“She never learned and the record sat there: ‘Put your finger on string No. 4.’ I paid no attention to the guitar and physically threw it down the basement stairs just to hear it make noise. And one of the tuning pegs broke, and it sat down there for six years until at 13 I thought, ‘I'd like to try to hear how this sounds,’” he remembers.

“There was a singer and guitar player in a lounge band who moved in across the street. He gave me guitar lessons with five tuning pegs instead of six and we would tune it with a screwdriver. After a couple lessons, he showed me a song or two and taught me a song by The Animals called ‘The House of the Rising Sun.’ He said, ‘Know this by next week.’

“I came back and didn't know it. He said, ‘You're wasting my time. I have a wife and kids upstairs, and I really don't need to be down in the basement, so either learn it or get out of my house.’ He challenged me and, of course, he was a great inspiration in my life because throughout the early years he would give me encouragement to listen to demos or listen to song ideas, or I would set up his gear in the lounges for him on Friday afternoons. I was his first roadie. He only took on three students and two of us became rock 'n' roll stars.”

Baruchel stars in thriller

Canada-born Jay Baruchel is one of the stars of the super spooky dystopian drama “Humane,” in theaters on Friday. The streaming public will have to wait till July to catch the thriller on Shudder, which marks the directorial debut of Caitlin Cronenberg (yes, the daughter of famous director David Cronenberg).

Baruchel plays one of the grown children of a retired newsman, all mired in a global collapse that requires a sudden decrease in the population. When the suicide of the father, played by Peter Gallagher, goes awry, chaos envelops his children.

Baruchel, who has starred in “BlackBerry,” “Man Seeking Woman” and “The Moodys,” recalls, “I was always precocious and a Chatty Cathy and always something of a class clown. Whenever I’d go to the big Christmas gathering, I’d always put on shows. When I was a little kid, 3-years-old, I’d be on Grandma’s coffee table doing a Michael Jackson impression or slogans from the Hudson’s Bay Company on TV.

“So Dad thought this might be a fun thing to do after school. Concordia University, which was one of the two best film schools in Canada, they were making a flick and they came to our school to see if there were any kids who wanted to read for it. And it got my first audition. And here I am.”

John Lithgow goes back to school

One of the more astute actors in Hollywood is John Lithgow, as he’s proved by his many roles on TV and film, on stage, and in his own one-man show. But, surprise, Lithgow is going back to school with his new one-hour show, “Art Happens Here with John Lithgow,” airing on PBS Friday.

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