5 Quotes of Guitar Wisdom

Sure, notable guitarists like Eric Clapton and David Gilmour have inspired countless aspiring musicians with their extreme talent--but keep in mind the fact that even those Rock and Roll Hall of Famers had to start somewhere.

For those who might despair at times during their learning journey, it’s important to remember that everyone who has picked up a guitar has faced challenges. Where the real inspiration occurs is how artists overcome those struggles, and develop into the virtuosos we love today.

As such, we’ve curated a list of comments from artists who reveal how they came across the guitar and how they learned to master it.

Keith Urban – Vintage Guitar (2010)

“My dad gave me a ukulele when I was 4 years old. I never learned to play any chords with it or anything – I just used to strum it in time to the radio. Dad was a drummer, and I kind of inherited his love of music.

“He played in a band in the 1950s, so they were playing Top 40 stuff of that era. He loved Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis and Buddy Holly; the beginnings of rock and roll. In the ’70s he moved to country music. I strummed the ukulele until I was 6, when my parents decided that an acoustic guitar might be a good idea.

“My parents had a general store, and one day a lady came by, wanting to put a sign in the store offering lessons. They told her that if she taught me, she could put a sign in the window. That’s how it started.

“(Later) I was in a guitar group with a dozen or more players, and we would go to retirement homes to play. Those were my first performances--kind of guitar recitals. Then I joined a theater group that was kind of like the Mouseketeers. We did musicals and I had to learn a bit of dialogue and do a bit of dancing. I did a bit of guitar playing and singing, also, which taught me a lot about melodic structure, which came in handy when I started to write songs.

“We moved around a bit at the time, and I ended up not liking my teacher. So I started just listening to records and picking things up by ear. I disliked the teacher so much that I would scoot away on my bike when it was time for my lesson. That really infuriated my dad, who was by that point paying for my lessons. But I just started to learn songs that I heard on the radio.

Then, when I was 8 or 9, my parents joined a country-music club. At that time, there were lots of them in Australia, and we would go to gatherings once a month where there would be house bands. Eventually, I wound up doing a couple songs with the house band, then I started competing in festivals; I’d do Dolly Parton, Tanya Tucker, and Charlie Pride stuff – whatever was going on at the time. That’s how I started performing on my own, at these country festivals.”

John Frusciante – Premier Guitar (2014)

“When I was a little kid, it seemed clear that if I learned how to play an instrument, I’d be able to play the music I heard in my head--music I’d never heard in the real world. My parents wouldn’t get me an electric guitar, though. I tried to start playing when I was 7, but I thought acoustic was boring — it wasn’t the sound that I wanted to hear. I managed to get an electric guitar when I was 12.

”As a little kid in Santa Monica, Led Zeppelin and Kiss were the big things. I would hear Jimmy Page and wonder how a person’s hands could get those sounds. Guitar for me has always been about the sound of the instrument, not the physicality. Physicality is just this thing between your imagination and the sound that comes out.

“The guitar is the best way for me to study other people’s music. Since I started playing, I’ve probably spent more time learning off records than doing any other activity in life. Doing that has so many values, among them the ability to think about music in intellectual terms. Not just hearing what you like and enjoy, but analyzing it and getting inside the heads of the people who played or wrote it. I like learning all the parts of a piece of music so I really know why I feel what I feel in the best terms that my mind is capable of understanding. I like to play one of the parts, but be able to visualize the rest of the parts and think about their relationship to each other in terms of intervals and rhythmic spaces.”

Bonnie Raitt – the Library of Congress (2011)

“Folk music was really coming up at the time of my childhood. In the early ’60s, Peter, Paul and Mary; Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were, you know, just icons. And all the kids in college that were my college counselors were playing guitar. Folk music was kind of a craze there in the late ’50s and early ’60s. So it was very natural that I would come home from camp and want a guitar, and want to learn to sing like Judy Collins and Joan Baez.

”And so (my father)was very pleased that I got pretty proficient on it; and my mom never pushed me on piano lessons, but I asked for them. And I was playing piano and taught myself guitar. Pretty soon, I was entertaining my relatives in the summer camps, you know, sitting around the campfire, and I just was doing it as a hobby.

“Then when I played the blues later in my middle teenage years, I fell I love with the blues, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and rock music and R&B. I was just a regular teenager. I think the first time (my father)heard me play in a club and I did a Howlin’ Wolf song, ‘Built for Comfort, Not for Speed,’ both my folks were a little surprised at the suddenly-so-grown-up and risqué kind of Mae West, Sophie Tucker (songs)and all the wonderful Bessie Smith and Blues songs that I loved. They sort of knew that that was part of my personality, but I’m sure it shocked them a little bit. But they were very, very supportive. My dad loved what I did and just always wanted me to get a little bit more sleep and not stay up so late.”

The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel – Premier Guitar (2014)

“When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I had this friend named Jeff. His dad was a ‘blues lawyer’ who played guitar on the weekends and made his son learn drums so he’d have someone to jam with. I went over to his house and got such a taste for the guitar. But it took months for me to convince my parents to buy me an electric. When they finally relented, they wanted to try to find something cheap. Luckily, I got the coolest guitar I’d ever seen — a 1963 Harmony Bobkat — for $89. This was in 1991, and I still have that guitar, although I’ve had it rewired.

“In any case, soon Jeff and I had a band. We’d play every weekend. By the time I got to high school I was jamming with kids after school. We did a lot of pop-rock covers — we learned all of the songs off of R.E.M.’s Monster, which was sweet because that’s when I first got to use a tremolo pedal. At the same time, I got into exploring the extended sounds that a guitar can produce, like how to make controlled feedback. I was mystified by the Sonic Youth records, with all their weird sounds. But as I experimented on the guitar, I figured out how to create my own nonstandard effects.”

Tim Armstrong – Collider (2011)

“Early on, I just figured out that (playing guitar is)all I love to do. I want to be around it and play it. I would play guitar for hours, when I was a kid. All I thought about was music, and all I did was play music. For five, six or seven hours a day, I would play guitar. It’s all I thought about. I just loved it. I could just go there. I felt safe, playing music. I really put a lot of energy into it.

”And then, I started surrounding myself with people who had the same feeling. I’d known Matt Freeman (from Operation Ivy)forever, but in high school we became inseparable because he had the same passion for his bass. He loves playing bass, as much as I love playing guitar.

“And then, Gilman Street happened and it was all over. We had a club that we all hung out at, all the time. All we did was talk about and play music. It turned out pretty good. I’m still passionate about it. I haven’t lost that, at all.”