Part I: Beginnings
Chapter One
I was fourteen years old, going on fifteen when I got my first guitar. The year was 1989. I had practiced some before that on my Dad’s acoustic guitar, and he bought me my first electric when I showed signs that I wasn’t going to just quit. See, I had tried once before, but it hurt my fingers, and I wussed out and quit. But that was before I heard Metallica.
When I was a young teenager, I wasn’t really that popular in school. I was mainly disliked because of my weight. I found that I had to try to be funny in order to get a laugh out of anybody, but it just got me laughed at, not with. My main talent was to draw pictures of anything, but it didn’t always help me vent any of the frustration I carried around with me throughout my childhood. The music I listened to didn’t help much either. I was into old Fifties and Sixties rock and roll. This was in the summer of 1988. I needed something louder.
The first heavy music I ever really listened to was Alice Cooper’s 1987 album, “Raise Your Fist And Yell”, and it felt good to just rock out to it. I eventually drifted back into my usual Little Richard stuff before I started the 9th grade.
I was in for quite a shock when I went to Spotswood High School that year. I saw all of these guys with black T-shirts with Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Megadeth, Exodus…all these heavy metal bands. I had never heard of any of them. So, I started asking questions. I kinda liked what I was seeing, and was interested in what it sounded like, too. The first of these bands that I actually heard was Guns N’ Roses. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was the popular song at the time, and I liked it too. The heavy guitars toward the end spoke to me. I picked up a copy of Appetite For Destruction, their debut album, and listened to it constantly. I stayed away from the rest of those bands though, because I heard they were evil.
Little did I know.
Chapter Two
Jamie Monger was the first guy I ever heard play a heavy metal guitar. He was my age, and he would bring his electric guitar and little 2-watt Fender practice amp to P.E. class a couple times a week. While all the preps played basketball and stayed in their little rich kid groups, the rest of us would hang out in the stairwell just off of the gymnasium to hear him play. He took requests, too. Everybody wanted to hear “Sweet Child…” and he could actually play it! I couldn’t believe it, because to my ears it was impossible for anyone but Slash to play that intro riff.
He also took requests for Metallica songs, which I still had never heard any of at that point. I decided around that time that I wanted to learn how to play. I had heard my dad play his guitar all my life. It was mostly country type stuff, but it was what I grew up with. I eventually decided I wanted to play too, because my Dad did. I had tried before and quit, but now I had another reason. I wanted to rock like Jamie. I still was not complete, however. That would come a little later in the year.
Chapter Three
Like I said before, I had avoided bands like Metallica and Megadeth because I had heard they were evil and would make me turn to Satan, and all that bullshit. I even went so far as to change the channel whenever they would show Metallica’s video for “One” on MTV. That was until one day I decided to let myself watch and listen to it to see what the big deal was. When it was over, I was hooked. I decided right then that I was going to play the guitar if it killed me. Now I wanted to rock like Metallica.
Of course, when parents hear the line “Hold my breath as I wish for death”, they’re bound to think it’s something bad, because Steppenwolf just never said things like that. My dad was no different at first. He didn’t really like the idea of me becoming a metalhead and rebelling against the family and the law, and taking drugs while sacrificing small domestic animals to the God of Hell. Of course, that never happened. The only thing it made me want to become was a guitar player. I started by picking out little parts of songs, even if just a few notes, on his acoustic guitar. Then I moved to full chords. Dad had written down the fingerings for A, C, D, E, F, and G for me to learn.
The first song I ever learned how to play was “Patience” by G n’ R. I was proud that I had a song that I could play. Dad had offered to flip the strings over on the guitar for me because I’m left-handed. But right-handed was the way I played air guitar before that, so it was the most natural way for me to learn, so I did. He saw that I was serious this time and bought a little Cort electric guitar and a Peavey backstage practice amp for me as an early birthday present that summer. Once I figured out how to get distortion on the amp, I never looked back.
Chapter Four
I fooled around all summer on that little electric guitar, trying to figure out Metallica songs, and trying to make up some of my own stuff. It’s a good thing I don’t have any of that stuff on tape! It was probably terrible, but I don’t remember. More than likely. I think I picked out the riff for “One” finally, after much frustration finding notes that sounded right and keeping the guitar in tune. I thought I could play the main riff from Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”, which was really popular at that time because it was the theme song of the wrestling tag team The Road Warriors.
I found later that much of what I was playing was wrong, because I had not yet discovered bar chords. That happened when Jamie showed me how to play “Wild Thing.” He told me “Here, use this chord. You can move it anywhere on the fret board without really having to change it.” So I tried it, and it opened up a whole new dimension to me. The Metallica songs sounded better when I played them. So did “Iron Man”. I was finally learning some useful stuff. I was also growing out of the Cort guitar.
Chapter Five
By the time I got into the 10th grade, I was deep into metal music, especially Metallica. “…And Justice For All” was my Bible, their music my life force. Dad still didn’t care for the fact that I was into them. He hated them, even though he had never heard them. He had only read the lyrics and found lines that were unfavorable, like in the song “Blackened” where it says “See our mother put to death, see our mother die.” That’s all he’d pick up on, totally out of context because the ‘mother’ in that song is mother Earth after a nuclear war. He especially didn’t like the fact that every time I got pissed off I would lock myself in my room and listen to “…And Justice For All.” He even came in my room once when I did that and destroyed my tape. When my mom asked what he was doing, he replied, “I’m saving our metalhead son!” Of course, that made me want to hear more, You know how kids are.
I remember the turning point though. Dad came into my room one day (I was on my third copy of “Justice” by then) and told me that the video for “One” had come on MTV a few minutes earlier and he actually sat through the whole thing and heard the whole story. He apologized for not giving it a chance because he actually understood what the song was about. I forgave him, of course, because I cannot hold a grudge no matter how hard I try. I was then allowed to buy Metallica tapes! I got “Ride the Lightning” and “Master of Puppets” at the same time, and had my mom order “Kill ‘Em All” and “Garage Days Re-Revisited” from Columbia House. My collection was now complete. My guitar also got broken at some point that fall (still in 1989) and we tried to fix it but it was a goner.
For an early Christmas present Dad got me another guitar. This one was a black Fender Squier Stratocaster. It was an okay guitar, but I had an even harder time keeping this one in tune than the Cort, mainly because of the whammy bar. But I was getting better, though. I loved playing the guitar more than anything, even homework. Now, whenever I would get grounded, it wouldn’t be from friends or TV. It was the guitar. Of course, I would sneak it out of my parents’ closet and play it when they weren’t home. Once, when I was finished being grounded and got the guitar back, I played the intro to “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith. Dad knew that I didn’t know how to play it before I was grounded. He ended up making me teach him how to play it.
Chapter Six
By the summer of 1990, I wanted to buy my own guitar. I had been working at a local grocery store for a few months. When I turned sixteen, I was old enough to get my driver’s license and own a car. But I wanted a guitar I had bought myself. Dad told me I couldn’t have both and to choose either a car or a guitar. I decided to ride the bus to school for another year. I had gone to a summer camp in June of 1990 for a week. I met this guy there with long hair and a BC Rich Warlock. He wouldn’t let me touch it, though. He talked about buying another guitar, and mentioned Ibanez. I had never heard of it. So, later that summer, after I got back from camp, I was at the swimming pool just outside of town, and Jamie Monger was there. So I started asking all these questions about guitar prices. BC Rich, Jackson, etc. When I asked about Ibanez, he laughed at me! It was almost like “Why? You’ll never afford one!” So when I went shopping that summer for a new guitar, I knew what I wanted.
We went to the store were he got my Strat, but I didn’t find what I wanted there. I found it at a store called Ace Music n’ Electronics. Dad went with me. We took in my Strat, for a trade-in in case I found something I liked. I walked into the big room where they had the electric guitars, and they had two entire walls covered with nothing but Ibanez guitars! I was in heaven!
I tried out one of the EX models, and I had never played a guitar smoother and as good sounding as that guitar. I picked out a burgundy one with a black pick guard, and at $425, you couldn’t beat the price! I got $150 for the Strat on trade in, so out of pocket I paid $275 for it. I loved that guitar. Plus, it had the Floyd Rose floating tremolo on it and locking nuts. No matter how hard I whammied, it would not go out of tune. It was perfect. I was now ready to make some noise.
I started writing some of my own music in earnest when I got that guitar. I felt like a serious musician when I held it.
I was in love for the first time ever.
To Part II
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