The Music and Recordings Page

The Guitar Years

My first guitar teacher at six was a classical nylon string player. I didn't last long, because I'd rather listen to a beach-side entertainer fingerpick a gut-strung nylon acoustic, filled with bossa nova songs full of romantic words. First day in New York City, our nylon classical guitar was left in a taxi cab. We never saw it again. I stopped playing until ten. I heard an Earl Klugh record, and his clean melodic phrasing caught my ear. I picked up a dusty abandoned nylon string in the apartment and started playing along with his records.All the pictures of rock-and-rollers caught my eye too. But AC/DC's Angus Young impressed me the most with his schoolboy outfits and devil-horned Gibson SG. I didn't realize until much later just how rich the attitude of AC/DC was. I worshipped John McLaughlin. His clean-cut goody-two-shoes look combined with impossibly fast, raunchy, loud, distorted guitar lines with Mahavishnu Orchestra appealed greatly to my sense of comedy regarding guitar heroes. Meeting John McLaughlin in person (waited in the rain for his for two hours after a show with De Lucia and Di Meola) and seeing how sweet and gracious he was simply reinforced his embodiment of the Stroop Effect where appearances and ability seem entirely unrelated. I thought Jimmy Page was very inventive, but his rockabilly playing roots made me crave the swagger that Angus projected. AC/DC solidified the idea of rock and roll devil may care attitude in me. My first electric guitar:

I played in front of a live audience as a teenager with a band. The whole well-endowed prowess of pelvis-thrusting rock guitar gods made me laugh. I applied the devil may care attitude of rock-and-roll to itself and short-circuited its accepted image. I wore a cute mickey mouse t-shirt 3 sizes too small, tight corduroy brady bunch jeans with pretty sneakers and adorable pink shoe laces. The metal headbangers there to see other bands thought I was the biggest fairy in town.

Here is a live recording of me playing my first guitar in front of an audience that night. 1985 (type: mp3 size 1.5 mB)

(the delayed reaction at the end still makes me laugh to this day)

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