My First Guitar

by Julia Crowe

  I had always loved music from the time I was seven and wanted to be holding an instrument, being creative with it and communicating through it. Kids always want to be in bands, have camaraderie and learn the songs of the day, impress their friends and then impress themselves. You realize if you impress your friends first, then you might as well go back to impressing yourself while you are struggling with chords and licks and trying to make music somehow. My grand plan did not take shape until I started formally studying guitar. Then I realized that there was a real career ahead because I had been through a number of bands as a kid. My mom let me drop out of school then, which might seem surprising for someone who had been so strict — saying, “You’ve got to finish up when you’re eighteen.” School was impossible when I was sixteen years old and out playing till one a.m., then coming home and trying to get up and get to class by eight a.m. It just never happened and I kept getting sick. She said, “Go ahead and play this out.” So I played around the Southland, and she let me go do this, finish high school and go to college.

  While my mom was encouraging me in music, my father, an engineer, was scared half to death, thinking it wasn’t possible to make a career in music. Later on he was very happy about my success, however in those early stages, he kept thinking playing guitar meant a lifetime of being that guy out there with a hat on a street corner. It was a case of the classic two images: my mother looking at me, thinking, “Concert. Stage. Carnegie Hall,” and my dad thinking, “Street corner. Hat. A few coins.” It’s like the old joke of the two-career paths of the guitarist: one picture shows this guy giving a concert and entering a limo afterward, and the other picture shows a guy asking, “Would you like fries with that, ma’am?”

  I had a few mentors along the way. My first mentors were great theory professors in college. Two of them were not really big names but they were big in Los Angeles City College, and they both really helped me develop my ear, which is what ultimately helped my career more than just being able to play an instrument. I learned to transcribe and write music. Professionally, I would say George Van Eps, Howard Roberts and Pat Martino were my mentors who kept encouraging me to pursue music. On the rock side, members of this old psychedelic San Francisco group called Moby Grape, which probably few people remember, were mentors of mine who came down to L.A. and helped me pick out my second professional guitar at a place called Wallichs Music City at the corner of Sunset and Vine, a very famous music store that no longer exists — there is a strip mall there now — but this was a Hollywood place where everyone bought their instruments. It used to be a big record store, kind of like a Barnes & Noble of records that also had a self-contained music store and repair department. You could buy some really nice guitars or basses, and you would have the possibility of shopping for music. Everybody used to go look at the instruments in the window, and this was back in the day when you could have nice instruments on display without having a big security chain attached to it. This band Moby Grape hung around at this place, and I met them when I was a kid. They told me, “You’ve got to get rid of that Telecaster and get a Les Paul!”

  One thing I’ve really enjoyed about the guitar is learning something that I didn’t know before, especially when picking up something from a recording. If you listen to something that was improvised, it hadn’t been written out because that was the nature of the music — it was made up and improvised on the spot. A big breakthrough for me was a song by Eric Clapton called “Hideaway,” an instrumental that I eventually figured out, note for note, simply by trial and error. Then I discovered my joy in being able to teach the song to others in my group and arranging it with them.

  Sometimes I can get too tunnel-visioned about playing guitar, such as when I was totally devoted to classical to the point of getting rid of all my electric guitars. A friend of mine who had been in the band Steppenwolf came over and asked if I had an electric guitar and was wondering what happened to them. A lot of friends disowned me when I was in this period. I had gone from playing guitar in rock clubs at night to being a diligent student of classical guitar with books of theory in one hand and guitar in the other. I’d gone to school at UCLA and had been a composition major. Really, I need to be playing lots of different musical styles because that is what brings me joy. The constant is that nothing has been constant — which is the nature of music itself because every time you think there is only one form of music that you’re involved in, you’ll hear something like a blues song that really excites you and must become a part of your consciousness.

  Daniel Lanois

  Grammy-winning Canadian guitarist, songwriter and record producer Daniel Lanois has worked with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson. He is also renowned for his work with Brian Eno and with U2 on their album The Joshua Tree.

  I got my first guitar when I was ten years old, and I was not interested in the guitar. I was in fact, playing a little plastic recorder at the time. The year before I received the guitar, I had bought a little white plastic recorder for $1 that I saw in a shop window. It had a little bit of purple around the finger holes and I loved that. Then I wanted to take up the clarinet. One day a man knocked on my mother’s door and asked my mother, “Do you have any kid who like music?” She said, “Yes,” because there were four of us. The man said, “Let’s try them out on an aptitude test,” and I’d passed. He’d offered me a choice of either accordion or slide guitar. I said I would take the slide guitar. I had no idea what slide guitar involved.

  I attended my first lesson at the Ontario Conservatory of Music, which was downtown from where we lived. I was presented with a guitar that was generally lent to students for their first eighteen lessons. They lent me an acoustic guitar, which was a no-name brand with raised action — they’d put a big metal riser at the nut and then a similar contraption at the bridge so that you would play this by putting it on your lap. That was the beginning of my playing slide guitar.

  At this time, I was really just listening to my teacher and felt it was funny that I had to play this guitar on my lap. I asked my teacher at one point, “When do I get to hold this guitar like Elvis?” He said, “Well, you could switch to the Spanish guitar after eighteen lessons.” That is when I switched to playing the Spanish guitar and bought a little guitar from the conservatory. That guitar again, was a no-name brand.

  I learned to play old American classics like “Little Brown Jug,” “Red River Valley” and “Oh! Susanna.” I was in a class of people with maybe six other students. We would play melody in unison, and the teacher would strum an accompaniment. That was it. I kept up with the guitar and became better at it, eventually ordering a guitar from the Eaton’s catalog, the Canadian equivalent of the Sears catalog. I picked a Beltone guitar and a strawberry-colored naugahyde-vinyl-covered Beltone amp. It was a pretty nice little amp.

  My mother was very happy about my interest in the guitar. My parents had split up by this time, so really, it was just my mom. I had found something that I loved. I found that I just got better and better at the guitar. I became so good at the guitar that I started teaching other students by the time I was thirteen. I started playing with friends, forming a neighborhood band that would play on the rooftops of houses.

  What I love about the guitar is that it is my friend and it never talks back. The pedal steel guitar especially is a place that I go to in order to secretly escape to a magic place. Everything is a challenge and I experienced a few hurdles along the way. I was ready to be a fingerpicker and that was difficult for me at first until it became systematic and then rolling — and then I eventually found a freedom in it, which is called independence, which is a nice thing. Athletes obviously experience this when they catch a ball and run. Independence is an incredible drug to get, and I do not think everyone reaches independence. I think there is probably academic independence for people who read one thing and start thinking about another. I think it is part of exercising our incredible brain. The more you do it, the better you get. It�
��s a process of building one’s intelligence. To this day I exercise my independence.

  My first gig was playing in the church hall. I’m French-Canadian so my family would attend this French-Canadian church where they held bazaars. People would bring in baked goods and have a little festival. I remember playing popular songs with my friends in the basement like “The House of the Rising Sun” and some English rock hits at the time that were making airwaves in Canada. We also played “Wipe Out” and a few other surf songs. I’d graduated to an Ampeg Reverberocket amplifier, which really helped on the surf music, and I bought a used white Stratocaster. There were lots of beautiful Stratocasters around then because they were common instruments at that time in the early ’60s.

  I went through many guitars when I was starting out. I had a baby Rickenbacker that I liked a lot; in fact, it was a 12-string that I could add six strings on. Later, when I went traveling on my motorcycle, I had a Fender Esquire, which is like a Telecaster with just a back pickup, and I would dismantle the neck and remove it so that I could fit it into my pack and travel with it. I do remember buying a brand new Rickenbacker 12-string. The first one I’d told you about was a solid-body guitar, but this one was semi-hollow and beautiful because we were fascinated with The Byrds and their song, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” I didn’t play Gibsons at all until the ’80s, when I played my first Goldtop Les Paul and got hooked on it. I kind of had a major turning point when I went to work with U2 in ’83. I had a chance to try The Edge’s rig, which was a black Stratocaster through a Vox, with quite a few effects, and this really opened my eyes to new sounds.

  Sharon Isbin

  Grammy-winning classical guitarist Sharon Isbin is the author of Classical Guitar Answer Book and the founder the guitar department at the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan. Her career took off after she won the 1975 Toronto guitar competition at age twenty. She has a catalog of over twenty-five recordings and has commissioned many new concertos for the guitar by world famous composers. Her playing is also featured on the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film The Departed.

  Our family moved to Italy from Minneapolis when I was nine years old because my father was on sabbatical to consult for a scientific project. When we settled in Varese, located about an hour outside of Milan, it was time then for my parents to figure out who was going to continue with their music lessons. I was resigned to taking up the piano again — I’d already given it up at the ripe old age of eight. My older brother, Ira, said he wanted guitar lessons. Elvis Presley and The Beatles were in vogue then, this being the late ’60s.

  My parents, not knowing what he had in mind, took him more seriously. They found a wonderful teacher named Aldo Minella, who commuted from Milan to Varese. At this time, he was playing concerts all over Italy. He had studied with Segovia and was a friend and colleague of Oscar Ghiglia’s. So my parents took Ira in for an interview. My brother realized immediately this was not the right instrument for him when he learned he had to have long nails on his right hand and practice at least an hour a day. My parents said, “Who’s going to take advantage of this? Somebody’s got to study with this wonderful guy.” I volunteered out of family duty because I was the only viable candidate, though I didn’t know what classical guitar was.

  Because I was only nine years old, I couldn’t play a full size instrument. Aldo suggested we see Mario Pabé. “If you go to Mario, he’ll figure out what size instrument you need and he’ll make you one. You’ll have it in a month and in the meantime, you can study solfeggio.” I’d thought, oh great, solfeggio, sight-singing, just what I wanted!

  I remember we went out to the countryside. This guy lived on a chicken farm, and we had to mount these rickety old wooden stairs with chickens gawking at us amidst a sea of white feathers flying all around. We reached the top, and there was Mario’s studio. He measured my hands to see how long my fingers were and said, “Come back in a month, and I’ll have your guitar for you.” Then the next torment started, which was this solfeggio business. Being a shy kid, I really wasn’t primed for having to do something like this and I was ready to bail after the second lesson. But I couldn’t, because we had already ordered the guitar from Mario Pabé. I was stuck. I couldn’t make my parents go through having ordered this instrument and then renege. I survived the month of solfeggio, the guitar came and I fell in love with it. It had the fresh smell of new wood.

  What I remember about being attracted to it was the very personal, intimate nature of one’s relationship with the instrument. The reason I gave up piano was because I just felt it was too mechanical of a process. You touch the keys and then something else happens with hammers and by the time the sound comes out, there is a lot of distance. It was not something unusual, because twenty other kids would fall into their lessons after me. But the guitar — this was exotic. This was something truly special. And in the late ’60s, in the United States, you could count on less then one hand the number of universities or conservatories that even had a guitar department. It was unheard of.

  And most kids who studied classical guitar at that time, were, very often, young boys who played rock guitar, heard a Segovia album, thought that was cool and switched gears in midstream at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Not many girls were studying classical guitar because they weren’t playing rock guitar. But in Italy, there was a whole different tradition. It was not unusual for young women to play the guitar, but it was definitely something out of the ordinary, and this is what attracted me. It’s the direct contact with the instrument. There are no keys, no hammers. You’re touching the instrument with your fingernails, your flesh. You’re caressing it, you feel the vibration against your body. It’s a part of you. It became an extension of myself, really. And it allowed me to express myself. I was a shy kid and this was another means of being able to let out my feelings.

  I went back to Varese, Italy, after thirty-five years. I made a little pilgrimage because I was playing in a town nearby. I just had to go back and see this school where I first studied and where I played on my first guitar. I remembered, at the end of the year, there had been a little recital where all the students of Aldo and his father performed, and I had played a little Carulli study.

  I found the music school and of course, I had to find this little recital room where I had once played. I was looking around and couldn’t find it. It had to be there, somewhere. Finally, I opened a door and there it was, this little room, exactly as I had remembered it. The studio where I had the lessons had been backstage and sure enough, there was a hallway with four rooms. I couldn’t remember which room I had studied in, but I peeked through each door and said, “Well, it’s one of these. This is where it happened.”

  The recital hall was empty so I took a chair and put it right in the middle of the stage. And I said to myself, “Thirty-five years ago, I sat on this very same spot with my first instrument and played my first concert. And here I am. The space is exactly the same. Time has vanished, as if it were yesterday.” It was an amazing feeling. It was so powerful, a remarkable experience. Almost like stepping into another dimension. It’s almost like turning on the radio and listening to something from California: you don’t have to travel by plane or how many days by car. It’s instantaneous. And this is what that felt like, an instant shift in time. Except that it was thirty-five years later, and I thought, “My god, what have I done in all this time? Who would have imagined?” I imagined myself as that child, nervously performing in front of these people on an instrument I was still new to playing. Who would have predicted the path that my life would take from that moment on?

  I had approached it as a hobby, practicing only twenty minutes a day at the start. What was really kind of funny was when Aldo came too busy to teach, he had to turn all his students over to his father, Papá Minella. His father was a wonderful, ebullient type of guy who made you feel great about everything you did, even if it wasn’t great. He kept telling my mother, “It’s amazing — when I put Sharon’s hands on the guitar, it�
�s like putting Aldo’s hands on it when he was a little boy. She’s such a natural.” So my mother had this prophetic dream one night there in Italy that that headlines read, “Papá does it again.” Of course, this was as foreign to me as you can imagine. It was just a hobby. I had no interest in classical music. I thought classical music was a very stuffy kind of thing, and I used to fall asleep at symphony concerts and get fidgety whenever my parents dragged me there. It was just not on my radar. But I did find this a very intriguing kind of hobby and I liked it.

  Sharon Isbin, age nine, in Varese, Italy, with her first guitar made by Mario Pabé. (Courtesy Sharon Isbin)

  The night I returned to Varese, I invited Aldo to my concert. He sat in the front row. And when I finished playing, I told the audience about my pilgrimage that day to the music school where I had played my first instrument. I said, “In fact, my first teacher is sitting right here,” and I introduced him. At that point, it struck me that Aldo looked exactly like his father did when I had started lessons, thirty-five years before. It was a powerful, emotional moment, because I never saw his father again. Since that time, Aldo has come to give classes with my students at Juilliard. I remember looking at him, teaching and thinking, “This is the man I owe my whole life to, the one who determined my future.”