It was in my even younger years when I first spotted Beatles movies and the Monkees show on TV when the guitar made its first impression on me. I think it's like that for just about every boy as he moves beyond comic books and puppet shows. Music is the next logical step. The great twang of Last Train to Clarksville and the catchy riff of Day Tripper served to inspire me on the instrument. Now mind you, the first guitar I got to play was one abandoned by my mother, who still swears that that was a quality instrument. Hey, even back then I knew it was a piece of crap, but at least it had become my piece of crap for the duration of my self-teachings. It was an unforgiving and likely hastily-assembled acoustic, surely slapped together on an assembly line by Chinese children and housewives. Hey, the sticker I saw inside the soundhole read "Made in China". So don't judge me!
I bought a handful of books on beginner, and not so beginner, guitar. I didn't exactly track my progress to see how quickly I was picking things up, but there was marked improvement. Probably over the course of a few years, I'd learned to read sheet music not too terribly, but I still struggled to speed up my playing with those more difficult pieces. The books never had anything better than folk and gospel songs, but that was about to change. I reconnected with a childhood friend, who just happened to be a bit of a guitar wiz. Even though he could have sat me down and schooled me further on theory, he instead made my homework fun by showing me how to listen to music and learn to play by ear. That was my most valuable set of lessons ever. Now I could simply play records and tapes, and copy the chords and licks on my guitar.
What made that early training even better was that my buddy owned a beautiful - but heavy - Gibson Les Paul. And he had a massive Traynor amplifier. Man, I felt like a guitar god when he let me jam on that thing. He had a little drum kit that he'd bash on while I'd push myself through some actual rock songs, the first of which was Rush's In The End. Powerful chords and simple, short riffs helped build my confidence and gave me fuel to practise more and more at home, even if that practise was to be on my stiff, finger-slashing acoustic.
Time to become cooler.
One day another friend at school offered me his old electric guitar for a nominal fee. What was it... fifty bucks, I think? I didn't know much about guitars at the time but even this truly ancient Kent 12-string looked like a jewel to me. Its tone was kind of listless on first play, but I learned the magic of the distortion and flanger effects pedals (on my jamming buddy's set-up) in conjunction with a killer amp. I set the guitar up as a six-string since this would be easier (not to mention cheaper) for a neophyte like me.
The one problem with all of this was that I knew my parents could never find out I had this electric guitar. Solution? Easy.... hide it in my closet, behind my clothes. That worked for a while, but after my parents' annual Homeland Security inspection of my room, I was hauled into the interrogation centre for some serious de-briefing. Dad would never understand any of this; I knew that from day one... he hated music - period. Correction: I recall him listening to some bagpipe strangulation techniques on a tape player one day. Does that count? Regardless, he was not a fan. "Turn down that damned jungle music!" was his most uttered line during my teen years.
In the end, there was nothing to be done. I'd bought the guitar and I guess it was decided by the local authorities that I could keep the device as long as it never interfered with their quiet time. Luckily, my cheap, worn-out little amp (also courtesy of my mentor friend) had a headphone jack so that I could practise privately without disturbing the man upstairs (I had a basement bedroom as a teenager).
Naturally, Smoke on the Water (or part of it, anyway) became a part of my repertoire. This was back before that song became a cliché for guitar beginners. I was on my way. There's more to this story, but this is a convenient place to wrap up part one. Stay tuned for more later.
Here's that crazy Kent guitar, which now lives in my brother's storage area across the country from me. There's a great story behind this guitar now: when I moved out of my parent's house, I left behind the creaky China acoustic and sold the Kent electric to a friend of my brother. That fellow trucked that guitar around the world, even settling in Japan for a spell. The guy eventually handed the guitar over to my brother, who then informed me that it was in his possession. I'm sure there was a gleam in my eyes when I heard that. I doubt I'll ever see the Kent again, but it's not impossible. I don't know if I even care to see, own, or play it again, but it was charming in its own primitive way back then. But if the guitar ever did come back to me, maybe I could finally throw twelve strings on it and see what it can really do!
Big chunky pickups, a beast of a bridge, and slider pickup selector switches
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