Blues Rock Guitarist

When I started playing guitar in 1964, the world was a different place and the music scene was completely changing, thanks to the British Invasion. I had received my first guitar on my 12th birthday and I wanted to learn how to play everything I heard on the radio. Back then the local AM radio station was usually the only connection to the world of music. I would spent my time in the basement sitting in front of this big old 1940’s Airline radio with my guitar.

I would try to play along with any and everything that came on. In 1964 a radio station’s playlist would play a Sinatra song followed by the Stones then maybe Louis Armstrong followed by the Beatles with some Buck Owens, Elvis and Chuck Berry thrown into the mix. Eventually I started to recognize certain similarities in chord progressions that many of these songs had in common. People didn’t pay much attention to musical boundaries back then, everyone just soaked up the wide variety of styles that happen to be in the Top 40 hits list for that week. As a result, a budding young guitarist would be exposed to all kinds of music.

During the seventies I was very much into hard rock, which was actually more or less blues rock. My favorite bands such as Cactus, Jeff Beck Group, Mountain, The James Gang and Zeppelin were dripping with blues riffs. In 1974, I was lucky enough to join my favorite local band, Wale, out of Rochester, New York. In the beginning Wale was mainly a big hair, tight jeans, very loud blues band that rocked.

In the 1990’s the world’s definition of hard rock was starting to change as it’s boundary with heavy metal remained undefined. The heavy rock no longer had its roots in the blues or for that matter, any roots at all. Real rock and roll is a mix of blues and country. This explains why the old rockers are now either playing blues or country.