In the late 1960s a scholarship freshman walked into the University of Miami dean's office to drop out, overwhelmed by academic life after spending his adolescence doing nothing but playing guitar. Instead of accepting the withdrawal, Dean Bill Lee hired him to teach electric guitar to students older than he was. This episode charts Pat Metheny from a brass-dominated swing household in Lee's Summit, Missouri, where his father, grandfather and brother all played trumpet, through the Beatles on television in 1964, a three-quarter size Gibson ES-140 at 12, wearing out Wes Montgomery's Smokin' at the Half Note, and the decision at 14 or 15 to stop imitating his hero, using Ornette Coleman's New York Is Now as the exit ramp.

The story continues through a DownBeat jazz camp, Attila Zoller, Kansas City gigs, teaching at Berklee under Gary Burton,  ...