I'm going to make myself feel really old. Oh well, damn the torpedos and full speed ahead.
I first picked up a guitar in the fall of 1974. My grandparents had a Silvertone classical guitar that only had 3 strings on it. I started, without any lessons, picking out the arpeggio in "Who'll Stop the Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
A few weeks later, we moved to Texas. My mother gave me an old student folk guitar she had. She couldn't afford lessons. All she could afford was a set of strings and Mel Bay's Book of Chords. And I taught myself. I also taught myself to read music, to sing, to play lead. I taught myself how to sing from a book called "How to sing olympically" by Graham Hewitt.
Anyway, here's the song that got me started.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIPan-rEQJAI started really working on my voice in 1988, to discover that I was a tenor.
Here's the inspiration that led me to work on my voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-AYAv0IoWIYeah, it was an inspiration to me. The perfect song, even if they borrowed the chord progression from "I'd love to change the world."
Though my bass range is sketchy, I am a solid tenor with reaches into castrati.
Above all, I love music and I am glad to have this forum to share my passion and am thankful that you accept my offerings, from time to time. There are times when I wish we could gather for the motherfucker of all jam sessions and I bet we could rock the world.
Thanks to Gott (no pun intended) for this thread, Bumblefoot, Pawnshop, and Justin, and other too numerous to mention.
We're all drawn here by the hard-driving, fresh, soul-fresh and honest feeling of rock and roll. From the youngest here at 14 to 17 years of age, to me, 45 (and scaring the hell out of 46, born 3-19-1964, if you must know).
In the words of KISS, "God gave rock and roll to you, gave rock and roll to you, gave rock and roll to you..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1yvQV7J47oBy the way, in that video, drummer Eric Carr was suffering from advanced stage cancer and still did the shoot. Now, that's rock and roll.
Hooraw ...