Golly McCry PART !!

GOLLY PICKS UP THE STORY AT:

my sister showed me how to tune a guitar. She said if you push down one string on the
fifth fret you get the same tone as the string below. One day she asked my brother,
if he wants to know some chords to play guitar too, but he wasnt interrested.
And I said " Here...ME... "I" want to know how to play guitar", but she said "No, your
hands and fingers are much to small to manage it right to this large guitar".
(I was 7 or 8)
I was nerving her, till she finally showed me one chord. It was E minor (you only need
2 fingers to perform it).
Everytime she wasnt around I took her guitar and exercised this chord and the tuning.
And so it came I was experimenting with chord changes and finnally a tune of my own
based on it. I dont have a recording of it, but still know it.
I heard lots of radio at that time together with my brother and we became more interrested in Beatles music. And I remember that day, we were sitting in front of the radio,
and they told John Lennon was shot dead. I couldnt believe it. I was crying the whole
night.They changed the radio program and played lots of Beatles music. It was
the first time I heard the song "Woman" by John and its still his requiem to me.
Everytime I hear it I have tears in my eyes.
Even though I liked Paul better at this time. I saw a picture of the Beatles in
a newspaper (pictures were very rare too at this time here), where they are standing
on a field (from the "Help" movie)and Paul salutes to the camera.
I tried to copy this pose of him and figured out he was playing lefthanded.
but it was good in some way and I decided to play lefthanded too. I thought its
easier to grip the chords with the right hand.
A good friend of my brother came up one day with a guitar and said "hey, I can play
the intro riff to Smoke On the Water by Deep Purple". He played it to us and as he
played I watched the moves of his fingers exactly and told him "I can play that too"
i took his guitar and played it as i seen it from him. I think he forgot the guitar
at our flat when he left that day and I used to play on it all the time.
The next time he was around he offered me to buy it for 30,- Mark, because
he never had money. And i gladly did. This was my first own acoustic guitar.
I loved it, I began to reverse the strings to play lefthanded.
So I had a guitar and I had my first standard exercise riffs. That must have been
around 1980/81. One of my standard riffs i developed to an instrumental later
called "The Message"
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqM5UT3oT0&fmt=18
the YT version of course was recorded in 1999, but the roots of it are in 1981.
In 1981 my brother bought his own cassette-radio-recorder an R4100 and it had
a feature: it had an intern microphone. That leads in to a new era...


to be continued...