Have you ever taught someone how to play an instrument, even the start-up bits of teaching an instrument? Despite still being a ham-fisted guitarist after 35+ years of playing, I’ve not shied away from doing my best to teach a few people the rudiments of playing guitar. My first “student” was Mike, a neighborhood friend and member of my first band. We were 15 or 16. He had recently acquired his first guitar, just a few months after I got my first electric and resumed lessons after first trying to play when I was about 10 years old. From the start, I was training him to be the other guitarist in our band. He outplayed me within a year, which in part earned him his walking papers. Shame on me!
My next “student” was another old friend, another Mike, who had already been learning the guitar but who needed my individual training to prepare him for the rigors of our band. My first order of business was breaking him of his fascination with the dual guitar leads of his then-favorite band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rather than break him of his Southern Rock roots, we ended up finding a way to merge his style into our sound. It led to a wonderful collaboration and extended through our band’s “classic”-era years. Once, while recording songs for an eventual 7-inch at our favorite studio in Rockville, Maryland, Mike was ripping off an outstanding solo on a Clash-inspired song while the rest of us sat in the booth with the engineer.
“What’s that he’s playing,” our usually mild-mannered engineer blurted out, “you’re gonna let him play that?!?!”
“What’s wrong with it,” one of us said, “we think it’s great.”
“It sounds like fucking Southern Rock. How can you have a Southern Rock solo in a punk song?”
