Why did you start playing guitar?

[McDuff]

My dad played and so it always seemed kind of magical to me so in middle school I tried to take lessons in a class of 50 sixth graders pretending to be rock stars (couldn't hear a note you played and my parents got me a full sized jumbo guitar which was ridiculous) so I almost gave it up, but in my freshman year of high school I heard Hurricane by Bob Dylan and well here I am.

[DMichaelG]

Because the banjo wasn't as cool as the guitar at the time, mostly due to the advent and quick rise of rock 'n roll post Beatles.

 

Essentially like the sound of the guitar better than the banjo.

[Steven Tari]

Don't remember the reason why. But I still have my Bought used 65 KG-2A and still play it all the time with my new baby's.

[JDK]

Because my parents wouldn't let me have a drum set.

[retrosurfer1959]

Parents required a instrument as a child so we all started on the Piano and like others here I hated the piano so I tried guitar and never looked back.

 

Plus chicks dig it

[TommyK]

A steady diet of Johnny Cash, Andy Griffith, Roy Clark and a pickin' and a grinnin' in my formative years.

 

I learned from The Andy Griffith show that guit tars is chick magnets.

 

It's how I snagged Mrs. K. That was during my Simon and Garfunkel years. "Sounds of Silence", "Homeward Bound", "Scarborough Fair" (I think I got my future MIL to like me with that one)

 

I should reacquaint myself with those S&G tunes. Might just get a kiss from the missus.

[codename]

My dad and brother played and dad's 51 ES 300 was always there if I wanted to , but didn't start to play till I was around 20 after a couple of my buds that played said "You're nuts if you don't learn to play that nice old Gibson."

[LPguitarman]

In the neighborhood I grew up in, there was a guitar player next door with a garage band, two guitar players across the street (my best friend's older brothers), another guitar player down the street (part of the neighbor's garage band), another guitar player in the next adjacent subdivision.

 

The whole area was full of musicians. It kinda just grew on me. Then my best friend got a bass and suggested I try guitar. I bought a cheap acoustic for $1.00 from the guy down the street and built up from there.

 

We always watched the garage band next door and dreamed. The highlight was when my friend let me borrow his older brother's Goldtop Gibson Les Paul (with permission of course). Fell in love with the Les Paul and the rest is history. Never looked back and kept dreaming of the day when I could get my own LP.

[TommyK]

...

That, and chicks dig guitar way more than saxophone. I mean you can't sit on a couch next to a girl and just start playing the sax, thats weird

 

That's why you second on the clarinet.

 

But then again, there's only so much you can do with a clarinet, exspecially since you can only play one note at a time.

[RayG]

My Dad asked me in '67 (i was 10) what I wanted to play. I told him 2nd base for the Yankees. He told me that wasn't going to happen.

 

Settled on acoustic bass then guitar after about a year. Thanks Dad, good call.

 

Regards-------------

[saturn]

As early as I can remember, I always loved listening to music. Around 4th grade I started getting interested in the hard rock I would hear coming from the older kids. I asked my horrified mom for a KISS album and she reluctantly got me KISS Alive II. I think "Shock Me" was the main song that got me specifically interested in electric guitar. The distorted tone sounded to me like our vacuum cleaner

 

Of course, with KISS, it was mostly the image that made me want to learn guitar. The one song that I remember hearing where it was the actual playing that got me, was "Sultans of Swing". I didn't even know the name of the song or who did it, but I just loved the guitar playing and told myself some day I'm going to learn to play that. It took a few more years, but I finally got an electric guitar and took some lessons. Once I got some proficiency, I told my guitar teacher I wanted to learn "Sultans of Swing" and he taught it to me.

 

Oh yeah. Van Halen too (II)! B) I was about the only kid my age who was into VH in their early days. I didn't know anything about how to play guitar, but knew there was something different about EVH than any other guitarist I'd heard, and that also made me very interested in learning to play. I remember listening to "Spanish Fly" over and over, just fascinated with all those notes droning together. Funny, I have never even tried to learn that piece.

[Silenced Fred]

That's why you second on the clarinet.

 

But then again, there's only so much you can do with a clarinet, exspecially since you can only play one note at a time.

 

Hahaha good one. That totally brings in the women. "Wanna see my clarinet?" "Wanna wet my reed?"

 

See, woodwind almost sexual jokes don't flow as well as ones with guitar. That's why

[Guest rogerb]

I come from a musical family, my Dad played professionally most of his life, but I think the main reason I got into playing guitar is because the girls liked it!

[TommyK]

I wasn't going down that road.... but...

 

I was thinking the clarinet wouldn't take up so much room on the courting couch...

 

But, then again, I'm an old man and my courting days have long ago passed.

[Searcy]

I wanted to get laid.

[tartanbeastie]

I loved the sound of guitars. I grew up listening to different stuff from country to traditional Scottish music, with some Shadows and Buddy holly Thrown in for good measure and it was always the guitar that I could hear above everything else.

When i was about 12 (now 36) I finally got the chance to try out a guitar and the rest is history..

[Twiz]

I started playing guitar because I heard this:

 

[Crocstar6]

it was something that has always appealed to me. im very musically talented and i decided to try it. i love it. hey haha metallica rocks my favorites ride the lightning

[bonzoboy]

On Feb.9,1964 my destiny was put in front of me when I saw John Lennon and George Harrison for the first time.I decided then and there that I was going to be a guitarist/musician.My 10th birthday was the next month and it was then that I got my first guitar and I haven't stopped since.

[Kimbabig]

"Women like guitarists"

____________________________

HaHa! what a ****ing lie!

 

 

 

[Hydra26]

My whole family is musical in one way or another, mostly with more classical forms and instruments. I myself played cello and piano for a number of years (not that I rememebr how to do any of it) because that was what was available through school. We were pretty poor when I was growing up. But I always remembered my dad playing folk songs from the old country for my sister and I and singing on this crappy yamaha nylon string that was a BIIIG deal when my mom let him buy it.

 

So roundabout the time I was getting ready to go into high school, my folks got me an electric guitar (I had been borrowing a friend's guitar for a while). For me, guitar was the "fun" instruement, I could play without worrying too much about form or technique or brainpower. It was kind of an escape from all the people who were insisting that I do everything in my life a certain way. It wasn't until many many many years later that I could afford my first Gibby, but that's perhaps a story for another time.

[Jared Purdy]

By the time I got my first guitar I had already become fairly accomplished on the harmonica. The electric harp is what really grabbed my ear, that was when I was 13. When I was 20 I decided that I wanted to have a guitar to noodle around on, as all of my friends had really nice accoustics (they were playing mostly blue grass), so I headed down to one of the major accoustic stores in Toronto and picked up a half decent Sigma, which use to be owned by Martin. I played that guitar off and on over the next 30 years, but it always "played second fiddle" to my harps.

 

The funny thing was though, around the time I turned 20, I started have this recurring dream that I was standing on a stage playing the blues with a Strat in 3 colour sunburst, and there was a pretty sizeable aubience. I had that dream for years, and years and years. For Christmas of 2009, I headed out to buy my daughter an electric guitar, as that is what she wanted. I had never even really looked at them, as I then knew very little other than a couple of the major names. I walked into this store, and picked up a Strat (a lefty, for my daughter) and I had an epiphany. My wife had been asking me what I wanted for my 50th which comes right after Christmas: it was to be a Strat in 3 colour sunburst! And there it was, under the tree, Christmas day, a Strat Deluxe in 3 colour sunburst. And guess what? No more dreaming of standing on the stage!

[Gibson Artist]

I started playing in 1983 (age 13) in summer camp one of the counselors played a Yamaha acoustic and let me try it one day and gave me a mini lesson. My mom bought me a cheap 50 dollar sears guitar soon after and although it had rough action it actually sounded fairly decent with some good strings.

 

The guy who taught me was a huge beatles/bob dylan fan so that was obviously the first things i learned and about 3 years later when i worked as a dishwasher i bought my own Yamaha guitar and even wrote a couple of original songs. Since then, its been about dozen guitars since with epiphones, yamaha, ovation, fender, ibanez and a whole lot of Enjoyment.

 

Sometime in the next 48 hours ill have a new guitar in the mail :)

[sexygibson]

Well, I had 3 olders brothers that played and would have probably started at some point but what did it for me was seeing Gary Bushey in " The Buddy Holly Story ". I loved Buddys' music and wanted to play it so I took up the guitar and still play some Buddy to this day.

[chengin]

It was definitely fate. There was an old unidentified nylon acoustic in my grandmothers house. No one had any idea where it came from or who played it, it was just there, and definitely no one could play it. I was just always drawn to it. So, when I was about 7 I brought it home.

 

In school at that time there was a teacher that played all the time, I really mean all the time. The year I was in his class a few years later, pretty much half of it was spent listening to him playing his old martin acoustic and rolling his cigarettes, it was like school of rock. I don't know how I learned anything that year, but I did do my first live gig around that time at a big venue in a big town (seemed like a stadium gig to us at that time we were so small), still remember it well.

 

He used to give lessons once a week after school, for about £1 a lesson (or maybe it was 50p)which lasted an hour or 2. He'd be there teaching a load of us with his Martin and rolling his rollies, which was equally as interesting to us at the time. That was a sweet guitar (I only heard a while ago that it got stolen while he was playing in the States, he was well bummed by that).

 

That was about 30+ years ago and he retired years ago, but I heard he still travels back every week to the school and still gives lessons for £1 which are still going strong! Needless to say, pretty much every kid in our village can play guitar...