What is the first song you learned to play?

Carol's son got an electric guitar and a bunch of tab; he was great at playing licks from songs, but it took a while before he learned a whole song. I, on the other hand, am lucky I can play the opening lick of Smoke on the Water.
 
Gary Blanchard said:
My first live performance was singing Kumbaya with my brother, Ken, for a church talent show. Memories.
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My first live performance was Babe I'm Gonna Leave You and U2's ONE in front of my High School followed the next year by Learning to Fly (Pink Floyd), Wish You Were Here, and Me & Julio DBTSY.
All of them were performed with my "band" at the time except for Me & Julio. That one was done with me, my dad, my AP History teacher, and 3 friends. We had 4 guitars, bongos, and Congas on it. It was AWESOME.
 
I think it was "Living After Midnight" from Judas Priest. Rhythm and solo right out of the gate... then I started moving on to other Priest and Dokken tunes and found some of the solos a "little" more difficult than that. :)
 
All the way through? I think it was Aerosmith's 'Write Me a Letter".

In my teens just starting out, I was picking up lots of hooks and riffs. One day a buddy said "when are you going to learn a whole damn song?" And he was right, I still couldn't play any song from start to finish. I had Aerosmith's first LP, I was really diggin' it at the time. So I chose this one as an attempt to try to learn and play an entire song.

A few months later, I've got it down pretty good. I'm rockin' away in my bedroom, and there's Dad standing in the doorway. He said, "How'd you learn to do that?" I think that was a compliment, or that was as close to one as I'd ever get from Dad :grin:
 
MonkeyZero said:
My first live performance was Babe I'm Gonna Leave You and U2's ONE in front of my High School followed the next year by Learning to Fly (Pink Floyd), Wish You Were Here, and Me & Julio DBTSY.
All of them were performed with my "band" at the time except for Me & Julio. That one was done with me, my dad, my AP History teacher, and 3 friends. We had 4 guitars, bongos, and Congas on it. It was AWESOME.
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Getting old is a bitch. I can't remember if my first gig was at our high school battle of the bands type thing, or a this party one of my friends threw. If it was the high school, it was Mr. Crowley, I was on bass. I have a video of that gig and just watched it. It was awesome, I swear. The full set:
Mr Crowley
Fade to Black (I had know idea I knew that song)
Drum Solo
Crazy Train
Guitar Solo
Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love (with my killer backing vocals)
Paranoid
 
The first piece of music I learned to play was a classical on piano called Serenade by Schubert when I was 8. The first actual song I learned was Jump by Van Halen (the keyboard parts). The first song I learned on guitar was One by Metallica when I was 15.
 
All the way through - Keep On Rockin In The Free World.

I had made it through a bunch of different songs in lessons when I was younger, but never to the point where I was actually playing the song. It was more just playing the notes or chords as I worked through the book.
Plink. Plink.... Strum. Strum. Strum. Strum....Strum.
Instead of
Plink-plink, strum, strum-strum-strum, strum.

Edit to clarify that this was the first song that I learned on guitar.
 
Paperback Writer. That was a million years ago, when the Beatles were still a current band. My brother showed me the chords from a beginner guitar songbook -- C and G7. It blew my mind that you could just play these two chords and even though it didn't sound like the real song it still sort of did. Magic!

I haven't played "Paperback Writer" in years, and certainly not the cowboy chord version. (I learned the actual riff at some point, but I've forgotten it.)

The first full song I learned, solo and all, was "Pushing Too Hard" by the Seeds. That has just two chords too, and a very simple pentatonic solo, but it felt like a huge accomplishment at the time.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
The Thing That Should Not Be, by Metallica.

I also learned how to make airplane noises with my pick on the wound strings.
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For my first several years of guitar-ing, I only had my dad's old cheapie nylon string classical guitar but desperately needed some distortion to play metallica, so I used to "weave" strips or paper or aluminum foil through the strings near the bridge to make a "fuzzy" sound. sort of the guitar equivalent of putting a baseball card in the spokes of your bicycle to make it sound like a motorcycle.
 
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