Childhood
Wilton moved from San Francisco, California to Seattle, Washington at age 6. His father took him to concerts from an early age and introduced him to many musical styles, but especially jazz. At age 8, he started practicing on the bass guitar, learning songs by bands from his father's collections, such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. At age 13, he also got a nylon string acoustic from his aunt and accidentally blew his father's speaker. He convinced his father to give him the Fender Bassman and speaker cabinet Wilton inherited from an uncle who died in a motorcycle accident.
In high school, Wilton changed his mind and chose to play guitar rather than bass, when he bought his first guitar, a Les Paul copy and a fuzzbox. At school, he also joined some garage bands with his school-mates, including Chris DeGarmo, Queensrÿche's former guitarist. He began to explore the guitar world further by listening to hard rock and heavy metal music such as Judas Priest, UFO, Iron Maiden, and Van Halen, and he began practicing seriously, for 2 hours per day.
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