flatfourfan
I'd have to say my mum and dad. Many of my mates grew up on cruddy nursery toones and whatever crud was being pushed out to the kids...........my mum raised me on rolling stones, Simon & Garfunkel, beatles, mammas & pappas.
As for my guitar interest, I'd have to say my buddy Tazio...........
Averatu
Birth.
First album, 'Flaunt It' by 'Sigue Sigue Sputnik'.
Jack-Flash-Jr
Not from a musical family... but I remember counting bars to Bill Haley songs when I was little and then... while watching a tv show (vietnam something or other), the bunch hop into a helicopter and the pilot starts blasting Satisfaction... a couple of days later I stole my first Stones tape (age 12/13) ?
Nylon soon after and electric soon after that follwed by a tidal wave of Jimi, Zep etc. etc.
@ Averatu, I do also remember this though ? :
Listen for the killer rockabilly riffs!
symbolofmylife
The one band I think got me into wanting to play guitar was Metallica. I remember mowing the lawn with my walkman on blaring Master of Puppets and I was completely blown away by the fact that it was humans playing that music. Sure, it may be seen as mediocre by today's metal and guitar standards, but at the time it was awesome!!! And I wanted to try it.
I did listen to rock prior to that (Deep purple, Hendrix, and Vai strangely) but nothing really that made me want to pick up a guitar and play.
So I started and the only lesson I ever got was from a friend showing me how to play a power chord, and then Come As You Are by Nirvana. I played that tune to death and eventually started hitting some Metallica stuff...I basically sharpened my teeth on the Black album. And then moved on to their older, more intense stuff. Funny, some people nowadays still say my playing and writing/riffing is very Hetfield-esque...guess old habits die hard...lol
But as time went on the availability of non-"mainstream" metal improved in this crappy country and I really got turned onto another band called Paradise Lost. They're a gothic metal outfit from the UK. Their album "Draconian Times" is still awesome.
So on a writing level Paradise Lost had, and still has a big impact on me.
singemonkey
My dad used to sometimes put headphones on me to shut me up - connected to his reel-to-reel tape recorder or his cassette deck. They knew this trick would work because I'd just stand there for 45 minutes (a record when you're three and a half), entranced.
It was The Beatles. Elvis. Simon and Garfunkel. Leonard Cohen. And they had a couple of compilations of music that reminded them of their teens. Those had Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry-Lee, The Penguins, The Big Bopper, Bill Halley, and Little Richard (no one wails like Richard).
But I had to play guitar when I saw The Song Remains the Same. That film demonstrated that it was clearly the most awesome thing you could do in the whole world.
It took me a long time to realise that most people don't listen to music like we do. They like to have some background or occasionally they like the lyrics, or when they're 17-25 it becomes important to showing off their identity.
But it's very different for people like us. You know how I tell? Those other people think that it's ok to change the song we selected, or turn it down without asking us ???
symbolofmylife
singemonkey wrote
It took me a long time to realise that most people don't listen to music like we do.
Oh man don't get me started. What also chaps my @$$ is people that "listen to everything" or "like all music". Then, when you drop some Tool or In Flames on them they "don't like metal". Opinionless little sheep. Thought you liked everything?!
I also think that if you play music, you absorb other music differently.
PeteM
My aunt introduced me to her ukelele when I was about 4. I was so taken by it that she bought me one and a basic chord chart.
Bob-Dubery
singemonkey wrote
It took me a long time to realise that most people don't listen to music like we do. They like to have some background or occasionally they like the lyrics, or when they're 17-25 it becomes important to showing off their identity.
But it's very different for people like us. You know how I tell? Those other people think that it's ok to change the song we selected, or turn it down without asking us ???
THis is becoming a big problem for me as I grow older, more puritanical and grouchier. Why can't people just shut up and listen to the damn music! I actually have very little interest now in putting on music unless there's a reasonable expectancy that there's going to be some attention paid to it. If it's going to be just a background to conversation then I'd rather have nothing on at all. So I treasure the drive to work because it's whatever I feel like listening to. I need to get a car player that will speak to memory sticks - then I can just load up 1000s of songs (the one I have at the moment plays MP3s, but only off a disk). We're selling our house. The location of the new chateau X is going to mean a longer commute for me. The plus side of that is that I'll get more listening time.
I suppose there is music that is made for talking over. Muzak. Elevator music... I'd still rather have nothing as a backdrop to the conversation.
I also think that if people just put their mind to it, make just a little effort they will be surprised at what they can listen to and enjoy and their lives will be a little richer as a result.
Jack-Flash-Jr
singemonkey wrote
But it's very different for people like us. You know how I tell? Those other people think that it's ok to change the song we selected, or turn it down without asking us ???
+10100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
I'm not
listening to the song, I'm
living it.
Squonk
singemonkey wrote
But I had to play guitar when I saw The Song Remains the Same. That film demonstrated that it was clearly the most awesome thing you could do in the whole world.
This is what did it for me!!!!
make-and-do
singemonkey wrote
But it's very different for people like us. You know how I tell? Those other people think that it's ok to change the song we selected, or turn it down without asking us ???
It's very annoying when people kill a track that's playing mid-song. At least do a fade out!! Modern day i-Pod Attention Deficit Disorder.
I love the part in Greenberg (movie) where Ben Stiller puts on some Duran Duran for party music and one of the much younger
guys just switches it off for a Korn track.
Argument ensues.
Very funny.
Not from a musical family, but music was always playing in our house. Grew up with Shadows, Beach Boys and Beatles.
1st track that got my air guitar going was ...wait for it...Europe - The Final Countdown.
Hahahaha, cheese deluxe I know...thank god for musical taste development. I had the tape (my 1st ever original tape I bought)
and the flashy Malmsteen type fingertapping solos got my attention.
Only picked up a random nylon string few years later at a friend's place and started tinkering.
Subsequently the thing that got me started - noodly Malmsteen/hair-guitar type playing, is a real turn-off to me know.
Koning
Unfortunately I was the only one in my parents' house that played any music, so didn't have a lot of influences growing up.
My first introduction to proper music was GNR Appetite for Destruction album when I was about 7 or 8 staying with my aunt, it changed my life and to this day Slash is still one of my favourite guitar players of all time. I stayed around the rock track with Def Leppard, Skinnard, Stones, Zeppelin and a bit of Pink Floyd. At this point my nephew that introduced me to these bands started listening to black/death-metal, I never quite got the hang of these so steered clear.
Guitar lessons introduced me to bands like Metallica, Alice in Chains, Ozzy, Gary Moore, Clapton, etc. and somewhere along the line something called the blues bit me, an infection I've never been able to shake and probably the only thing I can listen to every single day without even wanting to skip a track for fear of missing something. John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, BB King, Albert King and the list goes on.
Thats about where I am at this point in my life (26)
Demon-Dave
When I was but a little demon, about 5, my mom took me to guitar lessons with a lady named Ildy in Kensington, that was in 1981 to learn Classical Guitar. Ildy worked at EMI and decided one day, to give me a cassette, Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast”. That really did change my life forever. I then got very into my rock and metal, whereas my mom was a huge fan of rockabilly and my dad classic rock and Umpahpah Yodelling crap (Austrian)! That could explain a lot about me.
IceCreamMan
Led Zep 2 - the voice and the guitar working in conjunction sold me
took me 30 years to pick up a guitar from 1st hearing it though
rebelwithoutaclue
Albert Lee on half of Nashville's recordings in the 70's and 80's.
Charlie4
When I was 11 my friend Adrian started playing guitar and classical guitar lessons and we were hugely into grunge at the time ('99) - Nirvana, Bush etc.
I started playing a year later, dad bought me a Takamine G530 acoustic. Wasn't really that serious about guitar till we moved to Cape Town (14) and got involved in the high school gig scene - Neshama, Fuzigish, The Hogs etc. (Good ol' days 8) )
Found Iron Maiden that year and it just took of from there.
Still love playing metal but started playing classical and currently trying to master jazz.
Now 22 but will keep on playing till the hands and mind start failing me - am just enjoying the ride.
Averatu
Jack Flash Jr wrote
Not from a musical family... but I remember counting bars to Bill Haley songs when I was little and then... while watching a tv show (vietnam something or other), the bunch hop into a helicopter and the pilot starts blasting Satisfaction... a couple of days later I stole my first Stones tape (age 12/13) ?
Nylon soon after and electric soon after that follwed by a tidal wave of Jimi, Zep etc. etc.
@ Averatu, I do also remember this though ? :
Listen for the killer rockabilly riffs!
Tony James is KING!!! He was a member of The Sisters of Mercy in the Vision Thing years among many other great acts.
Averatu
IceCreamMan wrote
Led Zep 2 - the voice and the guitar working in conjunction sold me
took me 30 years to pick up a guitar from 1st hearing it though
Did you make it home in one cone on Saturday?
fjcdt
Grew up in a house with good music in general, mom loved Queen.
Dad boeremusiek, dire straits, deep purple and jim steniman.
Wasn`t until the Queen tribute broadcast in `95/96 that i really got into music, metallica played 3 songs on their set,
extreme played More than words, and David Bowie did under pressure with the Brian may.
Not to mention GnR.
So between Kirk, Nuno, Slash and Brian May i knew that music would be the source of great joy (and sore fingers) for the rest of my life.
So started a musical journey, Page, Clapton, Kosshof, Knopfler you name the greats and every guitar player, skilled or not will be able to tell you that their music had a impact on his or her playing.
Biggest impact on my own, the guys im lucky enough to jam with every so often and every passionate player ive been lucky enough to meet.
The feeling of jamming is the biggest musical turn on ever.
arjunmenon
In no particular order:
1. My maternal grandparents and their love of carnatic music & John McLaughlin
2. My 6th grade english teacher and his 12 string Fender acoustic.
3. Ritchie Blackmore and the riffs from "Smoke on the water", "Woman from Tokyo" & "Hush"
4. Billy Gibbons and the riffs from "Tush"and "La Grange"
5. Stairway to heaven
6. JH's version of All along the watchtower
7. Sabbath's NIB
8. My brother's collection of 80's stuff - Whitesnake, Warrant, Kix, EVH, Faith no more, Alcatrazz, Twisted Sister, Kiss etc.
9. Joe Satriani's Crystal Planet album
10. Steve Vai's Sex & Religion and Passion & Warfare.
