It just occurred to me, while I was playing the Sarabande to the 3rd Lute Suite a few minutes ago, that I have been playing guitar for sixty years. Yes, I'm pretty sure I started playing around July 1966 on electric bass. I actually wanted to play drums, but it cost too much to rent a drum kit and, as my mother explained, bass guitar was also in the rhythm section. My favorite music back then was a couple of songs by Eric Burden and the Animals. But I soon discovered The Monkees, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Six months after taking up the bass guitar (on which I had one lesson) I was in a band and soon after that we played our first engagement, a dance in a tiny community hall for which we received the sum of $6.50 each. Something like that, my memory is a little hazy!
As time went on I got a six-string acoustic guitar and finally an electric, an old Gibson Les Paul jr from the 50s. I had a Yamaha amp. We played a lot of little gigs including high-school dances and I doubt we ever made more than 50 bucks. Except New Years when live music was at a premium.
After three or four years of this I discovered classical music and started listening to stacks of old vinyl records of Debussy, Schubert, Dvořák, Beethoven, Bach and others. In the town library I discovered books on music history and ran across names like Schoenberg and Stravinsky. I started buying as many records as I could afford (not many, but cheap vinyl you could get for 90¢ or $1.20. The expensive new issues, like The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky on Columbia might run $2.98.)
After a year or so of this, I realized that I could go to university and study music. I had already taught myself how to read music so I could write down arrangements. I had written some forty songs as well--all lost in the mists of time along with a recording I made of a few of them, plus "The Thrill is Gone" by B. B. King.
The things I recall as having the greatest impact back then were the first time I heard the Mass in B minor by Bach and singing in the university choir--we did the Mozart Requiem and the Te Deum by Bruckner. This was in 1971-72.
This is obviously going to be in a bunch of parts, so let's end here with the Bruckner conducted by Sergiu Celibidache. So I went from Eric Burden and the Animals to Bruckner in five years.
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