Discovering the Power of Guitar

I was a shy kid who wasn't the type to attract attention to myself. When it came to girls, I might as well have been invisible. Then, one day, I brought my guitar to school.

The reason I even brought it to school escapes me now. This was around 1986 or 1987, probably, and I had gotten a bright-red Yamaha RG150 electric guitar and a tiny amplifier for the previous Christmas. Eddie Van Halen was my new hero, and like every other kid with a guitar back then I was doing my best to copy him. Before I got the electric guitar, I had mostly been playing a classical guitar, learning little classical pieces and getting pretty good at fingerstyle guitar.

On this occasion, I was sitting on a lunch table with a few guys standing around me. I was playing a couple of Van Halen things that I knew well enough to drag myself through, like the two-handed tapping run at the end of “Eruption”. This was a big hit for the guys, and it was kind of cool to be the star of the show for a moment or two.

Sadly, my Van Halen repertoire was quite limited and shaky at best, so I was running out of things to play. I fell back on what I knew: classical guitar. I switched the amp to a clean sound and started to play “Romanza” (or “Spanish Romance”).

I was really getting into it, and I had my head down focusing on my fingers. I could see a half-circle of shoes belonging to the guys standing around me, and one by one they started to shuffle away. Classical music just wasn't their thing.

After a minute or so, I noticed a different ring of shoes around me. Girl's shoes.

I stopped playing and looked up. There were five girls standing around me. One of them smiled at me and said, “Paul, I didn't know you could play like that!”

My face turned the same color as my guitar. “Thanks,” I managed to mutter. I finished the piece and played another, probably “Greensleeves.” The girls stayed, watching and smiling, until the bell rang and the concert had to end.

That was a big moment for me. There was finally a way that I could communicate, especially with girls! I got a new classical guitar soon after that, and it was my constant companion.