I'm probably a bit of an oddball in this regard.  I started piano lessons when I was 5 and subsequently only really listened to classical music till I was 14 or 15 years old.  I had my comic book friends and my dungeon and dragon friends, and my swimming/diving friends and my general friends.  My best friend was Allan Harwood and we spent many hours at his house playing the original Pong game, and board games and he turned me on to rock music.  Notably the first albums I really heard were Styx "Pieces of Eight", Kansas "Leftoverture", Queen "A Might at the Opera", Cheap Trick "Live at Budakon" and some Steve Miller.  I loved all of it, but Styx, Kansas and Queen spoke to me on a whole other level.  It was kind of like classical but it rocked.  

Allan use to drag me to the record store to check out and buy albums, which at the time I thought was stupid, I'd always say "why don't you just listen to it on the radio?".  I eventually learned and now have thousands of albums.  Now when I hit 16 I changed high school and moved away, for some reason I recall my older sister telling me that if I liked Styx, Queen and Kansas that I'd like Genesis.  I use to look at their section in the record store all the time but couldn't decide what to buy.  At 17 in my biology class there was a guy at my table who would doodle the Genesis logo and I asked him about it and went over his house after school and he played me Nursery Crymes and I was totally blown away, I started randomly buying Genesis albums after that, the first was And Then There Were Three.  My girlfriends best friend was a Genesis fan and told me to get Trick of the Tail.  It all just spoke to me in a way I can't describe.  I owe these people a lot for helping to shape my musical tastes.

Now last month, for the first time in the 30+ years I've been a fan, I got to see Kansas live.  Steve Walsh got me tickets and backstage and I was able to bring my family and we all met the band and got one or two pictures.  It was really an amazing time and a long time coming.  So that's where I'm coming from.