When did you join your first band?

[BigRedX]

On 20/11/2023 at 10:04, BigRedX said:

I started learning the guitar on my 13th birthday, and joined/formed my first band about 18 months later. It was just 4 people with similar musical taste from the same class at school. One of us was pretty good on the guitar. I could string a chord sequence together and the other two could barely play, although one could sing and the other wrote lyrics. We spent the first hour of our first "rehearsal" wondering what to do now that we were all in the same room together. It never occurred to us that maybe we should start by trying to play covers, besides it was the mid 70s and the dominant musical force was prog rock which was way beyond our abilities. Finally I started playing some chords, and the decent musician improvised a "solo" over the top. The others joined in with weird noises and percussion and that was the beginning of my first band. Over the next 7 years we slowly developed our sound. As a band we didn't have a bass guitar until I bought one at the beginning of 1981. But we did make a record that got played on John Peel's radio show.

 

...and here I am in my 60s still playing, writing and gigging

 

[uk_lefty]

I got my first bass at 15 and a couple of learning books. No lessons, no previous real ability on any instrument though I really loved music. Typical story, three of my school friends played guitar and wanted to start a band so they needed a bassist. It took me too long to learn so one of the guitarists switched to bass and I was left to learn. Fast forward to age 17 and I saw an ad in my local music shop "bassist wanted" list of influences for the band and a note at the bottom "...and we will always play something you like". By this time I had the ability to play along to one side of a cassettes worth of songs, the Kinks, Hendrix, a bit of Sabbath. I went to the band leaders house, he was 20 but had been gigging since his early teens and was ridiculously talented on guitar, though a rubbish singer. I had tried to play with friends at school and college before but it never really worked, playing with guys who had been in bands and being the last piece of the jigsaw really helped me. We rehearsed for a year before our first gig which was fantastic, then we set about getting gigs. I learned so much from the other two guys in the band, about following what was going on, jamming with the drummer, quickly reading the guitarists hands for when he wants to medley into a song I've not played before, etc.