Acoustic guitars and Guns’N Roses guilty for my love for rock music

I remember the feeling I had when I first started to like rock music. I was in a summer camp, during high school period and it was this girl, one of my class colleagues, who was a big fan of Guns N’ Roses, and I mean really big fan of Guns N’ Roses and their music. I remember back then I used to listen rap and dance music and totally rejecting anything related or only close to rock music.

Back then, Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t cry” was in heavy rotation on radio here in Romania and I had a lot of chances to listen to it, but I was just…turning off the radio just to not listen anymore since I was feeling that inside me, something is changing with each note I was hearing and I just didn’t want to. I was such a stubborn teenager back then, I guess…

So, I was running away from “Don’t cry” because I felt that anytime I was hearing it on radio, on TV or anywhere else, my love for rap music was fading away and it seemed less and less interesting, personal and close to my soul. Instead, rock music was gaining more and more of it. “Don’t cry” was getting to me and I was running away, I was fighting the feeling that was growing inside me for the lovely electric guitar sound, those starting riffs of Slash’s Gibson guitar and Axl’s scratchy voice. Of course, back then I had no idea what guitar Slash had, I only knew a thing or two about electric guitars but not much.

Anyway, I remember that a few months before this, I had bought an acoustic guitar of smaller size from a friend of mine (back then I didn’t know that acoustic guitars come on sizes so it didn’t make too much difference to me). I can not tell you now why I bought it, I was listening rap, no rock, but I think I just found that brownish acoustic guitar one of the things I must have so I’ve bougt it and how handy it came from that moment on.

Coming back to my story, I was in this summer camp and this girl brought with her 42 tapes (I am dead serious!) with Guns N’ Roses and some other rock bands, but mostly Guns N’ Roses. Of course Guns N’ Roses doesn’t have that many tapes, but there are compilations, best of, albums, live shows and this girl had them all! And I really mean all, plus tones of black t-shirts with Guns N’ Roses and the skull. We had some Walkmans with us in this camp and I remember borrowing tapes from her and starting to listen.

And the acoustic guitars broke the defense line

I remember the moment I dropped the defense line and I let myself in the hands of music…And, most of all, I remember the song that made this change possible…

It was not “Don’t cry”, even if it is of the songs I really love even today and it was part of my transformation. It was “Patience”, a song that broke my heart in two, a song that I found so sweet and clean that I could not resist anymore. I came back an other person, I came back a rocker. I remember sitting in the dark while driving back from the camp, at night and listening Patience over and over again, I remember the acoustic guitars, the clean sound, the sparks in those treble sounds and Axl counting in the beginning…one..two…

And so a rocker was born, a guitar player and an avid seeker of new sounds, thanks to Guns N’ Roses, thanks to Patience, thanks to acoustic guitars and their lovely, clean sound. And thanks to that girl…

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