John Gourley Quotes

As a youngster, I used to try to pick up any bits of wisdom about the guitar I could. It's not like now where you have books and books about every aspect of anything. Any little pearl of wisdom was welcome back then.

I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school.

I wanted to shred, so I learned classical guitar.

I would just listen to records and learn what I could, then just roll it over and over and over.

I started playing guitar back in '56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years before I learned any chords. Really.

I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.

In the last couple of years I've been picking up my guitar again.

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.

When I picked up my guitar, I spent the first day learning the chord E, the second day A, then B7, and all of a sudden, I could play the blues.

I got my first guitar when I was 15, and I just used to fool about with it, more or less, as time went by, though, I got more interested.

So I started to learn guitar right away.

I'm learning on the guitar all the time.

I've always dabbled on guitar, but never took lessons.

I grew up playing the saxophone. I joined the jazz band in high school, but somewhere along the way I realized the guys who strummed acoustic guitars at parties were the ones who got the attention. So I asked a friend to show me a few chords, and when I moved to L.A. I spent a lot of time practicing my guitar.

I'm a struggling guitar player.

It wasn't all spent on practicing, I did do other things! but the classical guitar means a lot to me so I spend many hours building good chops and getting a good program together.

I didn't really learn how to play guitar until I was in college.

From childhood, I have been more of a musician than a singer. People close to me know how much effort I put into practising. Even when I am travelling, I have my tanpura on my iPhone.

I guess by taking lessons early on, and really trying to play all the rudimentary stuff, and try to have it sound as good as my teacher. It took a lot of practice, which I enjoyed, and still do.

That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.

There is a great book out called 'Everything I Needed to Learn I Learned in Kindergarten,' and I believe that everything I ever needed to learn on guitar was in my first two years of hungry learning: Scotty Moore, Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley.

In high school, I decided I wanted to learn guitar, so I picked it up and starting teaching myself some basic chords and started playing with friends. Guitar inherently lends itself to be guitar music, especially when you're not good at guitar.

I've always thought that the act of playing the guitar was the act of trying to make a point of playing the guitar.

I just want to be a better guitar player, really.

I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.