What motivated you to take up the guitar?

[dreadnut]

You know, I was a child of the '50'a and '60's, and there was no shortage of good music and innovative musicians. I was not one of the "popular" kids, but at some point I grasped the idea that if I could play the guitar, I could lead the youth group singing around the campfire. Nobody else in my circle was doing that at the time.

About that same time, I was inspired by a guy we used to go camping with (actually I was madly in love with his 15-year-old daughter, but that's another story.) At night he would bring out his old Dobro guitar and we would sing around the campfire; Johnny Cash, Ray Stevens, Del Shannon, Glen Campbell, Roy Orbison, etc. After spending time with him, I just knew what I had to do.

So I would say he was my primary role model.

50 years in I've led literally thousands of sing-alongs.

 

[Nuuska]

I was drummer in a band - also sang about 50-60% of the songs. We used to practise with the guitar player - just the two of us - and he sometimes left his guitar at my place so I could practice alone - then after some months I bought my first guitar . . .

 

[richardp69]

GIRLS!!!! GIRLS!!!! GIRLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[GGJaguar]

GIRLS!!!! GIRLS!!!! GIRLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Same. Didn't work.

 

[F312]

Just to play along with what I hear in my head. At the time now it's Girls Girls Girls.

Ralph

 

[Westerly Wood]

My parents...

Late at night on my 13th birthday, they came home from a night out together. They woke me up out of bed and told me to come downstairs. They were standing each on a side of a small classical guitar. I think they bought it while up in Boston.

I learned on that for a while before I played any other guitar. It is still up in the back of a closet in their home in NH. It is broken but when I go visit there, I do take it out and look at it.

great memory.

 

[gjmalcyon]

GIRLS!!!! GIRLS!!!! GIRLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep.

And it kind of did work for me - first laid eyes on my bride of 37 years playing guitar at Saturday night folk mass when my buddy brought her in to sing with us him.

 

[walrus]

The Beatles. Then The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.

It should have been girls!

walrus

 

[fronobulax]

I played tuba. I thought bass guitar would be easy to learn, more fun and "cooler". I was right on one In retrospect if I had been exposed to Dixieland at the right time, I would have ended up in a Dixieland band and never looked to bass guitar.

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

See here:

 

[GAD]

So that I could one day spend all my time and money obsessing over them in an effort to beat Grot.

I play the long game.

 

[Rebosbro]

The 3 biggies, sex drugs and rock and roll. Unfortunately, number 2 on the list took over and controlled my life for about 35 years. Got sober close to 6 years ago and now I’m playing again. It’s part of my recovery. In a band with 3 other sober alcoholics. I play everyday. Maybe someday I’ll even be good! Playing keeps me centered. While I’m playing, I can’t think of all the not so pleasent things going on in my life. It’s just me, the guitar and my higher power, and it just does NOT get any better than that!
Have a sneaking feeling I’m not alone........
Paul

 

[GardMan]

It all started with the Beatles... but there are many more after that!

 

[spoox]

When I was nine--Elvis and Ricky Nelson. And of course My dad brought home a square neck Hawaiian guitar! After a few months of lessons with a little German man who would hit my knuckles with a ruler, that was the end until 1962 when for several months I took Spanish guitar lessons. That didn't work out either, as I would play things the way I thought they should sound as opposed to how the music was written.
A year later my dad brought home a Kay Thin Twin, which a year later somehow changed into a Guild Polara, which I still have. I lived in Redondo Beach at the time so friends would come over and show me how to play all the surf standards. I bought a chord book as even then
I was writing songs and rhythm guitar was all I ever cared about--oh, and my mother did teach me some ukulele chords--(which came in handy
when I started playing steel guitar again in 1968 after seeing Sneaky Pete with the Byrds before the Burrito Bros. split--as I'm not a big Hawaiian music fan!). I did and do love '20s music, so that's when the ukes and steel guitars come in handy. By the time I was playing in public I'd already
met the love of my life so GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS was definitely not a factor. She even eventually became a fan!

 

[Brad Little]

When I was about 9, I played "Greensleeves" on the piano at a Cub Scout Christmas Party in a church basement, The piano was badly out of tune, had keys that did nothing when depressed, was so bad that the minister apologized about the piano as a means of explaining some of the shortcomings of my playing. A friend played something else on a guitar and I realized that he didn't have to rely on anybody else to be in tune. Then, when what Van Ronk called the great folk scare came along, there was no looking back.

 

[davismanLV]

I played piano when I was a kid and was getting adequate at it then we moved to Thousand Oaks, CA and got horses. That became my first love and the piano faltered and then stopped. My brother played guitar when I was growing up but he wouldn't let me near it (7 years older) so I just ignored it. I always sang in college in several groups. Always singing. Then much later in life Don had two guitars and he played really well. A Martin D-35 and an old Goya. He sat me down and showed me some basic chords and then in 1994 when health care hit it's lowest point I was the last of 5 managers to be let go. What a blessing!! I was run off my feet trying to do the job of the previous 4 managers that were gone. Then they laid me off and i got a super nice severance package. So I went down the hill to Guitar Center on Sunset Blvd. and bought myself my first guitar, my Guild D65S. And that's how it all started.

 

[Nuuska]

... So I went down the hill to Guitar Center on Sunset Blvd. and bought myself my first guitar, my Guild D65S. And that's how it all started.

Not too shabby for first guitar - DE400 was my second or third . . .

 

[chazmo]

One of my counselors at summer camp played the guitar, and he got me started. Nothing formal ever came of it, but it was great to be able to make music so quickly by playing the rhythm / chords to popular songs... compared to the painstaking labor of learning classical piano and trumpet which preceded that.

As for the GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS... I am always reminded of this:

 

[dreadnut]

One of my counselors at summer camp played the guitar, and he got me started. Nothing formal ever came of it, but it was great to be able to make music so quickly by playing the rhythm / chords to popular songs... compared to the painstaking labor of learning classical piano and trumpet which preceded that.

As for the GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS... I am always reminded of this:

Yeah, well he deserved that!

 

[chazmo]

^ No doubt he did, dread.