First song you learned to play?

On Bass- Paranoid
On guitar- Sweet Jane

 

Gloria, by Them.
I was 11, it was 1968.
First I got the E-D-A-E rhythm, then the lick at the 12th fret.
Sorta.
I didn't "nail" it.
It set me on a path to the (tedious) House Of The Rising Sun, with it's dreaded first position, partial barre F chord.
That F chord was a serious rite of passage, for me and my tribe of garage/bedroom rockers.
HOTRS was the next tune I learned.

 

I'm impressed that Bill can remember, because I'm not sure I can and I'm a number of years behind him. If I really try very hard to journey way back in time, I think the first I can remember learning on guitar was Crossroads (Cream version of course). Or maybe Killing Floor. I took a lot longer to learn songs in those days, but then again they have stuck fast and I can still rattle them off today. That's an important reflection for me.

 

Lucky Man by Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

 

Gloria, then Louie Louie, of course!

 

Times Like These by Foo Fighters

 

Did you "get" that the 5 chord in Louie Louie was a minor?
I didn't, I happily hammered a B7th.
I hammered it wrong till a bandmate told me, much later.
Doh!

 

"The McCoy" by the Ventures, first song they recorded (Played on Fenders). Funny how great they were and they played this, so simple even I picked it up (I'm a bass player - not guitar) -- only four licks or so easily stretched to end a set.

 

I think in all honesty that it was "Dirty Water" by the Standells.
I'd already been taking lessons and learning to read music and play classical tunes and such
for 2-3 years.

 

I started playing guitar while listening to acoustic blues, the first Bob Dylan album, many folk music albums and some jazz. The very first song I learned was two chords (I Gave My Love a Cherry) from a fake book. I actually learned two songs that first day, both really easy songs. In the first six months of playing I learned a bunch of songs and after about six months of playing my father came in with his guitar and asked me to teach him how to play Midnight Special.

I had been listening to a lot of Leadbelly and that was the way I played it, as close as I could anyway.

In the first six months I had also learned to play House of the Rising Sun with the chord progression that Bob Dylan used (stolen from Dave Van Ronk), so a few years later when I was in about sixth grade and the Animals came out with House of The Rising Sun I loved the version, but really preferred the descending chords I had originally learned. My friends couldn't believe I already knew the song, but I had been playing it for a couple of years by then.

 

Exactly my experience as well. Probably around '65-'66 and I would have been around 14.

 

Sympathy for the Devil off Get Yer Ya Yas Out. Pretty simple stuff that rocks with the only four chords I knew for several years. That whole album is a crash course in simple but great rhythm playing.

 

"Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain", written by Roy Acuff's business partner, Fred Rose. Later I learned another one of his, "Foggy River".

 

I memory serves me well, it was probably House of the Rising Sun, using a sloppy and basic fingerpicking pattern (probably didn't have a pick yet!). It was on a cheap classical.

 

Come as you are - Nirvana

 

Walk, Don't Run-Off the "Learn to Play" with the Ventures albums. The You Tube of the day!

 

Johnny Reb which I did at my Junior High School (Starling Junior High, Columbus OH) talent show in 1959. I later got to meet Johnny Horton at a music venue called "Hillbilly Park" outside Newark, OH a little East of Columbus. I sneaked to back of the bandstand building in hopes of seeing his guitar player as I was in awe of the beginning riff of the "Battle of New Orleans". On the stairway to the building entrance was none other than Johnny himself! When I asked if I could meet his guitar player he agreed to do so if I would go to the concession stand and get him a cup of coffee. I got the coffee and he had his guitar player come out and join us for a few minutes. But the story didn't stop there; when it came time for the Battle of New Orleans to be played I was called onto the stage to join them and he even let me sing a few lines.

My hopes of seeing him again were shattered less than a year later when he died in a traffic accident - Rest in Peace Johnny

 

I believe "Goodnight, Irene" was one of the first folk songs in an old Mel Bay book.

After that, it was dead simple power chord songs of the day: probably Bush's "Glycerine," Green Day's "When I Come Around," or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana.