I was not a little cutie from the suburbs,I came out of the inner city.Daddy would buy them a les Paul and a pa system if they promised to cut the grass all summer.That's cool too you know,they really were great players and were expected to grow up and out of it as most of them did.I was a poor kid from the inner city.We had to make our sounds on crappy little second hand things and we did do that.I grew up and not out of it but INTO it.We had a lovely home paid off by my fathers life insurance policy but not too much else,as a very young child I had tons of music lessons from a great teacher, as long as i turned in the practice time the money was there somehow for that,if I did not practice my elder brother would beat my ass.Same with my grades at school "what do you want to be,a steelworker punching a time clock or an artist?"He was going to break into a music store and steal me a Gibson ES 335, he had the catalog and said "Which one do you want pal?"I begged him not to do it.Even though he beat me up a lot we were very close,he would never let me down in a jam."I am good right now with my silvertone,thanks man you know I love you,i am not ready for a 335 anyway."I pretty much had the piano down but was left handed playing a right handed guitar.Like a retard.My piano teacher had passed away and my guitar teacher deemed me hopeless."Stick to the piano" he said,you will never play the guitar."Up your piping mate is what I thought I can play anything I want!I had a very cool friend Jeff Platt who was fiddling a bit with the bass but wanted to be a lead singer so I started playing bass in his band quitting my own group,and the bass got me used to playing right handed.I was using his rig/bass and amp and begged him to sell it to me.We agreed on a price of 157 dollars for the "La Bozz" bass and Rosac amp.Good lord I think it took me three years to pay him off in nickles and dimes.but I paid him off and learned how to play right handed.So when I went back to the guitar I was ready.and had learned how to play bass.