Which guitar hero got you to pick up an axe?

Max Headroom

Max Headroom

Your Mom rang, can she have her panties back!
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Are most people into guitars here similar to myself and were blown away at an early age by an event or two involving musicians?
Curious as to who/what?

For me it was Ritchie Blackmore and Michael Schenker.

Saw Blackmore's Rainbow in 76 with the quintessential lineup of Blackmore, Dio, Powell, Bain and Carey.
Permanent indelible mark!

Then shortly after (81/2?)
MSG with again Powell on drums.
Schenker probably left an even bigger impression so much that I went right out and bought a Gibson Flying V...lol.
Pity Gary (flat as a pancake) Barden was the singer( and I use that term loosely).

So who was it for you?
Or maybe it's a what was it?
 
My brother whom in 1973 was playing a 70 SG with a Bigsby. Drove me to Ray Mullins Music in Providence RI to pick up my first cool guitar before I had my license. An Ibanez Artist that I still have to this day. Oh and it gets better, in 85 he went into Wurlitzer Music in Boston and bought one of those new manufacturers guitars a PRS Custom to which he still has. That got me into the brand long ago! Hats off bro.
 
Nobody famous but a guitar hero to me.

I remember it like it happened yesterday.

(cut and paste from an old post)
A long long time ago, (freshman orientation for High School in fact).
All of us strangers packed into an auditorium.
Lights go down. Curtain opens a little bit and there's a guy
standing downstage center with a guitar on.

but...

It's an electric guitar (a Fender Jazzmaster as a matter of fact. I know that now).
Suddenly the room fills with a sound I have never heard before.
It takes my breath away and as I look up I see that the guy is having a ball up there.
I knew right then and there.
"I want to do to people what he just did to me and have the kind of fun he is having doing it".
The curtain opens all the way and the rest of the band comes in.
I am lost in a new world.

Many many years have gone by.

I am still having fun and still doing to others what he did to me.

Thank you Joe C.

I hope you're still with us and still out there having fun.
 
Guitar heroes didn't interest me at all, nor did the instrument itself.

I was a keyboard player, and was in demand for that. Bandmates taught me to play guitar a little. That way, I could play when there wasn't a keyboard part. I'd borrow my brother's SG Special and drag it to gigs to play on a few songs. Still, I had no serious interest in it.

But on nights when I didn't have a gig, I'd go to parties where friends would bring their acoustic guitars and jam. I'd play piano. Unfortunately, there usually wasn't a piano around. Then I'd be stuck sitting on my hands watching my friends play.

So I bought a Guild acoustic. I was not gonna let everyone else hog the spotlight!
 
Aahzz said:
For me it was MTV. I was 13 when it went on the air and it was life changing - so much music!!! I watched it every day when I got home from school, until dad got home and switched the channel.
Click to expand...

So I should expand a bit...there were some early heroes of mine from MTV, that were a definite influence on starting. Rik Emmett, Alex Lifeson, and Gary Richrath all come to mind pretty quickly. So, I did get a Hondo II plywood Les Paul copy and a solid state silver tone amp when I was q4, which I completely didn't learn to play. At 17 I got a Peavey Bass, which II also didn't learn to play. Finally, at age 24, after working the New York Renaissance Faire, I decided I needed to get an acoustic to play around the campfires...so I did, and finally learned it.
 
The guitar heroes of the 70s all had a hand, but particularly Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Carlos Santana, and Phil Keaggy early on. I started in earnest in 1976. If you think of all the great bands and classic albums that were out then or in the 3-4 years either side of that, it’s amazing to me that anybody didn’t start making music then. What a time.
 
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Eddie Van Halen.
Not the only one, but the main one. I don’t play anything like him, but he is still an inspiration.

I remember my sister playing Beat It for me when I was a kid. She was so excited about it and asked me what I thought. I didn’t want to rip on her taste in music, so I thought about it for a second and answered honestly. I told her I liked the guitar.
 
László said:
Guitar heroes didn't interest me at all, nor did the instrument itself.

I was a keyboard player, and was in demand for that. Bandmates taught me to play guitar a little. That way, I could play when there wasn't a keyboard part. I'd borrow my brother's SG Special and drag it to gigs to play on a few songs. Still, I had no serious interest in it.

But on nights when I didn't have a gig, I'd go to parties where friends would bring their acoustic guitars and jam. I'd play piano. Unfortunately, there usually wasn't a piano around. Then I'd be stuck sitting on my hands watching my friends play.

So I bought a Guild acoustic. I was not gonna let everyone else hog the spotlight!
Click to expand...
I guess it was not so much the guitar hero aspect that first hooked me. It was the total energy and synergy of Rainbow on stage at that time that literally blew my young and tender mind.
But yes I then fixated on Blackmore as I couldn't/can't sing to save my life, piano totally escaped me.
But Blackmore's stage presence was just something else!
Totally electrifying!
 
For me (the first time), James Hetfield and Kurt Cobain inspired me to pick up a guitar. When I started playing at 14 all I wanted to do was jam along to heavy and hooky riffs. No solos or leads for me. Those two set the stage and encouraged me to give it a shot. Over time I started learning more about guitarists as musicians but I do not stray far and gravitate to that similar approach.

As an adult, life priorities changed and I stopped playing guitar in my early 30's. It took several more years before I sold everything off. Something about it always hung out in the back of my mind. I would stop in my tracks when listening to certain songs. I really started listening to a lot more punk, hardcore, and metal core music (going back to my fascination with rhythm and riffs) maybe 10 years ago. About two years ago (during COVID, of course) I watched a couple EU festival shows from ~2018/2019 on Youtube. Watching first Bad Religion and second Parkway Drive was enough to send me over the edge. That was in September 2021 and my first guitar and amp arrived a few days later.

Being in my mid-40's it is a bit tougher to learn than when I was a kid, but there are so many more tools and methods at our disposal that the past 1.5 yrs have been more enjoyable than the first ~15 yrs I played! The cool thing for me is that I have a lot of bands from the 80's to now which still inspire me.
 
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We listened to so much guitar driven music at the end of the 70s and the early 80s, and I had my favorites. Blackmore, Page, Lifeson, Schenker, Gary Moore, Frank Marino, etc. But, I didn’t want to pick up a guitar until I saw Blue Oyster Cult, Aldo Nova, and Dokken sometime around ‘83 or ‘84. Don’t recall what (or who) happened at that show that triggered me, but after that I was pestering my folks to let me trade my sax for a guitar.
 
I was lucky. The town I grew up in Northeast New Jersey is very small (2 miles long x 1 mile wide), but for whatever reason was FILLED with bands and musicians during the 80’s and 90’s. EVERYBODY played. I use to ride my BMX bike all over town and heard bands playing in garages, basements, just everywhere. Eventually, my friends stared playing and I would go to their rehearsals and shows.
That‘s when I had my grand epiphany - “IF THEY CAN DO IT, I CAN DO IT!”
So I never had that one guy that made me want to play (I do have a vast amount of influences, however). It was my local scene that pulled me in.
 
AceRimmer said:
I guess it was not so much the guitar hero aspect that first hooked me. It was the total energy and synergy of Rainbow on stage at that time that literally blew my young and tender mind.
But yes I then fixated on Blackmore as I couldn't/can't sing to save my life, piano totally escaped me.
But Blackmore's stage presence was just something else!
Totally electrifying!
Click to expand...
Speaking of electrifying performances, that Bonamassa video I shared in a thread makes me want to pick up an axe. An actual axe, with a handle and a metal chopper-upper thingy at the end!

And take that axe and destroy all of my guitars so I'm never tempted to play again. ;)
 
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