I was six years old when I started playing Piano Accordion (that was my Mothers doing not mine) and it wasn't long after that I started noticing the Beatles playing in the background practically everywhere I went. However I continued playing the p.a until about nine years old. By then, the music around me started getting more & more psychedelic (it wasn't until some time later that I realized what my parents were getting up to).
At some point I heard a really strange sound and asked a friend who it was, "oh that's a guy called Jimi Hendrix". I thought well, that sounds freakin cool! It was around that time when I was 12 years old that my brother introduced me to my first smoke of weed and the flood gates opened.
Along came the likes of Robin Trower, Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, Peter Frampton, Budgie, Alan Parsons, and a host of the 'usual suspects' talked about with fondness so much in this day and age.
By now it was bye bye Piano Accordion hello guitar (and goodbye school work).
Looking back, I think I was most influenced to pick up the guitar by an era of music rather than any one artist...at least in the beginning.