When I was 16 i had been playing for 2 years. (I'm now nearly 19 if your wondering....) I was obsessed with metal and spent hours taking Metallica songs to pieces. My friend who taught me also had me onto the past-masters like Led Zep and Hendrix so I had some of that style as well....although i didnt really appreciate how valuable things like the blues were until later....once you've got the blues scales and learned how to improvise them I simply applied them when learning metal songs and found i could play in a much more compact and fluent way. What I do now is largely the same style but a lot of my repetoir comes from Rush who i discovered a little later on and got hooked on.

How good was I? Good enough for a band but nothing special. How good am I now: I only ever play to myself so i couldnt really say....

What songs do I play...ummm, ok here goes:

Metallica: Slither; Ride the Lightening, Disposable Heros; Helpless (a diamond head cover); Unforgiven; My Friend of Misery; Carpe Diem Baby; Where the Wild things are; Bleeding me; The 4 Horsemen.

Zeppelin: Whole lotta love; Dazed and confused; Stairway to heaven; Black Dog.

Deep Purple: Perfect Strangers; Stormbringer; Child in Time, Emmeretta; Black Night; Strange Kinda Woman

Megadeth: Lucretia, Tornado of Souls; Reckoning Day; Black Curtains; The Conjuring, Disconnect, Dread and The Fugitive Mind.

Hendrix: Voodoo Child slight return (Although nowadays I work from SRV's version coz its way better); Red House; Stepping Stone.

Rush: Spirit of the Radio; Here Again; What You're doing; Working Man; Dreamline; Limelight; By-Tor and the SnowDog; The Camera Eye; Natural Science (my favourite play-along track); Jacob's Ladder; Driven; Bravado; Analog Kid; Digital Man; The Big Money; Test For Echo....(i've tried loads more but those are the main ones)

Smashing Pumpkins: Siva; Rhinocerous; Cherub Rock; Today.

I could sit here typing this list all night.......thats just to give you an idea :)