after insisting he must learn every chord in a large book with nothing but a guitar neck. Shepherd did so--with help from his cousin Ralph "Tony" McMullen--and his father bought him his first guitar.

Shepherd played in numerous punk-rock bands with friends as a teenager like March of Crimes, Mind Circus and 600 School, meeting future musicians such as Stone Gossard, Krist Novoselic and Matt Cameron. After graduating from