinging chords of Roxanne and the ninths riff of Message In A Bottle for the first time immediately got me hooked.
These two songs were not from the same album but they hit Germany approximately at the same time in 1979/80.
From now on I was to become a guitar player and I bought my first electric, a strat copy, shortly thereafter (had been playing classical guitar since 1977).
Punk and New Wave made it possible, anybody could form a band then. So did I, in 1982.
I have been playing music in bands actively since then, learning, discovering new music and re-discovering other great music.
It's kinda like a story of my life.

I wish I had a great story to tell, but mine is like a million other. The Beatles hit the US late 1963, and shortly thereafter I bought my first guitar - a very cheap electric made in Japan. I found a way to amplify it through an old radio that had an RCA plug input and a tiny speaker that must have been all of 6 inches. Once proving to my parents that I was serious about it, I jumped from that gear to a used Gretsch Chet Atkins Nashville and a Fender Twin Reverb with JBLs To this day I regret selling that gear when I went to college ...

okay, for the fun of it, here is my story.

i started to play tenor saxophone in 1979, because of john coltrane's music on impulse! records
i had not much talent and the neighbours did not like the sax. for the next decade i tried to master
this instrument in vain. in 1986 i started to play congas which suited me better. my teacher was
from california and we had a lot of fun. i played congas in a couple of bands and everything was fine.
in 1989 i bought a record of Iron Maiden, because i liked the cover so much: Powerslave!
this record changed my life. i must have heard it twenty times in a row, before i gave myself a break.
sold my sax. bought a middle-class guitar, put an ad in the paper: searching for a teacher who can play metal!
found my teacher. stayed with him for 10 years. practised 3 hours every friggin' day of the week and
founded my first band in '94, recorded my first cd in 1996. never looked back. cheers.

I started around 1980 playing bass guitar, all because of Mark king from Level 42, had to get the same JD bass and couldn't put it down.. now almost 30 years later, been picking up the guitars more and have the bass in my back pocket...

My Father bought me a first acoustic guitar in 1968 , first "electric" in 1969 .
I've done my first gig in November 29th 1968 , I was 13 years old .

Bough my first decent guitar in 1974- a Fender Strat !!!!

From 1972 and onward , I become some kind of local teenage guitar hero ,since I was the only one who can play

I was absolutely self teaching , just my ears and my fingers .
That's why I never manage to play 1 to 1 any of my idol's songs as today's kids can do using tabs ,video's ...
Even today , I do not use tabs and shits ...just my ears .

My Dad was a pro touring musician (piano and keyboard), started playing piano at 4 and guitar at 10. the record that lighted up the fire was Abraxas from Santana and later Casino from Al DiMeola. Playing guitar almost every day since 33 years. Real life (kids, wife, mortgage) has the priority but music is still my first love. Playing with a big cover band and a Jazz/Blues trio at the moment.

Wanted to play drums all throughout my early years in the 1980's. In high school, my friends and I formed a band before I even played a single note on a guitar. Since my best friend was a drummer, it was decided I would take up guitar. I began listening to guitar players to see what I wanted to sound like. It was an easy- Kirk Hammett! The band never really materialized. My band mates all sold their equipment quickly and we lost touch after high school. There I was band-less and hooked on guitar. 23 Years later, I'm still hooked! None of them even play music anymore. I would have never been interested in guitar if not for that strange fate of my buddy playing drums. I probably wouldn't even be that big into music. I have often wondered: "What would I be passionate about if it wasn't music?"

Grandfather played a lot of instruments Startet with keyboard though ... came to guitar when I liked Nirvana back in the days

Both my parents were schooled musicians with my mother playing classical piano and dad was a multi instrumentilest, he could play just about anything.

As a rebelious chap i ignored music and my parents attempts to teach me

Then puberty hit and my older sisters boyfriend at the time gave me a two cassette tapes. Black Sabbath Paronoid and Led Zepplin 2.

We had a very very cheap plywood electric guitar, no amp as such, but even cooler, a valve powered lowrey organ with instrument input. Turned every thing up to 10 and it would distort and sag like crazy, i loved it, everybody else did not, nothings changed really for 35 years.

The movie Woodstock got me hooked, Ten Years After (Going home) and Santana really did it for me. With my friends we formed a band: detergent barrels as drums and nylon acoustics with Schaller PUs restringed with steel strings. As amps we used tube radios like Grundig, Telefunken, and so on to be found at bulky junk (Sperrmüll) in the neighborhood. Cranked it up to get loud and distortion was was just for free!
In 71 or so I bought a Hertiecaster with 4 PUs (cheap Asian made strat ripoff sold in department stores), a used Dynacord MV46 tube amp and a beaten up 1x12 cab from Kraan, a later famous Jazz-Fusion band from Ulm. We had a couple of gigs and the whole thing fell apart when school ended. I sold everything except my first acoustic, which I regret especially for the Hertiecaster. Noodled once in a while on the acoustic and my repertoire over the years was reduced to House of Rising Sun.
In 89 I bought an alto sax and took lessons for 3 years but could not join a band due to the job (traveling all over Europe and USA). The dream of a sax player career faded as well until July 2004 I decided to get a guitar and an amp again. My job back then made me kind of mad and weird (still does... ) and getting into blues and rock at a decent level of noise helped me to stay sane. Found a band that was a bad as I was (I mean like "really schlecht") and we managed to get a set list together and some gigs.
Now I'm the last guy form the original formation and I still meet the guys once a week to work on our set list and plan to have gigs at least 2 to 3 times a year. It is a full band with vocal, organ, 2 guitars, bass and drums. It took me about three years to get back into singing like backing vocals. Matching the scale, breathing, reading the words and playing the guitar was just to much in the beginning but now I am doing OK, I was told :D.
Thats it!

Here's my story: in mid 70ties I went to music school to study piano, after 3 years of yawning I quited what I regret now. I was fed with classical music by my father, but I preferred more like from ABBA to ZAPPA. In primary school I used to draw rnr bands onstage with marshall stack walls instead of learning
anyway, I became interested in guitar circa 1983, since I'm left handed I started to learn playing on righty borrowed guitar strung regularly \just like Albert King\ in 86 I brought my first 'serious' Cort strat electric and the more serious playing started ever since. I'm not a pro musician in terms of profession, I work in company and that's my main source for living, but I've played a couple of various bands playing covers \like Dream Theater\ or own stuff to even weddings.
here's link, I'm the lefty one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…j0mKxGkWUfPQbeQg&index=15