Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

collin wrote:I sucked at sports.



The end.

Never was my bag either, even though I gave it a shot. I must admit, the cheerleaders were the best part

whojamfan wrote:

collin wrote:I sucked at sports.



The end.

Never was my bag either, even though I gave it a shot. I must admit, the cheerleaders were the best part

Mikey, you were a cheerleader?!

I started playing guitar in my early teens because I loved music, but it was not so long after that I had a choice to make...................between a becoming a member of the cloth (clergy) or the possibility of being a professional musician (this is 100% true btw). I chose to be a professional musician.

Strangely enough that did not last very long (10 years or so). Mind you I am not sure how I would have made out with the other vocation either.




Mike as a cheerleader? That would not be good!

My story makes me look seriously ignorant, but here goes.....

I tried playing guitar when I was a teenager, but it was all rather half hearted. About 4 years ago I was getting desperate to learn and talked to the Head of Music at the school I work at. I felt a bit like an idiot wanting to learn electric guitar for some reason. He was really supportive and arranged for me to borrow the school Yamaha Pacifica and have lessons in lunchtime with the school guitar teacher. I didn't even know we had one at that time!

I bought a mexican Strat, but being a huge R.E.M. fan, especially of Peter Buck, wanted the same guitar as him. The first time I saw him up close, he played a gig with Robyn Hitchcock and I was straining to see what the make of his guitar was and I could just read it. "Ricken....something" !! I came home and found it in my guitar book and the rest is history! I now have 6 Rickenbackers, A Tele and my dear Strat, which I rarely play but Aitch played a lot when he was here.

Although I am a real newbie to guitars, I have really fallen in love with Ricks. Their beauty, sound, quality and idiosyncrasies...as well as made loads of great, great friends from them

Rickygirl wrote:I didn't even know we had one at that time!

Which, the Pacifica or the teacher?

When;
Well that would be around 1979/80 i was 9 or10.
But i got a little plastic guitar for Christmas when i was 3 or 4 in 1973/74,and i think that started something.

How;
My dad bought me a used Satellite 65-T electric ,and i used a Watkins Dominator head through a 1x12" speaker from a Vox AC30 in a home made cab!
Dad was a drummer but started out on guitar so he tought me my first chords, and in no time i was playing Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran tunes.I then tought myself.

Why;
Dad was in a band from the early 60's and during the 70's played together with his brothers.
So i would see all their guitars and stuff all the time,well, at weekends anyway!
Dad brought me up on all the greats from the 50's and 60's, i especially liked Eddie Cochran ,Duane Eddy, Chet Atkins and of course The Beatles ,The Searchers, The Who and all the other bands beginning with The.

The music just sounded really fun and i was hooked and wanted to try to play it,it had to be even more fun to play ,right? I was also getting into other stuff too from then, Stray Cats, The Jam, AC/DC ect.. Yeah i know,an eclectic mix!

I went from the Satellite to a kay Les Paul copy and then took to bass ,a Westone Spectrum.
Around 1986 i went back to guitar and saw A Hard Days Night for the first time and fell in love with that 360/12!

I got my first Gretsch 6120 in 1988, a 1963/64 double cutaway,cost me £1100,that took a while to pay off!
My first Rickenbacker came a year later ,a 360/12V64.
I had to sell my Epiphone Sheraton ,Hondo Fame 760/12 ,Hondo 4003 copy and a Hondo ES335 copy to obtain this,plus a few pennies as well .

I still have both Gretsch and Rickenbacker to this day, plus a few more.

In a way, it's hard to imagine that I didn't learn to play guitar as a kid. My dad was an excellent guitar player, not in a band or anything, just for fun, but he could play classical and flamenco style acoustic like nobody's business. Listening to the stuff Ruben Diaz has on the Flamenco forum brings back lots of childhood memories.

The thing was, as kids, we weren't allowed to touch his guitars, probably a good thing... Anyway, he was gone by the time I probably would have been wanting to learn seriously.

Somewhere in grade school, they were starting to introduce us to music and getting into band, etc. For some reason, I've always been attracted to the low end of the musical spectrum, and the instrument that caught my ear was the trombone. If they'd offered a tuba or upright bass I may have gone that way, but trombone was the lowest thing they had.

So, I went on to play trombone in school band and orchestra. Of course, once I found out there was such a thing, I moved on to bass trombone (still have it too ). I also played tuba, bass clarinet, and even bass trumpet (still have that too). For some reason I never went to upright bass even though we had them in orchestra, probably too much of a wind instrument mindset, I guess.

Anyway, I suppose that set me up to always be intrigued with the bass lines and such in rock & roll. I'd listened to a lot of rock and really liked it, etc. but never really thought about playing it until one day. I heard this great new song on the radio. The bass line was just so captivating, I just couldn't get it out of my head. It's likely that this album was the first rock album I actually bought, just to hear that song and that bass line. What was it? Roundabout. Ol' Chris Squire's bass in that song was actually a life changing event. That song still does it for me too!

Needless to say, it's been a love affair ever since. I still haven't learned to play a guitar, well, I can play a few chords, but those little tiny strings, so close together, just cause problems. And there's those two extra strings too, what the heck do you do with them? One of these days I'm still gonna learn to play a guitar... maybe...

I used to watch Les Paul & Mary Ford on TV when I was a little kid, probably 4 or 5, and was enthralled with Les's playing and his black Les Paul guitar. Of course, when the British bands all hit in '64-65, that was an influence too, although I was always into drums as well, so at age 14, I started drum lessons and soon got a Slingerland set (that I still have), and got into garage bands playing drums. I continued to play drums semi-pro in various bands. The guitar was always something I wanted to pursue as well. In college, I bought an old Gibson Melody Maker from a former girlfriend for $50, and started messing around, picking up Chuck Berry licks and bar chords from a friend. Over the years, I bought and sold guitars like crazy and just fiddled with the instrument, slowly getting better, but never gigging. I'd occasionally jam with friends or go to an open mic.

Three years ago, I finally decided to get serious about playing guitar in a band, so I got one together and started booking gigs. I almost had a full-on panic attack on my first gig; "What have I gotten myself into?!" Despite a lot of clams, I got through the gig and no one said I sucked. From there, it's gotten progressively easier and easier. The more gigs I play, the more confident I get, the better I play, and the better I feel about it. I could count the clams I hit Saturday night on one hand, and they were all pretty minor.

Now, I play drums in one band and guitar in another. It's pretty unusual, but I'm having a great time doing it.

As far as why I started playing guitar, I guess it was just something I had to do. The music was in me. Guitarists are my musical heroes; Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ron Wood, BB King, John Cipollina, Jeff Beck, Leslie West, Mike Campbell, etc.

As a kid, I thought playing an electric guitar was as cool as it got! In '62 at the age of 12, I used to go next door and play my neighbors nylon-string acoustic. I taught myself the riff to "Peter Gunn" and encouraged by that next set out to learn the melody to "Ghost Riders in the Sky". The neighbor called my Dad and told him to "get the kid a damned guitar so I can play mine". Mom & Dad signed me up for lessons with a teacher and a rented guitar. After 3 months, I got a Gibson Melody Maker and Skylark GAS-5T with tremolo.
Although I kept taking lessons, I spent more time with an another older neighbor who had a single-pickup Silvertone with the amp-in-case. I was learning songs from Ventures albums and records by other instrumental artists. I hardly practiced my lessons and played most of the songs from memory by ear. I finally got busted for playing a song from memory in the wrong key. I decided to quit lessons and spent more time playing with the neighbor. His parents were deaf, so we could play as late and as loud as we wanted-until we moved up to bigger rigs-then they made us turn down when they could feel the floor shake. The neighbor started a band with guys his own age and I was left hanging. I talked a left-handed friend my age into learning "Bass" which he actually started playing on an upside-down right-handed six-string with the treble strings removed and the four bass stings reversed so they were correct for a lefty. As soon as he learned a couple of songs, we found a drummer and piano player and started our first band, "The Skylarks", named after my amp. Our first gig, we made $10.00-$2.50 each, but we were hooked. After a few months, I got a NOS '62 Strat and the first Deluxe Reverb sold in South Carolina from my former teacher (he was also a dealer), and the bass player got a Jazz bass and Bassman. And the rest-as they say-is history.
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collin wrote:I sucked at sports.



The end.

hahaha. fair enough! i started because i wanted to be morrissey and marr rolled into one. i achieved my goal, but only in bodily weight