The Bands of Challenge

 A LITTLE BIT ABOUT…how the guitar bug bit me BIG TIME

Yeah guitars….. There’s not too many things on the planet that are as cool as these guys.  I’m going to rattle on a little bit here about my introduction to guitars and the effect that they have had on me.  I’m goin’ way back.  I suspect that there’s a few of you out there that will understand the following and may remember similar times.

As a 5 year old kid, I had already ”kind of figured out” just how special this instrument would be to me.  The lure of it dangled right out there in front of me, was almost intoxicating, and seemed as if it was there just for me.  I was destined to discover the magic which the guitar was and is, so readily available to share with me, as I got closer to it.  I think most young kids, if put into the same room as a guitar, can’t help but be drawn to it, almost as if there was some type of magnetic attraction.  There really is a strong desire to want to get their hands on it.  I’ve witnessed this more times than I can count.

I remember the excitement of the first guitar that I actually touched… It wasn’t an expensive guitar by any means.  It belonged to one of my uncles who was living with us at the time.  He would always warn me when he was getting ready to leave the house.  “Whatever you do, don’t touch my guitar.”  I knew it wasn’t locked up, but so readily accessible and inviting.  The guitar lay on its back, without a case, underneath his bed, calling me, to come, just a little bit closer… the forbidden fruit.

I viewed his warning not as a caution, threat, nor a test of obedience, but rather as an invitation to the sheer ecstasy which might be mine.  It would usually last until the time I would hear my uncle’s car return home.  That was just the beginning.  Just to run my fingers across the strings.  The sound.  That tone.  I needed nothing else at the moment.  Satisfaction was mine, for a short while, and would once again be mine, just as soon as the next time that he would leave the house again.  As I think back, it was quite amazing how much time I spent reaching underneath that bed, just to feel the touch of and hear the sound of the strings.

During those days there was a hit song out on the radio that I managed to get my parents to buy for me.  The song was El Paso by Marty Robbins.  The wonderful lead guitar in that song was played by a member of the Nashville A Team, Grady Martin.  It remains to be one of my favorite guitar lead parts to this day.  What a great combination of notes, one right after the other, and then the groupings of two or more at a time.  Tasteful bliss!  (The lead guitar part here is so very fine.  Even at that age I knew what a sweet lead guitar part sounded like.)

I managed to do okay without a guitar until that fateful evening of February 9th, 1964.  I was less than two weeks away from my ninth birthday and would probably have been okay if my two older brothers hadn’t turned on the T.V.  The two of them, being three and four years older than I was, knew exactly what every teenager of the day was talking about.  Yes, it was The Ed Sullivan Show and the featured act was already known around the world.  Their popularity had recently taken America by storm also, so when they landed in New York City on February 7th, they found out that they had already conquered the U.S., even as they were just arriving here!  THE BEATLES!!!… Wow… “Ladies & Gentlemen, THE BEATLES!!!”

Seeing their fab guitars and hearing the sounds and tones that were coming out of their instruments was the coolest thing I had witnessed in my life ever up to that moment.  (See Beatle Authority Bob Mytkowicz’ article which first appeared in Guitar Player Magazine November 1987 –).  (Decca Records rejected The Beatles after their 1962 New Year’s Day audition, saying that “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business”).  I thought that music was so cool!  When I saw the effect that it had on all of the girls in the studio audience, I was really hooked!  Not only was the guitar such a cool, cool instrument that made these fantastic sounds, it had girl attracting magical powers.  At 8 years of age I knew that without a doubt that I wanted to have a job just like that some day!

It was a bit difficult for me starting out on a half sized, tunable, plastic, acoustic guitar.  It was probably the right size for a kid my age, but it seemed a bit embarrassing though, not because of the size of it, but mainly the fact that it was plastic.  (This was way before Plastic Ono was hip.)  Once I conquered the chords to “Home On The Range”, which was one of the songs in the little songbook that came with the guitar, I proved myself worthy to my parents that I was serious enough to be able to get a guitar that was actually made of wood!  I got my first Silvertone 604 (57G0604L) from Sears which cost a whopping $17.95!  It was made of wood!!!  This was just like entering the big leagues to a nine year old.

No more plastic shame for me.

One of my older brothers had been bit by the guitar bug also.  He is quite a good player and still plays all the time when he can.  He had a friend who was already playing, and this friend began teaching my brother how to play some chords.  His friend’s Dad had another guitar which he lent to my brother to learn on.  You can only imagine just how great it was to get that same invitation from my brother that I used to get from my uncle when my brother would leave the house!

Yep, instead of under the bed though, he hid the guitar high up in his bedroom closet so that as soon as he left, I felt that it was my duty as a younger kid brother, to hurry as quickly as I could to go get a chair from the dining room so that I could climb up and get the guitar down from the top shelf of the closet.  I vaguely remember being questioned once about getting the guitar out and am pretty sure that I said that I didn’t.  My sincerest apologies to my brother for that untruth, but, as a little brother, I didn’t have too many choice answers available for a situation like that.  I’m looking forward to the next time when he and I can play guitars together again!  A bit more next time…….