For me it was U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” I got the chills when I first heard it in 1987 (especially the intro crescendo - still do now!), and after hearing it I vowed to learn the instrument. “I must do that!”
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A little unconventional and not really shreddy, but for me it was the music from Sonic Adventure, particularly “Open Your Heart” and the character select jingle.
I was probably 7 at the time, and had gotten an N64 the year before. I went to spend some time with my uncle and he had a big screen TV, a proper sound system, and this playing though it. Going from Super Mario 64 to this was…incredible. And try as I might I haven’t found anything else that sounds quite like this. Jun Senoue has some beautifully smooth playing.
A while after that someone made me an “Intro to Metal and Punk” mix tape with Black Sabbath, Armageddon, UFO, Iron Maiden, Metallica (Kill 'Em All), Megadeth (Rust in Peace), Testament, Sepultura, The Sex Pistols, and X-Ray Specs. Possibly also Siouxsie Sioux, can’t remember.
Guitar Hero 2 was the final nudge, but at that point I didn’t have enough time to play or enough money for equipment, so I waited through high school and college, saved up, and bought my first electric.
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Great thread this, some interesting selections.
For me, being a teenager in the UK in the 1990s, my first real inspiration was from bands like Blur, Oasis, Ride, The Stone Roses.
In particular the Oasis album What’s The Story inspired me and influenced my playing a lot early on.
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Oh yeah dude, I completely skipped over the large portion of my youth spent listening exclusively to music from the Mega Man and Mega Man X games before getting into actual bands.
I’m listening to this stuff for the first time in what feel like a decade and holy shit, now I know where I stole literally all of my ideas from.
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Odd man out here, but while I grew up in a household where I was constantly exposed to the sound of the guitar, and my dad’s Stones albums, the Howlin’ Wolf London Sessions, and Jimi Playing “Voodoo Child (slight return)” were things that made me think the guitar was cool…
…it wasn’t until seeing a live video of Kurt Cobain playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that it was something that I actually wanted to go out and do myself. Something about him standing there, screaming his ass off, motionless in front of a giant wall of speakers, and this huge wave of sound washing over him really struck me, and suddenly it was something that I really wanted to do.
From there, it was only a short matter of time before I was picking up my dad’s old Gibson acoustic and trying to teach myself a few chords and learn some of the songs off “Unplugged” (I think the first was probably “About a Girl,” but “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” was the one that really drove me to learn).
Since then I learned mere mortals could actually play Jimi, discovered SRV, and then went off the deep end with Satriani, Andy Timmons, Petrucci, and a few others, but at the end of the day it was Kurt Cobain that made me want to actually go out and do it. 
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For me it was Goofy Goober Rock, which is used at the end of The Spongebob Square Pants movie; https://youtu.be/VeNxh5t5dHg?t=2m38s. It’s basically a cover of Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock” but with an extended solo. I was completely obsessed with it as a kid. Still one of my favourite hard rock solos.
Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” was also a pretty big inspiration for me.
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Come As You Are/Smells Like Teen Spirit. Almost exactly 20 years ago as well.
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Always happy to run into another guy who plays shred these days, but first picked up the guitar thanks to Kurt. And I say that as a guy with too many friends a couple years older than me who blame Nirvana for killing off 80s metal.
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hah well not to diminish your happiness, but I don’t really play shred stuff much. Still appreciate Nirvana!
Oh well, haha. You gotta play a little, if you ended up here! Still cool though.
Master of Puppets. First “mastered” on an acoustic with nylon strings with just the bottom three strings.
The accoustic in the second part.
… still pure magic for me 
When I was 9 or 10, I had a cassette with Deep Purple “Machine Head” album, and I was listening to it all the time. After some time I figured out that riffs from different songs are quite similar in terms of notes, I tried to pick them up on my brother’s acoustic, and suddenly it turned out to be really easy. I think the riff from “Pictures of Home” was my first.
I also had “Big Generator” album by Yes, and Trevor Rabin’s solo from “Shoot high aim low” really blew my mind, I still can remember that moment I heard it for the first time. I transcribed it (and it wasn’t easy with just an acoustic and a cassette deck), but couldn’t play it at the speed of course.
That’s pretty much how they do it in the studio.
That’s Dave Mustaine’s big criticism of Kirk Hammett. Mustaine says Hammett is a lousy rhythm player.
I cannot think of any one song which inspired me, but I can narrow it down a lot:
- Nothing Else Matters. When I was around five, I remember seeing the video, and thinking the intro, interlude (especially) and solo sounded really cool. Then later at the age of 8ish played Guitar Hero: Metallica, and liked a lot of their trashy stuff.
- A bunch of stuff my uncle was playing (fingsrstyle) at the time, most memorably Stairway to Heaven. Can’t remember if I liked the song, or whether I just looked up to my uncle so much, and wanted to copy everything about him😂; probably a bit of both.
- Asturias, Isaac Albeniz. Alright this one’s classical, but if I hadn’t ever played classical guitar, I wouldn’t have played the electric either. When I was 6, I started taking Classical Guitar lessons. My teacher, on the first lesson, started playing Asturias, and i just thought it was awesome. I always held it as a sort of target in my brain, and it helped push me to the level I’m at now…
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There is just something about that opening riff.
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And don’t forget the solo…
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