When I was 7 or 8 I wanted to play the guitar, but the teacher my mother took me too said that my hands were too small, so I ended up playing the accordion. My younger brother was also taking lessons on that instrument, but we only had one squeeze box. After a year or so I saw the film The Benny Goodman Story and took up the clarinet which I played up until I was 14. I busted up both my hands in a fight at summer camp, and when I got my hands out of the casts I had trouble playing the clarinet because my fingers had been set wrong. I was going the Bronx High School of Science where there were a lot of guitar players, it being the depth of the Great American Folk Scare of the '60's. I borrowed a nylon string guitar from my next door neighbor and started on the path of destruction. That was 1964 and I've been playing guitar ever since. Started in trying to make a living at it in '67. I've since also picked up about a dozen other stringed instruments which I can play with some competence. It ain't been much of a living, but it beats working.