Kid Rock
“As a kid, I had a little acoustic guitar that I probably plucked Smoke On The Water on. But at that age, I had no ambitions beyond jumping around on the sofa with it. Then, at 15, I had a couple of guitar lessons that didn’t really take because they wanted to teach me how to tune the guitar and play the B major scale – and I wanted to learn Black Dog and Detroit Rock City. But from 19 years old, I became obsessive-compulsive. Guitar felt like a religious calling. It bordered on some kind of mental disorder. I couldn’t not do it. It was a compulsion that steered my life.”
High Flyer
“In my high-school band, we practised so hard to play Born To Be Wild for a battle of the bands. When we got on stage, the piano player played the wrong chords, the bass player came in on the wrong note – it was a very inauspicious beginning to my musical career. But we were on a riser. And so when the chorus came in I leapt off the riser – and the place went apeshit. It was like, ‘We’ve spent four months learning the song but what we should have been practising is jumping up and down.’ It was a lesson I haven’t forgotten. I always had that track-and-field background, and for some reason, from early on I could always play guitar while aloft.”
Cheap Thrills
This story is from the November 2020 edition of Guitarist.
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This story is from the November 2020 edition of Guitarist.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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