CARYN: What made you say , "Oh, I want to play guitar."?

STEVE: I don't know. I think...for some reasons my parents thought it would be a good idea I had some kind of music lessons...you know...that was pretty cool of them.

C: Were either of your parents musicians?

S: No...I guess my mom played a little piano, like a very very little tiny bit. She's a school teacher, you know, grade school teachers play a little piano for kids, well, at least they did when I was in grade school. But across the street from my grandma's house was this guy who played violin... don't remember how old I was...if I was 10 or 11 or 12. I was probably still like in 5th grade or 6th grade or something like that...my mom took me over there to see this guy because I was thinking about playing the violin and..

C: Wait, you were thinking about playing the violin or your parents were thinking about you playing the violin?

S: I think my parents were thinking about me thinking about playing the violin...that can be shortened to My Parents, I guess...but anyway, I went into the guy's house, and I remember it so clearly because I was just scared out of my mind by what happened next. He was on the phone, dragging the phone all around the house and he was all excited because he had just gotten an amplifier and a pick-up for his violin, and I remember going into this little room and I remember a little Fender amplifier sitting on a little chair. It was probably a Princeton Reverb or something like that, nice brand-new black...and the guy plugged his violin in, still on the phone, to play for that guy over the phone-- and it was so fuckin' loud I couldn't believe it. I was totally scared andwent running out of the place. So that was the end of my violin thing.

So then, my aunt Dottie , who was a folk singer who I used to hang out with when I was a kid, had a guitar, piano, auto harps all kinds of crazy stuff---recorders, you know, folk music kinds of things around the house. And I guess cause there was a guitar there, my mom decided she'd get me a guitar. So I think my mom got me a guitar, you know, a Sears guitar, acoustic, like a $12 guitar. I learned how to play it. It had a moveable bridge it sat on top and I'd push it around...I thought...it make the strings longer and shorter that made a sound, you know. But that's about the time I was introduced to it, and that's about as far as I got with it.

But eventually, you know, I kinda had that guitar and I banged around on it and banged around and banged around, and finally a talked my parents into getting me an electric guitar. You know, cause of the Beatles and everything. I didn't know anything really. I knew like half a chord and I knew a little bit of a C Major scale, but that was it. Which wasn't enough to really work with when I think about it, but eventually I guess I figured out that I had to practice or something if I was gonna get good.

C: Do you remember the first song you learned how to play?

S: No...it could have been anything. I can't remember if I learned a little bit of this or a whole bit of that. I only really remember stuff from when I was playing with a band, like I remember the first entire arrangement I learned...probably some Allmans. In the Sunday paper they'd have a little thing in the Entertainment section with a song. They'd have the guitar chords and the lyrics--- it was kind of hip...you know--- C7, F, C7, F and you'd play it and go "That's not what it sounds like!!" but I guess I was probably 15 or 16 when I decided, "Oh, I know how you're supposed to do this. You've got to practice. If I just practice and learn all that I'm supposed to learn, then I'll be able to play.

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