Re: THE WELL: For Real This Time...I'm an Open Book
If you could have any three wishes, what would they be?
- Eternal happiness for all beings
- Eternal compassion among all beings
- Eternal health for all beings
As a follow-up, do you think you'd be extremely disappointed if the jinne who was to grant these wishes decided to only grant your second wish?
Since they're wishes, I'd be psyched to get even
part of one of those wishes. Genies don't make their way around here all that often.
What made you start playing guitar?
Sorry if I sound like a broken record here. Ace Frehley and Kiss as a whole were a big musical influence on me when I was young. I always knew I wanted to be in a rock band, and the instruments that interested me the most were the guitar and the drums.
I got a plastic toy guitar when I was five or six, and I used to play
Alive II (Kiss' second live album) over and over in my bedroom, pretending to be Ace Frehley with that toy. Eventually, when I was at an age when other kids in my classroom started taking music lessons -- this may have been around age nine -- my parents offered to start me on acoustic guitar lessons. My older cousins had an acoustic they never played, so they gave that to me. It was huge for a nine-year-old, which made it difficult to play. Add to that a woefully uninspiring guitar teacher and study curriculum, and you get one bored and frustrated kid. I don't think I lasted even a year doing acoustic.
Fast-forward to my freshman year of high school -- age 14. At the start of the school year, a new music store had just opened downtown: Mercuri Music. Just as interested as ever in rock music, I now had a place right in town to walk around and gawk at real electric guitars. (The other music store, where I took my guitar lessons, had more orchestra and jazz band-type instruments such as violins, clarinets and trumpets.) Up to this point, I'd never actually seen an electric guitar, with the exception of the electric one of my older cousins had but never let me touch. (I'm not so sure he touched it all that often, either.)
This music store didn't have what you'd call a vast array of fine musical instruments, but they did have an assortment of Cort guitars -- anyone remember these? -- as well as a few Fender Squires and one true Fender Stratocaster. The Strat always stood on a floor stand at the top level of this multi-tiered stage area they had toward the back of the store. It was positively majestic to any kid who walked into that music store. The store owners took to me quickly, as I'd ride my bike there almost every afternoon just to drool. They'd let me pick up and play (unplugged) that guitar a little bit every now and again.
A kid a few years older than me worked in the back of the shop, performing various odd jobs that included doing guitar setups. He took a liking to me and, having a couple years of guitar-playing experience under his belt, decided to teach me a few rock riffs. The riff I remember the most, and probably the first one he taught me, was the intro to "Working Man," off Rush's first album. He didn't just show me what notes to play, he also went into the nuances of playing that riff: how different the same note can sound when played on this fret of the sixth string versus this fret of the fifth string, how to add vibrato (both along the string and along the frets), how to get your hand from one part of the neck to another part without making crazy string noises in the process…that sort of thing.
For Christmas that year (1985, I believe), my folks bought for me a Cort guitar and Gorilla amp. It was cheap equipment, but it was enough to propel me forward. I learned by ear the opening riff to "Black Sabbath" (off
their first album of the same name), and played that and the "Working Man" riff over an over again for a couple weeks (much to my family's displeasure, I'm sure.) My cousin taught me about harmonics one day shortly thereafter -- the same cousin who had that electric guitar I mentioned -- and showed me the opening riff to Rush's "Red Barchetta." Man, that was cool.
I eventually upgraded my short-scale Cort to a full-size Kramer, and my Gorilla to a Rickenbacker Road amp. (You can find a pic of the Road amp
here. As I recall, mine seemed to have fewer knobs, though I could be wrong.) From that point forward, the guitar, the amp and my cassette player, along with a healthy collection of current and classic rock tapes, became my best friend. I quickly got to learning riff upon riff, song upon song, all by ear. I can't imagine a better way of spending those first couple years with my guitar.
Perhaps my response is more than you expected. Sorry 'bout that.
