Music has played an important and often complicated role in the lives of many New Yorkers. This is the story of how several of them fell in love with music, and how they left it behind.



IN THE BEGINNING

Ivor Hanson, 43
Stay-at-home dad/Freelance writer
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I know exactly when I decided that I just needed to play the drums. I was 9 years old. I was at a talent show at a school that my two older sisters were going to. My family was living in Hawaii. And so we were at this talent show and there was a band, a school band playing. And this kid was rocking out on his sparkly blue drum set and I just thought, “That’s what I’m gonna do. That’s it. I know exactly what I’m gonna do now.”

Stephen Lehtonen, 26
Entrepreneur
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I was 13 years old when I had that moment. I remember I was in the backseat of my car. My cousin had just made a mix tape of U2 songs for me. And he played the song “Bad” by U2. It’s on The Unforgettable Fire album. I’m sitting in the back and Bono is singing, “I’m wide awake, I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping.” I remember I looked at my cousin and I said, “What is this?” And he said, “Yeah, it’s U2.” And I said, “This is amazing. This is something unbelievable.” This was something so different than anything I’d ever heard. And so passionate. I remember thinking you could just hear Bono almost coming through the speakers, just pleading for this song. I had no clue what the song was about. But I remember just thinking it was so deep and so real. Later on I learned he was singing about heroin addiction.

Andy Barbera, 42
Graphic designer

My dad was a lawyer. But he had a passion for music. And he had, at one point, studied classical guitar a little bit. He loved that instrument and the classical repertoire. And that didn’t last long for him, but he ended up with this guitar in the closet which I fancied. And somewhere around 10, I took it out finally. And he showed me a couple things which I apparently could do immediately. And so they said, “Let’s get him lessons.”

Jason Knox, 27
Music historian/archivist

I’m like 8 years old and watching channel 13 and they showed The Ed Sullivan Show. And they showed the Beatles’ first time on Ed Sullivan. And I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And after that I pretty much found every Beatles album and I just listened to them over and over again. I always wanted to play the bass guitar.

Naomi Greenwald, 26
Graduate student

I was in Vietnam and I was really depressed. And I went out and I was like, “I’m gonna go buy a guitar.” And I spent $6 and I found a guitar and that sealed the deal for a really long time. I felt like that’s what I needed to be doing. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I need this in my life.

Edwina Handy DaCosta, 56
Public relations manager
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There was a baby grand piano in what was our dining room. It was a home in Mount Vernon in New York. I think it was around the age of 10 or 11 that we were humming this song. We were learning the scales of music and so on in elementary school, but my mother taught me “Chopsticks.” So I did not learn them by a music book, just my mother teaching me the fingering. And then perhaps six months to a year later, we’re kind of dancing with a few older neighbors of ours that might have been approaching teenhood, and they’re singing this song “Duke of Earl.” And so one evening my twin and I are singing and my mother said, “Do you like that song, Edwina? I’ll teach it to you.” And so she taught me the “Duke of Earl.”

Stephen Lehtonen
Entrepreneur

I got this old classical guitar. Nylon strings, obviously. It was just a total beat-up guitar. It had pretty thick action, which is the separation between the strings and the fret board. I remember learning to play on this guitar, where I had to really dig in to make the strings hit the board to not get a funny sound out of it. I knew like three chords. I would just start to mess around and put words together. And I loved it.



Jim Oakar
Composer/Guitar instructor/Studio musician

I started playing guitar when I was 7 years old. I fell in love with it after a kid down the street, his older brother had this huge stereo system and had an acoustic guitar and he would play sometimes. And I was fascinated how he would play. I think there’s two things. It was one that was like, “That’s cool. I wanna be able to do that.” And then there was another part of me which was like, “I could do that better if I had the chance to do it.” And also, you know what it was? It was also his intrigue in me. He was fascinated that I would come by almost everyday. This guy was probably like 16 or 17 at the time, and he was going out with his girlfriend, and all cool and stuff and I think he kind of admired me for coming up to him and saying, “Hey, would you play more? Would you help me play?” Or, “Can I practice this?” Or, “How do you do this?” So there was a bit of an encouragement early on.

Andy Barbera
Graphic designer
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There was a long time when I wanted to be famous essentially. I didn’t think of it as fame like Prince or something. But I did think of it as being like, “Oh my God. There’s Andy Barbera. He’s that guitarist.”

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