....guitars and pianos... a story:

So I stood on the front lawn with my Japanese electric guitar... ,,,and a picture was snapped that spelled out my future in a way that I did not understand then. I was going to Middle School (in Santa Clara, California) and I truly hated it. I thought of myself as trapped in a social culture that I both disliked and mentally rejected from the beginning. It was all about sports, clubs and academic things that I had really no use for. Chess Club? Give it up. Wrestling? Stupid. But guitar? That was different. I didn't even have a clue on how to tune it - but I knew immediately from the first time I ever held it that it was my friend in some way. It was 1965 or was it 1964? I don't know - but I did know that church offered a piano to play when nobody was around to say "don't play boogie stuff" or something like that. My grandmother thought I would be a "musicianer" or something like that. She was raised in the sticks of Virginia on a sprawling tobacco farm owned by her father. She also was very grounded in the Pentecostal church - which struck me as nothing but very wierd. But, Grandma, "Mom" as I called her for reasons I won't go into here - loved me and was constantly looking for ways to nurture either faith or music in me. She constantly sang hymns as she ironed clothes and worked around the house sewing and cleaning and cooking. Daddy Mike (as I called him) was always at work - and he liked to go hunting (which I didn't like) and fishing (which I didn't like)... but I did like my guitar and took a lot of comfort from it always. I had a bad complexion and was very sensitive about it. I used to look at myself in the mirror and shudder at how I appeared to myself. I knew I liked music - but I wasn't sure what it was all about yet and even more - didn't know what I should like or should listen to. In elementary school I heard my first rock and roll band. I was in 6th grade and something inside me jumped at the sound of the songs that they played to our school assembly. I suppose at that time it was a bold move for a principal to allow a rock and roll band play for young impressionable kids - and it was the move that changed my life forever. I knew THAT was what I wanted to do. It communicated, people listened and seemed like the perfect way to express myself and get someone to listen to me say, sing or do anything. There were a lot of things that happened during my early teen years that changed me a great deal as time went by. There weren't any drugs or alcohol in the picture - but I think that to some degree, I did like girls. Didn't know much to do about it as nobody spent any time explaining the "mechanics" of it all - pretty awkward, actually. We moved to another area of the city and I spent a couple years floundering with my music - mostly playing piano and taking a few music lessons on piano - all while the kids played street football and ran up and down the streets of the neighborhood - for me it was piano and books and perhaps the occasional pet. I had a few friends and acquaintances but none that influenced my music until later. I really have to say that my first lessons at guitar were at the hands of some who were just a bit more able than I was - and it began by learning a few chords and a few sets of note riffs - every new thing built upon the last and made something different and exciting to listen to. ...and as my music skills grew, other things began to happen... ...so what were the first songs that you ever learned as you began to play guitar or keyboards? The obvious ones had three chords. There was "Gloria" (by Them/with Van Morrison), "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones, "Play With Fire" by the Rolling Stones... but before I ever got to that point - there was the music that influenced me as I grew into an appreciation of bands and their music. Upstairs in Willow Glen (where we lived for a time) there was a Hi-Fi... yeah - not a stereo - a HiFi - and the first records that we ever played on it were Rickey Nelson, Billy Vaughn, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Elvis Presley and it was only later that two other albums came in the house (I bought them) that really made serious changes in the music that I listened to over and over again. First - there was "Meet the Beatles" and then there was "The Rolling Stones" - those were the album titles - that was it... there was no "Bridges to Babylon" or "Sgt Pepper's" yet - they weren't even thought of. There was no Jimi Hendrix and no Metallica - there was more likely The Everly Brothers or the Beach Boys. Even Jan and Dean, later on. Entertainment without the Internet and without VCRs? Yeah - that's what it was. Radio was even different then.. All there was amounted to "hit" radio on AM and FM wasn't even starting it's heyday yet. One of the biggest things to come along was James Bond and THAT was a passion too. I read every single Ian Fleming novel that came out, starting with Dr. No and forward. At that point, I never imagined there would be garage bands and playing with other kids from school - and in retrospect, when that DID happen - other things began to happen too. I was a true loner. My entire understanding of life to that point revolved around watching Gil Hile's All Night Movies (and I used to sit up all nite when I should have been sleeping before a school day) - there was also church. Good old Sister Wrench. She was the church pianist and she pretty much banged away on the old hymns, "He Set Me Free", "How Great Thou Art", "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" - and just about every other old fashion hymn you could ever dredge up. There was no Christian Contemporary music at that time - unless you would want to count "Kum-By-Yah" or something like that. I am leaving out names - because I don't think anyone wants to see their names here - most of them are dead now anyway - but one particular pianist - with her background in New Orleans changed my life in church. She played "barrelhouse" style in church and I had never heard anything like it before. Except maybe as a child growing up in East Palo Alto down the street from an all-Black church - and man - THEY COULD SING! I listened to a lot of Floyd Kramer then. Much of the musical piano style that I play today is very much rooted in Black gospel, Floyd Kramer and Barrelhouse playing. It works oh so well with the blues! As I move into the personal material I will be restricting some of these entries to those on my friend's list. So - if you don't want to miss anything you had best jump in, because this is going to go on and on. ....but Floyd Kramer gave way to other things... .....like learning that "prepared piano" offered other possibilities. Upholstery tacks turned out to give the piano a "honky-tonk" sound when I placed one into the felt of each hammer that would strike the string. This was the first time that I discovered that piano didn't have to sound like a piano in the proper sense of the word. And - I had a cassette recorder by now and I began to record my songs on it. By the time I visited with my cousins in Illinois I had learned how to make my acoustic guitar sound like an electric one by using contact pickups - little more than a transducer with two wires soldered to it and secured to the guitar with a bit of surgical tape. There were way more than three chords and I was playing melody lines very easily. My cousins were enthralled with the idea of playing in a band and I influenced them as "the cool cousin from California" and ended up pushing them into a lifelong love of music just like myself. It was only two short years after that when I learned they had formed a country group in Illinois, and later - North Carolina - and were playing in bars and truckstops to make money with my Uncle managing them and pushing them along the way to more and more as musicians. Their's was a family band made up of brothers and two sisters - they ended up recording a vinyl album and selling it whereever they played. I still have a copy of it somewhere. My Uncle Earl was always doing something different and unique, especially where his children were concerned. When I visited them in Gilman, Illinois (one of the lounging places for Al Capone in the 1930s) I made all kinds of interesting discoveries about life. One of the most memorable was getting hooked-up with "Dolores" who turns out would hook-up with anyone... much to my cousin's amusement. "Come over to my house and play the guitar for me, Gary". That was an early discovery that music tended to cement the most fleeting relationships. ..but fleeting relationships and girls were never as important as music... When we came back from Illinois and resettled in California we had a piano in the living room and I got my hands on a second cassette recorder. This was my Sophomore year at High School and things began to happen musically. With the second cassette recorder I quickly discovered that I could sing with myself and record a second instrument by ping-ponging back and forth between the recorders. This gave me something that was rare at that time - another musician - even it was me! Overcoming the shyness and introversion during my early high school days led to the discovery that there were other musicians around and that was one of the greatest things that ever happened in my life. I formed friendships with other guitar players and we spent a huge amount of time playing music together and both copying the things we heard others play as well as the early attempts at writing our own songs. Few of us had decent instruments or amplifiers and microphones at that time were used together with our guitars in our marginal amplifiers. First there was crummy crystal recording mics (which sound terrible) and then better ones from Radio Shack. Despite the bad equipment - we made music that was not so bad at all. Garage bands began to proliferate all around us and regular visits to other kids playing music in their garages became routine. The "garage show" was about all we had in the earliest days - with the garage door being opened and playing to the street when other kids would come by to watch. My guitar friends and I would walk around the neighborhoods on a Saturday trying to find other bands that were practicing to just listen and exchange ideas. The currency of acceptance was approval and mutual respect. "Hey man, that sounds great!" and - with that - you had gained another insight and maybe got to stick around to learn a few things from each other. It was not very long after that when we discovered that you could play at a recreation hall at a public park or a dance at the Junior Highs and High Schools and make a few dollars for your effort. That was the next milestone - discovering that people would pay for bands to play. We learned how many songs it took to cover one, two or three hours and set out to make sure that we had enough to be covered for that length of time (and almost immediately discovered the 15 minute break per hour thing was a great help when it came to having enough songs!) This was the first year of discovery that began to lead to even better things. When I was fifteen years old I played my first Enlisted Men's Club on a military base. These events were unique to anything that we had ever seen. AND - once we started playing at those - we discovered that there were a lot more of them out there. For some reason - booking agents in the valley (Santa Clara Valley) had not discovered the money potential in dealing with the military clubs. Several phone calls rounded up no less than five of these gold mines and by sixteen - we were playing at all of them on a repeated basis. I remember a couple of years later annoying a booking agent because he had never been in such a such enlisted men's club before and he was literally begging me to not quit one band and make that "gig" so he had an "in" there. Having done it for so long - I failed at that time to recognize that the agents had finally figured out it was an untapped venue and were struggling to add it to their list of clients. Not to get too far ahead - and backing up sufficiently to tell this part of the story - at an early point I also discovered that there were predators out there. One person who seemed to show an inordinate interest in us was a gay man looking for fresh blood. That didn't become apparent until one member of our group was literally a part of his sexual advances and I simply walked away from the whole thing in disgust. In retrospect - the "victim" was a teenager who had no father figure, was continually looking for "something new" and the whole thing later on (two years) nearly ended in tragedy when he tried to take his own life after his mother discovered the relationship. (and the rest of you.. put your guns away - I am not dissing or flaming here). One garage band led to another until I finally hooked up with a group that was made up of all high-school buddies and we played our homecoming dance (before which we had lost the game). It was at this dance that I experienced my first "review" when another student (which shall remain nameless in this account, but he will know who is he is when/if he reads this) launched a fairly decent sized ice cube across the dance floor from the back of the high school cafeteria and nailed me squarely in the forehead. Hmm, could it be someone did not like the show? (Duh!) Must have liked something because two years later we were playing in a band together in a completely professional environment. But, we talk about that later. I even took a couple of guitar lessons from him. Strange marketing for a guitar teacher (but it must have been effective, because I conceded). So many things happened at this time that it is very hard to keep it all linear in event order, and being that this is the first time I have written it down anywhere - I may reorder and republish this later as I think it through. It was about this time that there were large rock concert gatherings happening in the SF Bay Area - and the mode of exchange in our house was "go to church and you can go". ... so I went to church on one such occasion and went to a huge gathering called "The Human Be-In" and San Jose Family Park at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds - where I saw (all in one fell swoop) Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane and if I gave you the other two band names you wouldn't even believe it - but one of the two was Big Brother and the Holding Company (yes, with Janis Joplin) and THEY weren't even the real headliners! What a fantastic show that was. It only served to fire up my enthusiasm even more (and I went ALONE) - and make me even more determined to do well playing music. ---more---- (To Read On In This Story - go to http://www.tagworld.com/gtittle )