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When I was six, I started first grade at Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School in Stratford, but after school I was banging on those drums and getting my musical education on the radio. I was also figuring things out on the piano. I couldn’t read music (I was just beginning to read books), and Mom couldn’t afford lessons for me, but I knew what I wanted the music to sound like. I could feel it when the chords and melody didn’t fit together, the same way you can feel it when your shoes are on the wrong feet. I just kept poking and experimenting until it fit the way I wanted it to. When I listened to music in church, I could feel those harmonies hanging in the air like humidity. It wasn’t an issue of learning it exactly: it was more as if the music soaked in through my skin. I don’t know how else to explain it.

As soon as I was big enough to get my arms around a guitar, I started figuring that out, too. You have to build up strength in your hands, and, until you build calluses on your fingertips, it feels like razor blades. That probably discourages a lot of people. They start out thinking, “Hey, playing guitar would be fun. And it looks pretty easy.” After thirty minutes or so, they’re like, “Ow! This really hurts.” And they forget about how much fun it was supposed to be and give up.

The thing is, if you keep on it, you get used to it pretty fast, and then you just keep plugging away at it while you’re watching TV or waiting for supper. Or sitting in your room because you’re grounded for mouthing off. But we don’t need to go into that. The point is, I played guitar because it was fun, and, by the time I was eight or nine, I was all right.

“Mom couldn’t afford lessons for me, but I knew what I wanted the music to sound like... it soaked in through my skin”

The best times were when my dad was one of the people hanging out playing guitar in our living room. He wasn’t a big fan of pop music. He was more into classic rock and heavy metal. He taught me some stuff like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and a few other Dylan songs, turned me onto Aerosmith, Metallica, and Guns N’ Roses, which got me listening to (and showing respect for) the legends like Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen. My dad taught me how to play “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, and I still remember it. (You should hear Dan Kanter and me kill that thing.)

To play metal or even the 1980s hair band stuff like Journey and Twisted Sister, you’ve gotta know the so-called power chords, and Dad taught me a few tricks there, too. He showed me how to play barré chords, which is when you lay your index finger flat across all the strings at once, which moves the chords up a little on the neck of the guitar. You’re essentially playing the same chords, but changing the key, so you can play the song in whatever range fits your voice. If you know the basic form of five or six barré chords, you can play pretty much any song in the universe. Grab the lyrics off the Web, listen to the changes and progressions five or six times, and there you go. You’re Green Day. In your room, that is.