Loading details…
Artist
Bill Berends
5+ albums
bluesrockbluesrockguitar rockguitar blues
about
Bill grew up in suburban Baltimore, Maryland during the wonder years and became interested in guitar after seeing The Beatles on TV. George was always his favorite Beatle because he appeared thoughtful and concentrated more on playing rather than jumping around, so Bill got a cheap acoustic guitar and learned chords and songs, but he gravitated towards riffs and guitar solos. As a kid he once played "Money" by The Beatles over and over so many times that his mother threatened to take the record player away. A few years later Bill heard Cream and that made him get serious about playing guitar. This was some serious shit! He badgered his parents into getting him a Gibson SG. Always something of a problem child, they did, thinking it would help keep him out of trouble. It probably did. This was the golden age of rock and Bill was fully immersed in the music of the day; Cream, Hendrix, Woodstock. All this eventually led Bill to the blues, source material for the guitarists Bill so admired, and he immersed himself in the language of blues. After playing in his own high school band for a few years, at age 17 Bill was asked to join "Cabbage", Baltimore's best known blues band at the time. Black men twice his age, his parents weren't thrilled by this, but he sure learned a lot. But a new kind of music was emerging... strange and complex and deeply weird next to the blues rock of the day. Progressive rock and jazz-rock fusion. Bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Mahavishnu Orchest
