Like most rock guitarists of my generation, I learned to play by listening to the guitar titans of the time like Carlos Santana, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore, Billy Gibbons, and, of course, Duane and Dickey. There were also the ubiquitous three who fans, players, and chroniclers alike seem to have decided long ago, should forever be presented in the same sentence: Clapton, Hendrix and Page. Together, these guys were my collective muse, and for hours at a time, they had me sitting on the edge of my bed, thrashing away at my entry-level Harmony electric and punishing the needle of my record player. It's hard to recall how I actually sounded, but it must have been a few months until I was playing something akin to music - and longer until I discovered that my amp had a clean channel. To my father, a professional bandleader and upright bass player whose musical tastes were informed by the supple sounds and sophisticated harmonies of acoustic Jazz, the scourge emanating from my bedroom must have been 75 watts of pre-pubescent torment. Still, my family was very supportive, and I was rarely asked to turn it down. I was eleven or twelve, and it was the early seventies.

My first guitar teacher was Rug. The older brother of one of my best friends, Rug had recently graduated from a prestigious private academy and now played in a Rock band called the Sunshine Express, and delivered our weekly dry-cleaning to us in a brown van with the band's namesake painted on it. Rug was more than the quintessential cool-older-brother-of-a-friend figure, he was Rock 'n Roll made flesh. On lesson days, my mom would drop off me and my guitar-playing buddy Stefan at Rug's apartment, which was above the cleaners where he worked. With our guitars and a case of Bud cans to pay for the lesson (Rug's choice of compensation), we would stand there ringing the doorbell, grinning at each other, and praying that he hadn't forgotten the lesson. Eventually we would hear Rug clear his throat and then yell down the steps 'just a minute guys'. We would wait for his signal to come up, and then step into his fragrant apartment where all the windows had just been raised and his Music Man amp and red Les Paul sat in the corner. (I must confess, after suggesting my precocious eleven-year-old tastes at the start of this story, Stefan and I once tried, with the kind of assuredness that rises only from complete ignorance, to convince Rug that Ace Frehley was better than Clapton because the latest issue of Hit Parader had ranked him #1.)

After my time with Rug, who had shown me some new chords, new tunes, and a scale, I started picking up more and more licks on my own. Mostly simple, Chuck Berry-inspired things that, when I got them right, could sound like excerpts from an real guitar solo (or 'lead' which was the term we all used for solos at the time). I was also really into low-end, distortion riffs. Sunshine of Your Love, Smoke on the Water, Satisfaction, The Lemon Song. In time I discovered that while I had difficulty playing fast, I had developed a pretty good ear, a decent sense of rhythm, and was beginning to craft some passable solos. I also realized that lead guitar was my thing. I guess it was really this way from the start, as I could never seem to play the chords to an entire song, and always reverted back to single-note doodling.

By the time I was about sixteen, I had graduated to a cream-colored Les Paul, a Fender Twin, and a new teacher named 'Steelman'. Steelman looked like Ted Nugent, and played an assortment of Gibsons through a Marshall 100 watt double-stack in a band called Witness. I can remember going to see the band (Steelman would put me on the guest list so I wouldn't get carded), and before they even stepped on stage, I would sit there mesmerized by all the gear...the roadies...the sound men...the lighting guys...the pre-show rituals like ducktaping, mich. tapping, tuning up...and most of all, Steelman's rig. Damn, that was the shit. (During his solos, he liked to leap from the stage of the London Ale House onto one of those wobbly, little, two-person cocktail tables, and then race across the top of a long row of them, usually ending up in the lap of some giddy chick soon to be on the Witness mailing list).

Lessons with Steelman were pure fun: he taught me what I chose to learn and little else. With his cassette tape recorder, he would record the solos from 'Sweet Home Alabama' and 'Blue Sky', Mick Taylor's live solo on 'Sympathy For the Devil' and eventually Clapton's hallowed 'Crossroads' solo. Steelman would record a solo one week, and then the next, show me either my favorite parts, or the entire thing. It was during this period that I established what would become a lifelong method of practicing: simply playing along with records, jamming to entire albums. Sometimes playing the chords, but mostly just playing my own leads - whatever sounded good. It was also during this time, and really on through my twenties and early thirties that I found my own voice within what (I would later learn) was sometimes referred to as the 'blues box', or simply the 'box'. (In the key of A, the box is the minor pentatonic scale, played at the fifth position, two octaves.) Approximating the shape of a box, this is the hub and very heart of Rock and Blues guitar. It's where all lead players are nurtured, and feel most at home. By extension, players and listeners alike often remark that Keith Richards seems the embodiment of Rock 'n Roll. Well, as for his actual playing, let's just say that Keith is the box.

It was 1980, and it was my first day as a freshman at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York. Having arrived a few hours before my assigned roommate, I had set up my stuff on my half of the dorm room, and then gone to lunch with my father. I missed my roommates' arrival, but I still cackle perversely when I consider the puzzled, troubled look on the faces of he, and his mother in particular, as they entered the tiny room and saw my Marshall 100 watt head, resting like Grendel on top of my enormous 8/10 slant cabinet. Maybe they thought I was some kind of science freak.

Anyway, I ended up moving my rig down into the boiler room of the Gymnasium, where me and a few other guys would jam, playing the Stones, AC/DC, the Allman Brothers, Bad Company, the Outlaws - I loved the Outlaws - and lot's of Blues. We played an occasional Frat party, but never really made it into the bars, experiencing the typical college-band hindrances: the singer was popular and good-looking only; all the guitarists wanted to play lead, not rhythm; the one bass player on campus was already taken. The drummer was an only-child from Manhattan who had a huge, shiny set, and swung like a rusty gate.

I still couldn't play very fast, was a bit sloppy, and would often forget chord changes to tunes I had played a hundred times. But I was developing a style that seemed to connect with people. It was clear to me that I was never going to be a 'hands' player, a technique guy. I would have to be a 'tasty' player who relied more on feel than flashy chops. But that was O.K., most of the guys I had always liked were that way. So throughout the eighties, I stuck to what I knew best, playing mostly in the blues box. Sure, I sounded like Buddy Guy when I played over Metal or Hard Rock tunes, but so what, that's more or less what Angus Young did too, and he sounded great.

Next came the requisite Blues phase. My favorites were B.B. King, Albert King, Johnny Copeland, and especially Albert Collins. Of course I was blown away like everyone else by Stevie Ray. I sharpened my Blues chops over the next few years playing in a duo with a three-hundred-pound Blues/Gospel piano player named Raphael. We played Thursday nights at a small, upscale restaurant, which after the dinner crowd left, quickly morphed into debauched college bar. Raphael would sing and play all the chords, so basically all I had to do was sit there on my armless, upholstered chair answering his vocal phrases and soloing whenever he gave me the look. I could actually drink a full beer during certain songs. It was a great gig. I was now playing a black Gibson ES-147 through a Boogie Mark 4 amp.

By the early nineties, things had changed. I had become increasingly curious about my father's music, and now wanted to play in his band. So one evening, I put on one of his tux, and went along with him to a gig. He told me to keep my amp turned down, and sat me on the edge of the bandstand next to his real guitarist, a grey-haired Italian guy named Sonny who had a big Ibanez Jazz box and a polytone amp. Sonny had a huge, round sound, and his playing seemed otherworldly. He not only had an infinite repertoire of chords and scales that left me breathless, but he seemed able to play any idea that entered his mind. By the end of the night, I was wondering if Sonny and I actually played the same instrument. The next day I arranged to begin taking Jazz guitar and harmony lessons. Jazz was an entirely new vocabulary of chords, scales and rhythms that sounded complex and intimidating, but also sounded so irresistibly exotic and hip. I felt like the innocent abroad, both excited and bewildered. Transcribing Wes Montgomery solos, reading and playing Joe Pass chord-melody-style standards, and memorizing Charlie Parker heads were now daily routine. I even entered full time into the Jazz program at the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, where I studied for two years. This systematic, academic approach to music, however, was beginning to wear me down. I had figured out that becoming a true Jazz musician would require a level of dedication and sacrifice that was well beyond any kind of musical commitment I was willing to make. So, I took with me what I had learned and decided that I would forever be a Arock player - who could play a bit of jazz.

I made another change in the early nineties that I never thought I'd make: the shift from the fat, humbucking sound of Gibsons, and crunchy British-style amps, to the beautiful bell-like chime, and crispy clean articulation of Fender guitars and 50's tweed amps.

Playing a Telecaster, and having really taken to the flowing lines of Bebop while studying Jazz, I then found myself drawn to all these Nashville guys burnin' up and down their Teles on the country music channel. Most of the time, I didn't like the actual tunes, so I would just hang in there, watching, and hoping the guitarists would get a solo - and I just knew it would be a good one. It seems like every single one of those chubby, bearded guys with their hats hovering low and their teles cinched up high plays with serious precision. So for the past few years, this has been my bag, and Albert Lee has become my guy. Blistering chromatic runs, double-stops, pedal-steel bends, banjo rolls, impeccable time, Albert has it all, and his playing is as challenging to perform, if not dissect, as any Jazz player I have ever culled from.

Just recently, I've started getting back into the sparse, straight-talking - yet surprisingly nuanced - playing of the old-time acoustic blues players like Robert Johnson, and Lightning Hopkins. While rediscovering this music, I began reflecting, once again, on the box. I have been playing now for almost thirty years. During this time I've spent most of my energy learning to use the entire neck of the guitar in every imaginable way. In essence, to get away from the box. And yet the box still feels like home, and is still the place where I make my strongest statements. Why is this ? Perhaps there's some abstract theoretical explanation, similar to the one that music professors love to tell first-year students about Ahow licks and riffs played in groupings of three have the most profound effect on human emotion. I doubt it. My take is that many of the classic Rock licks, having originated in the box, just lay nicely there, and usually sound best there.

Clapton, Hendrix, Page, and the other's who constitute the modern-day pantheon of Rock guitarist are all, primarily box players. Sure, they work the entire the neck, pulling off their favorite licks in all sorts of unlikely places, but ultimately, what they love best is digging into the box. So do I.