October 15, 1979, my 12th birthday, was the day that my rock & roll fate was sealed. For my birthday present, my parents let my two older sisters take me to the Kiss Love Gun tour concert. I am still not sure why, it was either because I was relentlessly begging them or because my parents thought if I was tagging along, my sisters would stay out of trouble, either way, I got to go.
The first album I bought with my own money was Kiss Alive, followed next by getting Ted Nugent’s Cat Scratch Fever as a birthday present, and then Van Halen, which had the guitar riff that rocked the guitar world, Eruption.
My Mom bought me a cheap beat up electric guitar for Christmas when I was 12. Even though the guitar was in pretty bad shape, I still thought it was the best thing ever. My parents did not have enough money to afford guitar lessons for me, and even if they could have, there was not a guitar teacher anywhere near the small town in Iowa we lived in. The only thing I had to learn from was an old beginner guitar book and since I did not know anybody who knew how to play the guitar to help me understand any of the content in the book, I struggle and floundered along for a year until I finally gave up.
My mom passed away a few years ago and a little after that, my nephew gave me back my old guitar that I gave to him to learn on, so I decided to honor my mom and finally learn how to play the guitar. And my journey to being the next wanna-be guitar god began.