“I might have had a better career if I was able to focus on one type of music, but I have to be so many different things to satisfy my itch,” says Vince Gill.
It's hard to imagine Vince Gill having a better career. As a guitar slinger, singer and writer of numerous hits, he’s sold more than 30 million albums and earned 22 Grammy awards, the most of any male country music artist. Gill has also earned 18 Country Music Association awards, including two for Entertainer of the Year and a record-breaking four Song of the Year wins, making him one of the most awarded artists in CMA history. His most recent recognition was the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, which he received in 2025.
He’s also established a career as a solo artist and as a player with bands like Pure Prairie League and the Eagles. Somehow he’s managed to do it all while retaining a reputation as a musician's musician and the nicest guy in the world.
Undoubtedly he’s managed to accomplish so much simply because people like to work with him. But it’s also because Gill is a tremendous talent who started out quite young. As he tells Guitar Player, he’s been drawn to the guitar for as long as he can remember.
“It has been part of me since before I had any memories at all,” he says. “I have a picture of me as a baby, asleep on a couch, with my arm around a guitar. My dad played a bit of banjo and guitar, but I don't have a conscious memory of seeing someone play the guitar and saying, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do that.’”
Gill was born in Norman, Oklahoma. His father played in a country band part-time, and encouraged young Vince to learn banjo and guitar, to which he quickly added bass guitar, mandolin, dobro and fiddle, while still in high school. Not surprisingly, Gill’s father was the source of his first guitars, which led to his own dozens of fine examples.
“He got me a guitar similar to the ES-125, but with a four-string tenor neck,” he explains. “With my little hands, I could make chords on it a lot easier than I could on a six-string. I tuned it like the first four strings of a guitar.”
He was still a youngster when he gave his first performance.
“The first time I played in front of people, in second or third grade, I had learned ‘The House of the Rising Sun,’” he says with a laugh. “I sang a song about whorehouses in grade school and I didn't even know it!
“I had learned ‘The House of the Rising Sun.’ I sang a song about whorehouses in grade school and I didn't even know it!”
— Vince Gill
“I just played the songs of the day, whether it was the Beatles, the Stones, or what have you. In sixth, seventh and eighth grade, we were playing the rock tunes of that time — the late '60s. I was the youngest in my family, so I was at the mercy of the music my mom, dad, big brother and big sister would play. I heard a diverse palette early on, and I liked a little bit of everything.”
From the start, he was drawn to the sounds of rock’s classic era.
“Believe it or not, Joe Walsh was an early influence, as well as Eric Clapton,” Gill says. “I learned ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’ and I loved Led Zeppelin in those high-school years. I was drawn to all of it.”
But it wasn’t all rock and roll. Gill’s ears were tuned into country as well.
“Chet Atkins was a big influence, too,” he says. “In those days, I was playing more with a flatpick and not trying to figure out how Chet was doing what he did. I just loved the way he sounded.”
By his early teens, he was beginning to find his niche as an acoustic guitarist.
“I got flipped into the bluegrass world when I was about 15, and that pointed me in a completely different direction. I didn't play nearly as much electric guitar in the last years of high school. I was flat picking, learning to play fiddle tunes, picking up the mandolin, and trying to learn the correct style of banjo playing.”
That changed around 1977, when Gill moved to California.
“There were so many musicians to learn from, and I started being inspired by players like Larry Carlton, Robben Ford, and James Burton,” he says. “I could hear the difference in the way Larry Carlton and James Burton would bend the strings. James would bend the strings like a steel-guitar player. I'd hear Larry Carlton playing on a Steely Dan record, and try to learn to bend that way and find that tone. Then I stumbled upon Albert Lee. Albert Lee was such a huge inspiration as far as me wanting a Telecaster.”
While Gill’s range of influences may seem dizzying, there is one thing that holds them all together, he says. They each have nuances that make them unique as players. And it’s exactly what has made Gill among the greatest guitarists on the planet: His attention to detail.
“I’m really interested in subtleties," he explains.
But it’s also because he’s interested in everything.
“If there's a blues shuffle or something else where I get to scratch that itch, it's enough,” he says. “I don't feel I have to do a whole blues record just to prove I can. I like being a country guy, a blues guy, an R and B guy, a big ballroom singer or whatever.”
