What song made you want to play guitar ?

EdGrip

I was at a folk festival in Sidmouth in 2001, with a group of folk dancers, one of whom was an Australian exchange student called Sal Kimber. One night the young 'uns (those about 18 or so, including Sal) gathered in a tent and sang songs and played the guitar. Sal played songs by Australian bands The Waifs and Tiddas and was generally exotic and exciting. I was 14, and was enthralled at all these cool young adults, older than I could conceivably ever be. 

I went home from that festival, and decided that I would learn to play the guitar. The first songs that I learned to play, on my mum's classical guitar, were "Bad To The Bone" by George Thoroughgood (badly, in the style of Smoke On The Water) closely followed by American Pie, which me and my friend James would sing around the village green.

The songs Sal played were these:

And nowadays, Sal is back in Oz doing her own folkabilly thing....

kelvinburn

RocknRollDave said:

underdog said:

kelvinburn;187561" said:

The rhubarb and custard theme music originally



Then "Alive" by Pearl Jam which also introduced me to Jimi Hendrix "Rainy Day Dream Away"

Pearl jam probably my all time fav band, while everyone though nirvana were the saviour of music I always rather listen to Eddie and co. Yellow Ledbetter is an excellent nod to Hendrix.

Whilst in fact Alice In Chains were better than both bands

I wouldn't disagree at all @ RocknRollDave I also preferred RATM, Soungarden and Kyuss but it was the opening riff to Alive that initially pricked my ears

daveww

lots of them Bell Bottomed Blues, All Right Now, Smoke On the water, Summer Breeze.....

Flanging_Fred

Into the arena by Michael Schenker.

timhulio

Lipgloss by Pulp. There isn't even much guitar on this song, but the simple fuzzy lead lines seemed effortlessly cool, just like the guitarist Russell Senior. Never one to overplay, which is a quality many guitarists lack!

samzadgan

Iron Maiden...anything on Live After Death...in the end, the only Iron Maiden song i ever played was Powerslave, really poorly.

bertie

no one song,  been noodling little tune-ettes on my big bro's guitar since I was about 8 - no idea what I was playing (no progress there then)  but I learnt that picking certain strings/frets I could get a tune,  Just snow-balled from there really

The one song that possibly inspired me to learn properly, was my old art teacher playing Hesitation Blues.   

Phil_aka_Pip

Can't say for sure but it was Sweet Baby James that made me sit up and take notice of proper guitar playing. Before that I'd just been a chord thumper.

Handsome_Chris

For me the song which made me want to play guitar was Genocide by Judas Priest from Unleashed In The East. To me it has got a great twin guitar sound.  Glenn Tipton is my first guitar role model. 

I'm surprised @Frankus hasn't referenced this yet.

frankus

I got the KK Downing parts to play ... believe it or believe it not.

Preferred Metal Gods, myself ... "laser beaming hats!"

bazxkr

Aahhh...magic....I need to buy the boxsets 50 yrs on haha...thks for the memory

& Camberwick green, tales of the riverbank, Andypandy, Woodentops et all...Good days

Bogwhoppit;187466" said:

Theme from Trumpton 

stickyfiddle

A combination of seeing the "Buddy!" musical when I was 13 and Oasis's What's The Story Morning Glory album I think.

jonnyburgo

When I was 10, my mate gave me AC/DC Powerage on cassette, this was in 1982.

When I heard RIff Raff that was it, I thought it was the most exciting thing Id ever heard, still do today

Dave_Mc

Eruption )

Still can't play it right, but I'm getting there. Ish.

I'd always thought electric guitar sounded awesome, but eruption was the thing that made the lightbulb go off in my head, the change from, "Electric guitar sounds awesome" to "Why don't I try to learn it?"

Wish I'd thought of learning about 5 or 6 years earlier, though.

frankus

The Beatles - Flying. (When I was about 8)
Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower (aged 13)
Frank Zappa - Treacherous Cretins, Watermelons in the Eater Hay (aged 15)
Pixies - Caribou (aged 15)...

fretmeister

No one song for me either.

A mixture of Queen, Iron Maiden (Live after Death was the first album I ever bought) and Metallica's Master of Puppets.

My mum listened to loads of Queen and my copy of Master of Puppets was an old tape that was at least a 20th generation copy and sounded shite.

I bought Live after Death purely because it was a double album. I had enough for 1 LP and knew I wanted an Iron Maiden one. I didn't know which. The double LP had all the cool gig photos on it and twice as many songs!

Never been the same since!

dogload

Would probably be this:

Robot by Hawkwind

NPP

for me, it was probably the Made in Japan and Highway to Hell albums - I got both in the 80s and picked up the guitar a little later aged 15. Soon, I got into Hendrix, Stones, Yardbirds, Zep, Rory Gallagher, SRV, then backwards into really old blues, forwards again etc. etc. etc. But it was these two albums, and then consciously hearing Hey Joe for the first time, that got me (I must have lived under a rock for a long time, but I grew up in Germany in a household where nothing but classical music was played and there was only mainstream stuff on the radio except sometimes on BFBS). 

JDE

All Your Love from the Beano record was probably the main one. Listening to that whole album with my old man made me want a guitar. Dazed and Confused was another big deal for me. I remember seeing that live performance of that in the TV studio and totally losing my shit over it.

koneguitarist

This made me want to play guitar

And this made me want to play a tele, nothing else gets close to this tone ! Solo starts at 2:15 

http://youtu.be/09zZQ6zm1Fg