Everyone has their favorite genre of music. Whether it’s pop, country, or classical. There’s one genre that sticks out for everyone. You listen to that genre because it either appeals to you the most, or you have a connection between that genre and an important event or person in your life. For me, hard rock is that genre. I was introduced to rock music at a young age thanks to my dad. I remember driving back home from Maine after spending the day up there with my grandparents, he turned on the radio to a rock station. “Change the channel to something else,” my mom would say to my dad while we drove back, but I wanted the rock to continue playing. Something about the fast-paced electric guitar and drums hypnotized me. I wanted more, I wanted to know how they were playing it, and most of all I wanted to play it for myself.

Around 12 years old, my exposure to rock music was much larger than it had been when I was young. Instead of just listening to rock in the car, I had started to listen to rock on my own. I started out with AC/DC’s Back in Black album, spending my time listening to the songs over and over again like a broken record. Memorizing the lyrics of all of the songs. Occasionally one of their songs would come on the radio and I would surprise my dad by saying what it was. Around the same time,I was being taught how to play songs on the guitar. That lead me to go online on my own and look at how to play rock songs.

For the next two years, I was learning and practicing songs that I wanted to know how to play because I heard them on the radio or my dad suggested that I did. Not only did I play the songs but I listened to them regularly. On an overnight road trip in the spring with my dad, Van Halen’s “Ice Cream Man” started playing and my dad sang along, the way the guitar sounded when Eddie Van Halen played it were demonic screams that sounded amazing.

“What album did this song come from?” I asked him.

“I remember listening to it from Van Halen,” he said to me.

“But that’s the name of the band.”

“I know, the album was titled the same thing.”

Another time Ozzy Osbourne came on the radio and my dad said,

“Ozzy Osbourne’s albums are the best in the world, you should listen to them. Specifically the Prince of Darkness album which included the song “Iron Man” that was used in the Marvel movie.”

I kept asking him about bands, Metallica, Aerosmith, Guns n Roses, Led Zeppelin (which I never understood why they called themselves that), Korn, and many more. I lived and breathed rock and roll, the genre flowed through my veins as I listened to the songs.

Fast forward to now and I still love the genre and I’m still learning more about it and being exposed to more and more songs, bands, and albums. But what I didn’t realize until now is that my love for the genre doesn’t just come from the upbeat songs or the heavy guitar playing. It also comes from the bond that formed between my dad and me. He introduced me to rock and exposed me to all of the music that he listened to when he was my age. To him, I’m living the life that he did at my age, except today and not in the 80s. And to me, it’s another way to bond with my dad while enjoying the music.