In the beginning there was...

Horror movies!

Ever since I was a kid I've loved horror movies.

All the classics like Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Dracula,

all the Vincent Price creepies.

Monster movies like Godzilla versus everything,

 Gamera (you know - the turtle?) Rodan - anything

with an overgrown radioactive house pet gone mad!

And of course my all time favorite rubber suited giant, "ULTRA-MAN"!

Every Saturday afternoon on channel 20 in Detroit, or late at night

watching our King and Leader THE GHOUL on whichever TV

station hadn't booted him off the air yet.  THE GHOUL always

had cool music playing in the background while he was reading

viewer mail or blowing up toys, models, food, radioactive house pets

 - and whatever was cute at the time -

with a "GHOUL POWER BOOM-BOOM" ova-dey!!!

(ahem)

Which brings me to my next addiction: MUSIC.

When I was in the 3rd grade I was the only kid in my class that was

bringing KISS albums to school. While the other kids were bringing

in their Mickey Mouse stuff - or whatever pop song was being overplayed

on the radio at the time - I was bringing in "Destroyer" and "Rock And Roll Over".

Gene Simmons breathing fire and spitting blood, explosions, loud rock 'n roll music.

This was the greatest band in the universe!!

                 All of my favorite things rolled up in one package!

           I spent many hours in front of the mirror playing air guitar

           to all of my favorite KISS songs.

A couple of years later a friend of mine asked me if I'd ever heard

TED NUGENT,

and of course I hadn't because with the most awesome band in the universe - KISS -

why would I need to listen to anything else?

So he plays "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" from NUGENTs

"Double Live Gonzo" album, and of course being a kid as soon as I heard

TED say the "F" word in the intro to the song I had to hear more.

Because when your a kid and you hear something with swearing on it

that is like the coolest thing next to saying it yourself!

And your parents are always telling you not to swear

which makes it even cooler to do it!

So after discovering that there actually were other things worth listening to besides KISS out there,

I raided my uncles record and cassette collections and found all kinds of

goodies!

All the TED NUGENT that was available at the time, LED ZEPPELIN,

ALICE COOPER, AEROSMITH, VAN HALEN...

I had found the motherload.

Eventually my mom bought me an electric guitar at a garage sale and even though

I didn't have an amplifier to play it through -

I HAD AN ELECTRIC GUITAR!!

Now I just needed to learn how to play the damn thing.

So I bought a couple of METAL METHOD guitar lessons and learned how to

tune the guitar, learned how to read TAB, learned a few basic licks,

and went from there.

I started learning songs by ear.

They weren't perfect, but when you're just beginning even if it's wrong

it still sounds good to you - until you hear someone else

play it the right way that is - then you start bothering them to show you how they did it.

After learning a bunch of simple stuff like MOTLEY CRUE and QUIET RIOT, I moved on to the harder stuff like TED NUGENT, VAN HALEN, and RANDY RHOADS.

NUGENT played the fast bluesy licks, VAN HALEN played the fast melodic licks,

             and RANDY RHOADS played both.

        And RHOADS was all the rage back then, if you could play some RANDY RHOADS

        licks everyone thought you were great.

         So...I was great for a little while.

                             Then I heard YNGWIE MALMSTEEN.

           And everything that I knew was now totally useless.

I had found my "GUITAR GOD".

Well, I shouldn't say that everything I knew was totally useless..

Here we go again...

To be continued...

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