The Guitar

I decided to learn to play the guitar out of spite. My parents had bought one for me, years ago, but two separate instructors had been determined to use it as a means of teaching me to identify key signatures via Mary had a little lamb, London bridge is falling down, and various beige flavored compositions by other music tutors. I lost interest quickly. All of that changed on the night of my fifteenth birthday.

I was a loner then. More socially underdeveloped than antisocial. As a result I had a pretty limited pool of people I could invite to my party. One of these people was a guy who had started playing the guitar a couple of years before. He had worked at a pizza parlor (now extinct) nearly every day the previous summer and despite being mostly tone deaf and possessing the rhythmic instincts of a boot in a dryer he had used the money to purchase a 1973 Gibson Les Paul equipped with mini humbuckers. It sounded like the notes were being fired at your eardrums by a crossbow built out of jaw harps. It was his pride and joy. At this party, he inevitably discovered my guitar languishing in some corner of the basement and brought it out to show off. He played Blackbird by The Beatles. From the time his fingers connected with the strings until the last note faded away, it was like a spell had been cast over the house. Even the dog sat and listened.

To this day I can remember what I was thinking as I scanned the room, taking in the awestruck faces:

"If this asshole can do it, why not me?"

The following day I demanded he teach me to play it; I learned it in a week. I could play it at tempo in two. This pissed him off to no end.

Though I didn't care much for him then, and definitely don't now (due to a series of events that bears no influence on this story) he changed my life forever that night. Before the guitar, the topics on which I could sustain a conversation were limited. I liked video games, anime and fantasy novels in that order. The people, in both my house and hometown, who gave a whisper of a shit about any of those subjects could be counted without running out of fingers. With the guitar, I finally had something people wanted to talk about. As I was discovering and learning songs from bands like Led Zeppelin, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Killswitch Engage, and Circa Survive I was also discovering that people really liked discussing them. I hadn't just been introduced to a new hobby, or a way to express myself, I had been given a pathway to connect.

The thing I like the most about the guitar is its meritocracy. No matter how smart, capable or talented you are there is no guarantee that it will ever get you anything. Dolts, dullards and bigots seem to find their way into positions of comfortability and influence with much greater ease than humanity's best. History, too, prefers to remember the ones who are written about the most. The people whose names and stories deserve to be the subjects of study, the ones who truly turned the wheel are all too frequently confined to obscurity. The guitar is different. No matter who you are, no matter where you are from or what you have stacked against you, if you work hard enough the guitar will give you what you want. There is nothing separating anyone reading these words from guitar legend status other than a few thousand hours of practice, and an unshakable belief in themselves. Remember the maxim: maybe I can't play it now, but I will play it soon.

There is a feeling (I'm not sure it has a name) that I think may be exclusive to guitar players. If your amp is loud enough, and you're standing close enough to it, when you let a note ring out there is a chance that it may turn into feedback. The pickups on your instrument sending the sound of your amplifier back into itself in a perfect loop, creating the mournful wail that has become emblematic of rock and roll. In that moment, you, your guitar, the amplifier, and the audience are all vibrating at the same frequency. You create the sound, you are the sound, the sound is you and the sound is them. In a world of banal tragedy and spreadsheets, the value of transcendent experiences is beyond the power of money to quantify.

Since the night of my fifteenth birthday I have recorded nine albums and EPs two of which have been pressed to vinyl. I've been signed to a record label (no longer, alas), I've been on the cover of a magazine, and been in enough bands that I'd have to sit and think about it before I could give you an exact figure. More important than any of that, it has lead me to friendships that I know will be a part of my life for the remainder of my time on earth.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go practice: I have a show tonight.