Which artists inspired you to play guitar ?

Goo Goo Dolls, Santana, there's quite a list. Although to be honest I didn't know who Hendrix or SRV was when I first started playing
 
For me, being in college when I started playing back around 2003-2004 it was Justin Hawkins from The Darkness. Not quite as legendary as some of the other names in this thread....

But I'd also throw in Slash too as an inspiration, as Velvet Revolver released their Contraband album and I seem to remember Guns N Roses released a Greatest Hits album around the same time. So I was really influenced by Slash. Not so much these days.

Queens of the Stone Age got me into rock music, and shaped my music taste but didn't necessarily inspire me to play guitar. But I would say Josh Homme's playing over the years has kept me inspired to play guitar.
 
Lola said:
When I saw johnnie and Edgar Winter playing together at Maple leaf Gardens. OMG. But no one can ever replace EVH. They’ll never be another one like him in yours or mine life! I am so grateful that I got to see him twice! RIP EVH! ❤️
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Admittedly, I was a snob. One foot in college punk and the other in the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead. I didn’t listen to commercial FM radio. I played a lot of guitar. Never really heard of EVH until years later watching VH1’s ‘Where are they now’. He wasn’t and isn’t all that relevant to my musical journey.
 
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Juan Luis Vidal said:
Don't know much about The Darkness, but Justin has a really fun and quirky Youtube channel.
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Yes, Justin Hawkins Rides Again. It's quite cool to see people who know him just from YouTube.

The Darkness were massive back in 2003/2004. Their debut album 'Permission to Land' blew up here in the UK, and "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" was pretty big worldwide. They split up in 2006 and then got back together in 2011. They've had a small resurgence here over the last couple of years (with Ed Sheeran being a fan and appearing with them a couple times) but they're mostly a cult status band really. They do classic rock type stuff, with a plentiful amount of guitar solos. They've never taken themselves too seriously.
 
andrewajc said:
Yes, Justin Hawkins Rides Again. It's quite cool to see people who know him just from YouTube.

The Darkness were massive back in 2003/2004. Their debut album 'Permission to Land' blew up here in the UK, and "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" was pretty big worldwide. They split up in 2006 and then got back together in 2011. They've had a small resurgence here over the last couple of years (with Ed Sheeran being a fan and appearing with them a couple times) but they're mostly a cult status band really. They do classic rock type stuff, with a plentiful amount of guitar solos. They've never taken themselves too seriously.
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They are about as close to Spinal Tap, without actually being Spinal Tap that you can get.

In a good way.
 
If I went back to the core of first really wanting to play, I could easily state that it was a family friend. Rick Hauck used to come to our house and when everyone was singing and my mom playing the piano, he'd join in on guitar and then he'd do more songs that she didn't play along with. I always liked it before that, but he made me really want to do it. After that I started getting into rock and roll and then the "pro" players started to influence my desire to play. But the time I first started to really want to learn to play, it was all because of Rick.

(Side note/story links. This is the guy who was the nephew of Chet Atkins. He sold my dad my first guitar and amp (the little amp that I told the story about Chet owning and me throwing away when it quit working, and the story about me meeting Chet at their family reunion, etc.)
 
DreamTheaterRules said:
If I went back to the core of first really wanting to play, I could easily state that it was a family friend. Rick Hauck used to come to our house and when everyone was singing and my mom playing the piano, he'd join in on guitar and then he'd do more songs that she didn't play along with. I always liked it before that, but he made me really want to do it. After that I started getting into rock and roll and then the "pro" players started to influence my desire to play. But the time I first started to really want to learn to play, it was all because of Rick.
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First of all, yes @DISTORT6 I'm talking to myself again. Now that we have that out of the way...

The new forum feature shows "similar threads" below. Yesterday when I posted this, I saw a thread from 2022 started by @danktat about what regular people "real life players," not stars, influenced you to start playing guitar. I clicked on it and saw that some deleted member also mentioned Rick as the one that made them want to play guitar.

Small world!
 
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My parents were big opera and classical music fans. I found rock and roll when I got my first clock radio in the late 70s. I used to hold up a cassette recorder (one of those with the little red button you pushed with play to record) to the speaker to get the music. I know I recorded some Cheap Trick. Then I found Led Zeppelin and started bicycling to the local record store (which sold these weird glass pipes…) to buy albums of all the greats. (and even some bootlegs). From there I went forward to EVH and backward to Eddie Cochran. And all the great blues guys. Elmore, the Kings, Robert Johnson..
 
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