I’d say, Patti Smith, when I was about 5 yrs old.
My brother (7 then) & I were digging around the record cabinet (admittedly, looking for some aggravating Chipmunks Xmas record), when my brother pulled out this dusty record at the very bottom (turned out to belong to some old friend of my mom’s, she didn’t even know she had it). Patti Smith Group’s Easter. He said he found it earlier that day, & looked around to make sure my mom was gone.
He dropped the needle on Babelogue. Of course, I couldn’t fully grasp what the hell I was hearing, but I knew it was the coolest thing to ever touch my ears… until it went into Rock N Roll Nigger, of course.. I loved the tune. Understood (at the very least, at that age) – the song was about people who were different- outsiders. Niggers. And all I knew was that I liked it. Probably odd to have a topic like that resonate with a little kid, but I’ve always been a bit weird, I guess. Of course, my mother didn’t react well to her 5 yr old skipping around the backyard singing, “baby was a black sheep/baby was a whore..”
My tastes moved along to Buddy Holly. My grandfather exposed me to tons of 50s rock, since he’d heard about the “rock n’ roll record incident” at my house. He gave me some records. Dylan was in there, somewhere. Mother had allowed it.
I don’t recall how I got into the Ramones, might have been that I saw them on MTV when I was waiting for Beavis & Butthead to show up. Bought a Ramones cassette at a yard sale. That’s how I got Iron Maiden’s Fear of The Dark, too. Started going to actual music stores when I had the money, when we moved to less rural areas (we moved a lot).
And of course, with the rise of the internet, came more exposure- deeper down the wormhole. Napster was a good friend. Came across The Casualties, The Adicts, Cocksparrer, Green Day, of course..
And so the story goes on, I guess.