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That ’ s mostly unheard of . You didn ’ t like the people that were teaching you ? Well the thing is I would have taken lessons and continued to take lessons if I could have found teachers that taught me that kind of stuff . I got my guitar and signed up for my first month of lessons and it was like Twinkle Twinkle little star and stuff like that and ironically , I didn ’ t being a teenager , you know I would come in every week and say hey you should look at this Van Halen riff my friend showed me and my teacher is going “ and what did you practice ?” So , open position chords that you strum on acoustic and it wasn ’ t really much interest to me . After a month of lessons with him he told my mom , it ’ s just not working out so I basically just got fired I guess , if you can be fired from guitar lessons . He said why don ’ t you try my friend , so I signed up for a month of guitar lessons with this guy and after two weeks of lessons from him I quit because it was the same thing , just a different teacher . And that ’ s when I found out about Metal Method . I call it self-educated . I ’ m not self-taught . Self-educated you know through books and stuff like that . A friend of mine had been carrying around an ad that he had cut out of Hit Parade or Circus Magazine back then for heavy metal guitar lessons which was Metal Method Doug Marks and whatnot . He had it in his wallet and I said dude if you ’ re not going to use that , let me take it . So , I ordered my first two lessons from Metal Method and it was all over from there because it was exactly what I was looking for because it was like taking lessons from Randy Rhoads or Eddie Van Halen or whatever because it was guys playing the stuff that I wanted to hear and was listening to and he was teaching it you know . So , I did the whole Metal Method ’ s course and then just started buying books and that turned into VHS tapes , that kind of dates me but that ’ s Ok ! I ’ m lucky and fortunate to have grown up in that era because that era is some of the famous rocking guitar players that ever existed came from that era and don ’ t really get it or respect that a lot of people don ’ t realize how much Yngwie or Randy Rhoads or Eddie Van Halen plays the same guitar and I get it . A lot of those guys can play faster than some guys but that ’ s not what it ’ s about . It ’ s about what they brought to the table you know . It ’ s not just getting up to their speed they brought a whole new style of guitar . They did things that no one was doing before or at least in the main stream media you know . And going back to the internet thing there was no internet back then so you know if there was someone else doing it somewhere it wasn ’ t like they got online and saw them doing it or heard them doing it you know . We all tapped into similar sources so that was cool . So , it just built from there and this was even before Yngwie came out and Randy Rhoads was my base influence when I was getting started and whatever Randy did I wanted to do so Randy taught so of course I wanted to teach . Randy listened to classical music so I started listening to classical music . I would absorb anything I could any interview , any bootleg cassette or album whatever I could find I had to have and unlike now those days I was starving for information whereas now online you can get as much information more which is not always a good thing because you don ’ t take it for what it ’ s worth sometimes I think . It ’ s like I like to buy cd ’ s or buy albums I don ’ t want to buy one song you know how do you get to know an artist from one song ? Well I bought the one song , then I bought one song over here or they probably didn ’ t buy it because I don ’ t think kids know today know that you buy music . I think they just think that it ’ s free you just get online at this certain website and you download it or hijack it or whatever you want to call it but that ’ s a whole other rant I ’ ll save for later .
I tell everybody that if you support the artist try to go to their website . Try to buy the CD directly from them . Anything , T shirts , guitar picks anything that you get through your website because that ’ s how you must survive . If you are not out on the road 360 days a year like some of these bands are because the music Industry is not what it is anymore
Yeah , I honestly don ’ t completely blame them and I probably should but I think it ’ s from lack of information . I think sometimes that people are just naive and just assume that because you have an album out or whatever that you ’ re like rich you know . I think the music industry and artists and certain level of actors are the only people who experience this I ’ m not
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