My First Guitar

by Julia Crowe

  Every guitar that I grew up playing — including the guitars I played in the club years and with System of a Down on Sunset Strip — I do not have anymore. The Carvin was stolen out of my dad’s truck. I was eating at a Denny’s and came out and found the window shattered and the guitar missing. The next guitar I’d bought after the Carvin I bought directly from the L.A. Guns guitar player Tracii Guns. I was only about seventeen years old at the time. He saw me playing at a guitar store and he said to me, “Hey, are you going to buy that thing?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You should come to my house because I’ve got a couple of them and I will sell you one.” I’d seen Guns on MTV, and there I was going to his house. My cousin drove me there and I bought a Washburn Nuno Bettencourt N4 off none other than Tracii Guns. I was in a dreamland, asking him all sorts of questions on how to make it big. You know what? That is the only guitar I still have! After that, all the guitars I played in the club years were stolen. We were on tour with Fear Factory and all of our equipment got stolen. I think they found those guitars burnt in a warehouse.

  I was in the eighth grade at a school assembly when I played my first official performance. We played the Sam Kinison version of “Wild Thing.” It was just me and a couple other guys who played guitar and who were into rock music. I was having a blast. I always wanted to be onstage — it’s not just about the guitar. It’s also about being in front of an audience and performing. I get off on that and that particular experience was my first. Up until then, I had been in front of my mirror, just pretending. Whether it was a school audience or any audience, I didn’t care! I was up there headbanging and going crazy. That’s always how it has been for me. Any time, if you put me with a guitar on a stage, something comes out of me that would never come out of me just sitting in my room playing. You would never catch me dancing at a club or a wedding. I’m not the guy who does that, but when I get up onstage with the guitar, I turn into a dancing fool. It always feels right at the time.

  It worked out great that I started playing the guitar, whether I’d wanted to or not, because my love in life is songwriting. I love to write music and vocals, and the cool thing about it is I feel that being in love with the drums makes me a stronger guitar player. I see many guitarists who really do not know much about the drums and often their music is about a solo or lead. I personally see the guitar as a tool I can use to create what I want the drums to do, what I want the vocals to do, what I want the bass to do — while I am playing the guitar, I hear all these parts inside my head. Whether it’s System of a Down or Scars on Broadway or anything I’ve ever done, I’ve always written the music on the guitar with the big picture playing inside my head. The guitar is a medium for this. Another person sitting in the same room would just hear me playing the guitar, but what I’m hearing in my head is the drums, the vocals, the bass and everything else. Until I explain it or put my music onto a record, people are not likely to see my vision. I am very happy that I wound up learning how to play the guitar because that’s my favorite thing to do in life. That’s what I live for.

  Tracii Guns

  Tracii Guns is the guitarist who founded the glam metal band L.A. Guns with singer Axl Rose and later, the bands Brides of Destruction and Contraband. He was also the guitarist in the first lineup of Guns N’ Roses.

  I was six years old and I actually owned my first guitar, a Harmony solid-body electric that my uncle owned and gave to me. It looked a bit like a Fender Mustang, and I think they were made in Japan during the mid-1960s. As soon as the guitar spoke to me, that was it. I had played piano and drums, but the guitar always felt like the perfect shield to protect me from the rest of the world. The first song I learned to play on that Harmony guitar was “Pinball Wizard” by The Who. My uncle showed me how to play it. Then I heard “Whole Lotta Love” on the radio and that was the end of my life as I knew it at the time. It was like, “Oh my god: Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin!” Really, that’s all I cared about — Led Zeppelin and then maybe some Black Sabbath. In my early teens, it was Ted Nugent, Van Halen and Randy Rhodes. It was all really hard-hitting music that I’d liked at first because my mom was playing country music at the time on pedal steel guitar so I couldn’t get far away enough from it.

  Of course, when I was little, everyone was excited by my interest in the guitar. As I became a teenager, playing the guitar was all that I did. Basically, by the time I was fifteen all I did was surf and play guitar. Everybody was supportive of my playing, but then eventually it got to the point of them asking, “Hey. Um, so what else are you going to do?” My response was “What do you mean, what else am I going to do?” Thank god I got signed and had a record deal by the time I was twenty and it all made sense, so there was not a lot of resistance after that.

  From an emotional standpoint, the guitar meant much to me, especially as an only child. My cousin, who was more like a brother to me, died when I was seventeen, so playing the guitar gave me a completely new sense of reality. It never fails to bring me somewhere else. It is easy to be alone when you play guitar. A guitar can get you through a lot of challenging moments and music in general taps into people’s emotions. To be able to express and create music in your own way and gain an emotional release is what is great about the guitar. Oddly, I might seem unemotional on the outside and come across to some people as being distant, but the guitar has always been healthy for me.

  The one thing that’s been a bit of a stumbling block for me, which in truth helped me create my own musical style, is that I’ve had a really difficult time picking out other people’s music by ear alone. I can remember being obsessed by Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same. I played along with that record relentlessly for years, and I could never pick out exactly what it was that Page was doing by ear alone — which kind of had me playing things my own way. Over the years this has become less of an issue. With the help of YouTube, if I need to learn stuff, there is always some fourteen- or fifteen-year-old kid who knows a song note-for-note. You just put a little bit of feeling into it and then everything is okay!

  My first official performance was at summer camp when I was twelve. I had just received my first Les Paul and my buddies and I put together a little band. We played three songs total — “Mongoloid” by Devo, “Rock ’n’ Roll” by Led Zeppelin and “Stranglehold” by Ted Nugent.

  My very first signature model guitar was a B.C. Rich Gunslinger. When the L.A. Guns were in Japan, performing the last show of an eighteen-month tour for our first record, I decided I’d smash the last guitar of the tour. I had four or five guitars and the one guitar I happened to be playing, of course, at the very end of this set, was the prototype. I just trashed it into pieces, into ashes almost. Afterward, I thought, “Ohhhh nooooo, what did I do?!”

  My guitar tech at the time, Kent Holmes, actually gathered up every last bit of wood and kind of Frankensteined it back together with big metal plates and screws. He did all this surgery on it and it ended up hanging from the ceiling of the Lip Service store on Melrose for years. I guess the owner still has that guitar. The first prototypes of a few signature model guitars I’ve had are important and dear to me. Yet I must say most guitars, honestly, are just tools for me because I really do not clean them or take care of them, and they eventually all disintegrate from sweat, salt, weather and travel.

  Incredibly, I have not managed to own a single guitar for the past twenty-five years that really held up long enough for me to be able to say, “That’s my guitar!” I have new guitars that I’ve owned for a couple years that I have taken care of because I do not want anything to happen to them — these are signature model guitars that look a bit like a Telecaster and they have only a black satin finish on them so they’re already susceptible to wear and tear. These guitars are almost vintage at this point, and after two years of playing them, they’re as vintage as any of my ’50s guitars, so I want to be able to use them for the next twenty to thirty years.

  I remember when Daron Malakian bought my Washburn
Nunobettencourt N4. I think he was $200 to 300 short and he just walked up to me and said, “Hey, aren’t you with Washburn?” and I said, “Yeah!” He told me he really wanted an N4 and that they were expensive and he only had this much money. I said, “Why don’t you come over to my house later and I’ll sell you mine?” I think I sold him one for $300. It’s so cool to know he still has that guitar!

  Let me tell you something — I’ve owned close to a thousand guitars in the last thirty years, and I’ve given about ninety percent of them away to friends and fans, and Daron Malakian from System of a Down is the only person I know who ever really appreciated it and did not sell it or do something weird with the guitar. I swear every other guitar I can track on eBay from year to year. Someone is always selling one of my guitars and I’m like, “Awwww, man!” Now I do not give guitars away for this reason.

  Joscho Stephan

  Joscho Stephan is a German jazz guitarist known for his virtuosic technique for playing in the gypsy jazz style.

  I received my first guitar when I was about three or four years old — an old red Höfner, which looked a bit like a 335 model. Because I was so young, I accidentally stepped on the guitar and broke the neck. My first guitar that I truly remember is one that I received as a Christmas gift when I was about five or six years old — a Seiwa Powersonic. To be honest, the first “real guitar,” which I still have at home, was a Gibson Les Paul red sunburst ’68 reissue. I did not play any other instrument, though I did wish to become a drummer. My parents felt that drums were too loud, I started to play guitar instead. I am very glad for this decision today, though I do play a little bit of electric bass these days.

  When I started playing guitar, I was an absolute Beatles fan. Later, when I learned that I would never be a singer, I focused more on the guitar itself and listened mostly to rock guitarists like Carlos Santana, Gary Moore, Joe Satriani, etc. After this spell, I started playing jazz. Some guitar players say they listened to saxophone or piano players for their influences, but I’ve always preferred looking toward other guitarists for inspiration. One of the first jazz guitarists I heard and saw playing in concert was the legendary Hungarian jazz guitarist Attila Zoller, who was very famous in Germany, but I would have to say I am more influenced by artists like George Benson, Wes Montgomery and of course Django Reinhardt.

  I chose jazz, or let’s say, “improvised music,” because I discovered I have the talent to improvise. I found that I was always more nervous if I had to play classical music because there is no space to cut loose. When I played rock music, I felt more comfortable. Because I do not sing, however, I still felt the need to search for another suitable playing style because it seemed as if even rock guitarists like Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix always worked with vocals. I wanted to find a style where my instrument would serve as a voice. Gypsy Swing proved to be perfect. Everything that I love is in that style of music — rhythm, melody and virtuosity.

  My family arranged guitar lessons for me when they noticed my talent for playing. I am very glad about this because I think that so many children have no chance at all to learn a musical instrument. I was fortunate because my father also played guitar, and he recognized that I had talent and potential.

  Initially, I faced many technical challenges of playing the guitar, but I was always ambitious. I have always looked up to the best guitar players in the world. I never just wanted to play as well as my neighbor — I wanted to play like Carlos Santana, Django Reinhardt, George Benson, among others. If one aspires to reach that level of mastery and proficiency on the guitar, this of course requires talent but also it requires discipline. I practiced for hours between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, and I continue to spend hours practicing today. No one ever forced me to practice; it was always my own wish to master the guitar.

  My first official performance was probably between the ages of seven and eight. It was classical guitar, but I really cannot remember what piece I played. What I do remember is building my first musical group with my father and double bass player when I was sixteen. Since that time I’ve performed probably more than five hundred concerts. What I love most about playing the guitar is performing and making people laugh and cry at the same time for playing funny fast songs or slow and sad ballads.

  One funny story I have is from when I had won the Youth Jazz division of the Jugend Jazz competition in Dortmund, Germany, when I was fifteen. At that time I was playing my Gibson Les Paul. As the winner, I was invited to return to Dortmund as a student for a workshop with professional jazz musicians. I was incredibly overwhelmed and proud of this honor. Unfortunately, when we left home, I forgot to bring my guitar with me and did not notice it was missing until it was far too late and I had to borrow a guitar. This never happened to me again.

  My father, Günter Stephan, plays now a Hoyer 3063 model guitar, which I first played. We bought it for a very cheap price in a music shop in Düren, Germany, near the town of Aachen. A man by the name of Hajo Hintzen who organized concerts in Aachen saw that I enjoyed playing the Hoyer 3063 model guitar and kindly arranged a contact between myself and the Hoyer Company, which, for a couple of years, had built a Joscho Stephan model guitar until company ownership changed. I played this instrument until I discovered the guitar love of my life: the Jürgen Volkert D-hole Maccaferri. I have been playing this guitar since 2003.

  I also have a new O-hole version, which I use especially for recordings. The D-hole model I have played so much that its maker, Jürgen Volkert, had to refinish the guitar two years ago. Many people wanted to buy a guitar that had that same great, vintage look, but Jürgen and I had to tell them that he is not able to built a guitar like that — they first must play the guitar five years straight, like I did.

  Johnny Hiland

  Guitarist Johnny Hiland, who is legally blind, began his career as a bluegrass player and has developed his own hybrid sound of country, rock, blues and swing.

  My first guitar belonged to my grandfather. He passed on when my dad was six months old. I’m his namesake, in fact. He was John William Hiland and I’m John Edward Hiland — I have my dad’s middle name. Back in the day Gramps used to play on his guitar, which was a 1939 J-45 Gibson that was left to my aunt. She had it up in her attic for a long, long time and it was supposed to be passed onto my dad. Of course my dad played drums back in the ’60s and he never really picked up guitar. So it got passed on to me when I was three or four years old.

  Before that, I had a toy guitar and I’d jump all over the living room with it, listening to Bee Gees records. When I was given my grandfather’s guitar, it was really my first good guitar that I knew was going to stick with me forever. I wouldn’t part with that guitar for a million dollars. It has so many playing hours on it from Gramps and then more from me. The guitar was a little bigger than me, of course, but I just wanted to be with it all the time.

  The guitar has always been my best friend. I was born legally blind with an eye disease called Nystagmus, which really hindered me from playing kickball with all my other friends, so I sat in my room playing my guitar instead. Basically, as a kid with a visual impairment, I went through kids teasing, calling me names and stuff, so instead of sharing these details with my parents, I chose to share it through my guitar. And later on, being a sixteen-year-old kid who can never drive a car while all my friends were out taking their first spin just drove me closer to the guitar. It was a great emotional release. That’s why I consider it my best friend.

  I’d yearn for it after being in school all day. I just wanted to run home, grab it and play. For me, the guitar became a strong love. I did my first TV show, Stacey’s Country Jamboree, in Bangor, Maine, with that guitar, playing Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” My dad tuned the guitar to an open E chord and I used my thumb to walk the bass line as I played it flat on my lap. It was so funny because the steel guitar player kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if I was playing lap steel. Back home, I used to take it onto the school bus and sing “On the
Road Again” to the bus driver.

  I later took my guitar to Dana Bourgeois to refurbish it so it’s like a brand new Gibson. Dana builds the most beautiful flat tops these days and makes the Ricky Skaggs model and builds for Nickel Creek and a lot of the contemporary acoustic bands. He left in Gramps’ traits, like a thumb nick in the neck where Gramps used to rest his thumb, and then of course, where his arm rested, there is still a blemish there, which is kind of neat.

  Ricky Skaggs is one of my biggest heroes. My mom and dad took me to see Ricky when I was ten years old at the Bangor Auditorium, and from then on, I decided the Telecaster is what I wanted to play instead of playing acoustic. Then again, Ricky had a huge bluegrass element in his show. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Don Williams, Merle Haggard. My granddad on my mom’s side had all the old Faron Young records, and I’d listen to them for hours and hours on end. Early country music was my big thing.

  I had two main teachers in my life. The first was Phil Gallup, a jazz player in Hartford, Connecticut, who is now playing in a band called Men in the White Coats. He’s a phenomenal jazz player. He taught me my first seven chords when I was ten years old, and seven chords can get you through a show, I guess. I was about thirteen or fourteen when I studied in Bangor, Maine, with a guy named Billy Pierce who taught me theory and the chalkboard stuff.