I had been playing for about a year and a half when the Beach Boys formed. When our folks went to Mexico on business, we would take the food money they had left us and we would rent instruments.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In Puerto Rico, I played in all kinds of bands that played salsa and merengue. That's how I saved the money to come to the U.S. We used to play El Gran Combo tunes. Half the band was my friends - we were around 15 - and the other half was my friend's father and his friends from the hospital where he worked. They were all, like, 50.
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.
Me and my brothers started a musical group early on, and we were playing in places where we really weren't supposed to be.
We sat around and I fed them barbecue and whiskey. And pretty soon everyone started to compete with each other on the guitars. It seemed the more everyone drank and ate, the more everyone got into it.
I went to national piano competitions and did that whole circuit. Then I played professionally to support myself when I moved out to LA.
I have played lots of clubs since I was 14, but I always did my own music.
When I came out of the military, I had a club in Memphis and I started using the The Bar Kays as my club band. They were still only in the middle school - but I'd take them on the road with me on the weekends, sometimes.
The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.
I was brought up west southwest coast of Scotland and my mother and father had a music shop, and so I was surrounded by pianos and drums and guitars, and music, of course.
My dad was a bass player in a Latino band when I was growing up. So we always had musical instruments in our basement.