The Making Of A Guitar Hero

Five things we learned about Joe Bonamassa from the new documentary guitar man

1 HE COMES FROM A LONG LINE OF MUSICIANS

As he’s told us in the past, Joe was involved with guitars from a very young age thanks to his guitar shop owner father, Len Bonamassa, who gave Joe his first guitar at four years old. “We got him a Chiquita guitar – which is a shortened, scaled-down solid-body electric actually designed for airplane use,” Len explains in the documentary. “By the time he was five, he was playing chords and he never looked back.” But before that, his great grandfather Buddha was a respected trumpet player as was his grandfather Leonard Sr. – so it would be fair to say music was always in the blood.

2 IN EARLY GROUP BLOODLINE, HE FELT LIKE “AN OLD MAN IN A KID’S BODY”