About my first guitar...

I was 9 when I got my first guitar. I had been in love with the sound of the guitar since the first time I heard it. I remember begging my parents for a guitar and going to the music store on the upper west side. A dimly lit place where, from the shadowy shelving that loomed over my head, the salesman pulled a nylon string guitar. My father examined it with an important expression on his face. He was an aeronautical engineer and I could be assured that he would notice any structural defect in the instrument, even though he knew nothing about guitars. When the man put the guitar in my hands I looked at it in awe.

"This is a real good beginner guitar," he said.

The salesman wore a pale blue sport shirt which was stretched tight against his relaxed gut, and was tucked into gray slacks and a thin, well worn, leather belt. He didn't look that different from the shoe salesmen at the shoe store on Orchard Street where my mom took me to get my Hush Puppies.

The guitar was a HyLo, made in Japan out of shiny plywood. A full size classical style nylon string with a slotted peghead. It cost, as I recall from 1966, $20.

We took the guitar home and, after one guitar lesson at the local community center where I learned to tune the thing, I committed myself to learning to make the sounds I'd heard on the records and television. The guitar lessons at the community center - the Educational Alliance - on East Broadway in Lower Manhattan, were a group affair... about five or six kids, most of whom appeared to me to be unclear on why they were there. After the second lesson I decided to set out on my own. I had learned to tune the guitar faster than anyone there and felt as though bringing the strings into tune had also changed me in some way. I felt the vibrations enter me through the back of the guitar. I didn't need to be an a classroom - i needed to be alone with the guitar. And so I spent as much time as I could exploring the sonic possibilities of the six strings. I immediately started writing songs, and figuring out how to play the songs I already knew.