My earliest memory goes back to childhood: I'm dancing on the clothes hamper, squeaking out Build Me Up Buttercup along with the Foundations' 45rpm single. High School was when I began to practice in earnest, screeching out Stairway to Heaven in a few hometown bands.

At eighteen I decided to knuckle down and learn to play guitar. My first true hard rock "mentor" was Alex Lifeson of Rush. I had this cheap green sunburst strat copy, and I banged the snot out of it learning the LPs Fly by Night and Caress of Steel.

From kindergarten through junior high, I was the kid who was always drawing in class. I attended a high school that offered a half day of industry training and a half day of standard academics, and my elective was Commercial Art. For three years I was the favorite student of Mr. Anthony, who mercilessly beat my talent into shape.

In 1976 I graduated with a Pell grant, and the next Fall I entered art school. I wandered through my first year as in a garden of discovery; my interest in commercial art waned, but my desire to master the guitar became an obsession.