I was born in the beautiful San Francisco East Bay Area, was an Angeleno from 1999 until 2014 when I moved back to the East Bay, San Ramon, to be precise.
Growing up in the Bay Area was lovely and I am unapologetically a suburban baby boomer.
Music played a central role in my life. My earliest memories of music were listening to KFRC on the radio, soaking up all the hits, reveling in pop masters like the Spinners, Temptations, Jay Ferguson, Henry Gross, the Beach Boys, Bread, Elton John and so many more.
A little band called Led Zeppelin kept popping up here and there, but their ethereal and powerful music was quickly subdued by the horrible strains of Leo Sayer.
Then in 1978, I got serious about playing the guitar when my sister’s boyfriend was strumming the opening strains of “More Than a Feeling” on our front lawn one summer night.
“How long have you been playing?”, I breathlessly asked.
“Two weeks!”
This was the art for me!
Over the years, I kept playing guitar, and for a while there, I got relatively good at it. At one point, I even did a workmanlike job of playing the solo in “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me”, which is still truly beyond me to this day.
Fortunately, the only somewhat easier “Eruption” was the coin of the guitar hero realm, and I passed muster on that, performing the song at my high school senior show.