Which guitar hero got you to pick up an axe?

I started out life as a drummer. Back then I could pick any instrument I wanted to play and DRUMS were it!
The name of the first guitar player I ever learned was Ace Frehley.
The first brand name of guitar pickups I ever learned was DiMarzio... because that is what Ace Frehley had installed in his guitars.
I got into playing guitars by asking various guitar players that I jammed with as a teenager if I could try on their guitar and asked them to show me how to play a note or two. Eventually I started buying my own guitars. To this day, I'm still better at playing drums and buying guitars than I am at playing guitars. :p
 
I learned to play using a Beatles songbook on an acoustic. Played acoustic for years as the singer in a band and didn't play electric until I was about 19, though I had one from 16. My earliest influences were Andy Summers, The Edge, Dave Sharp (The Alarm) and Stuart Adamson (Big Country). As I got more into it I gravitated towards SRV, Lukather and Sambora. I still love all of those guys
 
For me it was Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson and James Burton.

Begged my folks for a guitar and they bought me a plastic Roy Rogers model.

But I didn't get good on the guitar until i heard the Beatles and the Stones.

By then i was old enough to have a real guitar. Just a Harmony but it was a real guitar.
 
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Scotty Moore. I was 5 or 6. My grandmother was talking about this horrible singer named Elvis Presley and how he was going to be on the Ed Sullivan show. It was past my bedtime, so I sneaked to the stairway while the adults were focused on the screen. I could have cared less about him, but there was a guy behind him who had this piece of heaven around his neck. I was transfixed. Three days later I asked my mother (a violinist) what he had around his neck, and was told it was called an archtop guitar. She didn’t get mad at me for sneaking up late, and I never wavered. Although I‘m mostly an electric player the last 8 years, the archtop is in the back of the guitar rack, and calls me periodically. It’s still magic.
 
dogrocketp said:
Scotty Moore. I was 5 or 6. My grandmother was talking about this horrible singer named Elvis Presley and how he was going to be on the Ed Sullivan show. It was past my bedtime, so I sneaked to the stairway while the adults were focused on the screen. I could have cared less about him, but there was a guy behind him who had this piece of heaven around his neck. I was transfixed. Three days later I asked my mother (a violinist) what he had around his neck, and was told it was called an archtop guitar. She didn’t get mad at me for sneaking up late, and I never wavered. Although I‘m mostly an electric player the last 8 years, the archtop is in the back of the guitar rack, and calls me periodically. It’s still magic.
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I saw that show when I was 5 or 6. Changed my life. The next day I was literally strumming a broom and trying to sing Hound Dog.

Just 8 years later we were watching the Beatles on the same show and by that time I was ready to take a few lessons and jump on the bandwagon.
 
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For me...I started out playing country/folk music for a while, but the guy that made me want to take guitar more seriously was Alex Lifeson. If it wasnt for him, I might have quit guitar a while ago. I would have still been into music, but more as a songwriter and not as a guitar player.

Special mention for Robin Trower. I never got into Hendrix as much as I got into Trower. He's one of those guys that it seems has a bit of a niche impact on guitar overall. He gets unfairly lumped into the cavalcade of Hendrix inspired clones, but I found him to be darker, like a bridge between Psychedelia, blues, and proto doom metal. When I do blues stuff, he's basically the guy I think of when I'm constructing solos or rhythm pieces.
 
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I really believe it was more of a deep love for music that got me started but If I were to pick any players that nudged me along to start learning guitar it would definitely be Ace Frehley & Neal Schon.
As I got older and built up some chops I would say players like Bobby Gustafson, Hetfield, Petrucci & Jim Matheos helped push my playing further.
 
I feel like I was always interested in the guitar for as far back as I can remember. My older brothers (who are quite a bit older than I) used to listen to Kiss and I'd run around playing air guitar to Ace Frehley as a toddler. I wouldn't necessarily list Frehley as an influence because I was probably more into the makeup and aesthetic of Kiss than the music. It probably wasn't until I was introduced to the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Santana, etc. as an early teenager that it really became obsessive. However, that kind of playing seemed so unattainable to me at the time. Especially Jimi and Santana. At the same time, the Grunge movement was beginning to happen and I heard Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the other Seattle groups. That's when I realized that I could do it if I put forth a little effort.
 
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