What person/band motivated you to pick up the guitar?

[bsic]

Hey guys-

Was thinking of this on the way into work this morning when an old tune came up on the iPod random playlist -

What band, song, or guitarist motivated YOU back in the day to learn guitar? Which artist made you scream "I want to do THAT!"?

I think Bjorn's was the Sex Pistols-- mine-- was believe it or not Metallica's "black album" back around '91. Senior year in high school, our daily ride to school was 7 or 8 guys crammed into an old beat up station wagon (with a MAJOR sound system upgrade ), ears nearly bleeding by the time we got to school. Saw a Monsters of Rock video where they performed, and said... "I GOTTA LEARN THIS". They had a really mainstream, listenable take on harder rock music, where it was certainly not metal, but the guitars made it sound more huge than your typical hard rock sound of the day. Heavy, haunting, but simple riffs. Great music to learn first on guitar..

Cant say I listen to that style of music at all much in the years to follow, but it sure inspired me to play, and play loudly. After that came the ~8 year SRV obsession... which was what really helped me learn more about dynamics, subltety, TONE...


Others? Given the wide variety of ages, backgrounds, personalities... I love hearing what others say to this question.

[thesjkexperience]

I am just old enough to remember the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show! I was under two, but my Mom got us so excited (my Dad was at work) to see the band we used to sing to on the radio. I saw George and knew that was in my future. Unfortunately, my parents wouldn't get me a guitar, or let me buy my own, thinking it would lead to drugs Well, since I had noting to do in the Wisconsin suburbs I got very involved.

One night when I was 16 I heard Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun. That one note, and you know the one , I called my friend who played bass and we went off with $200 I had saved from working at the Ski shop and went to the music store. I came home with a used (by one year) '77 wine red, three bolt, Stratocaster! My friend helped me tune it and I kept it under the bed and would go to his house to play through an amp. My first song was The Star Spangled Banner as I used to have to wait a long time for my friend to get ready to go out.

My parents found the guitar and I had to sell it But, I went off to college in 1980 and picked up a used '76 Firebird which my Mom actually helped with I bought and sold for about 6 months and came upon a THE STRAT in candy apple red! I still have that one and it was my only guitar for almost 4 years. I was in several bands at that time and got a job at a music store and picked up a bunch of guitars for cheap. People would need to unload guitars they had bought 6 weeks earlier to pay rent. I usually kept $200 in my pocket and you wouldn't believe the deals I got. Remember this was the new MTV period and guitars were not popular.

Over time those Gibsons went WAY up in value helping fund much of what I have today.

But, George Harrison and all those "midnight movies" of Led Zeppelin (how I learned to play guitar), Pink Floyd, Jimi, Woodstock, etc. were what got and kept me going.

[cajone5]

Well I may be giving away my age here but what really inspired me to play guitar was acoustic music, older "rock" and some newer acoustic/rock...

-- Cat Stevens
-- James Taylor
-- Steve Miller Band
-- Dave Matthews Band
-- etc.

I had always seen my brother play guitar and wasn't a big fan of his style. He was big into Nirvana and just made noise on the guitar... not so much a player as a rock god in training... Don't get me wrong, I like Nirvana but he wasn't quite doing their music justice... So that kind of turned me off to guitar in general. I was also somewhat of a slacker in high school and didn't want ANYTHING to take up my precious free time so I stayed away from anything requiring practice

Anyway, I went away to college and met some people who played guitar and it kind of sparked my interest again. After my freshman year I ended up picking up an acoustic guitar and beginning to teach myself how to play. I took a couple mini courses at school and got better and was primarily an acoustic guitar player for about 5 years with only a short stint into electric (which I didn't "get" at the time and quickly dismissed and moved on from).

Recently, around 10 months or so now, I traded a 12-string acoustic I had that rarely got played for a Partscaster and a Blues Jr. amp. Then I got a couple pedals (boss, mxr, line 6) and started to toy around. Didn't (and still don't ) really understand how to play electric vs. acoustic so I just strummed away and thought most of the pedals and the amp sounded awful. Then I found TGP and then BJFe.org and the rest is history...

Oh and I'm 24 (for another 3 days anyway) now and started playing at 18

[SteveA]

Well the very first inspiration was probably Lenny Kravitz Era Are you gonna go my way and all. But that quickly turned in hendrix with his All Along the Watchtower solo that just left me speechless ! I mean I listened to that thing more times than I care to count. Little wing came after that, etc..

Now i'm into the old blues looking at Albert King and Robert Johnson

[Bobby D]

heh.....my grandpa Slim Henderson is who inspired me to play guitar, and taught me my first chords.

that is, until i bought an electric guitar with a fuzz and wah pedal. then he said "get that noise OFF MY PORCH"

then it was Clapton, Hendrix, Frank Marino, Robin Trower.......then the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash......then later Elliot Easton with The Cars, Eddie Van Halen, Jamie West-Oram from THE FIXX, Andy Summers from The Police.....

[melodichaotic]

heh.....my grandpa Slim Henderson is who inspired me to play guitar, and taught me my first chords.

that is, until i bought an electric guitar with a fuzz and wah pedal. then he said "get that noise OFF MY PORCH"

then it was Clapton, Hendrix, Frank Marino, Robin Trower.......then the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and The Clash......then later Elliot Easton with The Cars, Eddie Van Halen, Jamie West-Oram from THE FIXX, Andy Summers from The Police.....

The FIXX! Excellent memories. GREAT band--I saw them after their heyday in the 90's and they still sounded great. Jaime had some great parts and sounds, one of my favorite being from "One thing leads to another"..just heard that song last week ,for the first time in a long time, and it still sounded fresh--the late 70's/early 80's were booming with what I would consider closest to the true "alternative" sound..early REM, early Police, PIL with Johnny Lydon(aka Rotten from the Pistols), early INXS, etc, and the Cure-even though wasn't terribly keen on them I respect the fact that they had at times Zeppelin attitude but were taking things to a different place--actually, there cover of "Purple Haze" is one of the coolest spins of ANY cover song I've heard.
"Walking on the Moon"..spacey, utilitarian, ultra-vibey...that was fresh, as was by U2's third record, where The Edge really came into his own--actually those two alone are the origins of MANY subsequent influences(and rip-offs) to follow to this day.

[thesjkexperience]

Cant say I listen to that style of music at all much in the years to follow, but it sure inspired me to play, and play loudly. After that came the ~8 year SRV obsession... which was what really helped me learn more about dynamics, subltety, TONE...

That is what I got from Jimmy Page and somewhat from Jimi. Zeppelin would do acoustic, electric 12, and full on Les Paul with a Telecaster solo all in one song. The live version of Since I've been loving you" got me thinking about using the volume and tone controls for huge dynamics and color. Jimi did similar things in his live work where he would bring everything down to a whisper level and then roll up the volume knob and blast! In fact I think that is illustrated in machine gun as well.

When I started doing my own recordings on an old Fostex cassette 4 track I would often use an electric 12 where the bass would go, or use my octave pedal with a Les Paul. I would dub in acoustic guitar under or on top to the really dynamic riffs of a distorted electric to get this incredibly bold sound. I felt I got so many production ideas from Page who learned his ideas from Les Paul. (I grew up about 10 miles from where Lester grew up) I even used a paper 12 pack box as a drum kit once using two mics and different distances which freaked my drummer out thinking I had someone else sit in lol!

[ptbarnum]

heh.....my grandpa Slim Henderson is who inspired me to play guitar, and taught me my first chords.

that is, until i bought an electric guitar with a fuzz and wah pedal. then he said "get that noise OFF MY PORCH"

Cool!
My grandpa showed me the ropes too..he was awesome, even feigned interest as I played him an intro riff from some Suicidal Tendencies tune.
His favorite was Chet Atkins, and he had Guitar Player clippings posted up in his basement workshop where he taught me the string names and open chords on his Gibson (which I have now, and still think of as my favorite axe)..

I started playing the saxophone in my school's jazz band, and sorta fell into guitar (combo of hearing a Hendrix bootleg, and seeing Marty McFly shred Johhny B. Goode in Back to the future.)
Then metal, then SRV passed, and I got deep into his playing...Eric Johnson, Vernon Reid, angus young! The eighties were a cool time to learn guitar.

[Donner]

Great thread !!!
Born in 1960 - for me I was lipsyncing with brooms to 45s with neighborhood kids early - but then the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was the lightning strike and I was obsessed with getting a guitar and finally my Elvis lovin grandma bought me one for Christmas about 1970 - My Mom is the same age as Elvis and grew up in Memphis and still has some pics with him~ so she understood ...... Hey Jude was the first record I bought with my own money (along with Paul Revere ) and that was it until a few years later when I became equally enthralled with KISS and they were my first two real concerts ---- I never liked Hendrix or much of the other British bands ( except Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and Queen and Pink Floyd and Bad Company and )........... loved Joe Walsh and Alice Cooper and Lynyrd Skynyrd and REO SpeedWagon(early) and Montrose and FogHat and Grand Funk and Aerosmith and Peter Frampton and Boston and Styx etc... and that was High School in the midwest in the 70s

Then the Cars and Dire Straights and Robin Trower and Pat Travers and Journey and More Queen and then Metal hit and went acoustic singer songwriter

[Bobby D]

great thread!

my grandpa played with a gentleman named Jimmy Rogers, "The Singing Brakeman"

this is one of the songs my grandpa taught me from Jimmy.

Jimmy is considered to be the father of American Country Music. but when RCA Records came to town and signed Jimmy, they left his band behind. so my grandpa ended up doing his own thing, and eventually had a show on WWNC in Asheville NC, til he ended up getting drunk one time too many and cursed on the air on a live radio show in the 40s


in Charlotte NC, my grandpa used to jam with this guy, Arthur Smith - grandpa brought me along, and I got to meet Arthur when I was 10 years old, he was kinda impressed that i was able to play most of "Guitar Boogie" back then that my grandpa had taught me. Arthur Smith had a morning TV show every day Monday-Friday in Charlotte, and it was kinda cool to see him play guitar every morning on the TV before I went to school. A lot of European people seem to REALLY dig Arthur Smith, there seems to be more love for him in Europe than here in the USA.....

and grandpa LOVED Chet Atkins.....and when i went out on my own and started playing rock music with FUZZ, grandpa always told me that "those rock guitarists ain't even a hair in the crack of Chet Atkin's ass!"