When did you know that music was your passion?

When I was around 6 or 7 years old I had this fascination with the inner workings of older electronics. I'm 51, to put this in perspective. I would dis-assemble old tube radios and such to see what they were made of. I thought those big old caps where the greatest things. I'd take them apart, and collect the resistors and caps, and I'm drifting.... This lead me to actually listening to the equipment, and trying to figure out how they all work, which eventually lead to listening how the sound was better in some, and worse in others, and why, etc. I found I liked to listen to good sounding gear, which started me down this road. I could never get enough of just listening to the radio.
A friend of mine lived across the street from the park we used to play softball at. He would put his JBL L-100's up in the windows and crank it while we played ball. We all grew up with music playing continuously. Wow, great memories...

Three things: 1. Summer vacations spent at my uncle's house in Ann Arbor MI, discovering his Beatles albums and he letting me play them on his "stereo" ! with some big 10" woofers and BASS! (which we had nothing of the sort at our house. OH what fun.
2. Seeing the movie "Yellow Submarine" on TV around 1973 when I was 12 years old, BLEW MY MIND. Psychadelic Peter Max type animation and Beatles music. I was hooked; went out and bought my first beatles album, Revolver.
3. Around 1975 or so picking up a Radio Shack catalog and musing over the raw driver section wondering what a 15" woofer would sound like... about the same time picking up a JBL catalog and "wow"-ing over the L200 and L300 and raw driver section... thus begining my facination with speakers.
4. okay okay I said 3, but... after the Beatles quickly moved on to Chicago, Elton John, CSN, Steely Dan then more progressive's like Yes, King Crimson, ELP, Camel, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Rush, Santana.. then around 1977 discovered jazz fusion with the likes of RTF, Weather Report, Jean Luc Ponty, etc... full blown Jazz nut by 1980 or 81... began attending symphony and buying classical throughout the 80's. These days it's Coltrane, Miles, Duke, Louis, Stan Getz, you get the idea.

When I was in the womb, my mother was an amateur opera singer.
When they slapped my rear end I didn't cry, but started to wail 'Carmen'. Apparently.

When I got a 45 rpm copy of Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini for my fifth birtday in 1962.

Devilboy,
I had a similar story to yours. I was like 12 and used to spend summers at my grandma's place. One day a buddy of my cousin came and brought along some 'strange music'. Being younger than them I didn't dare going into the living room to hang out with them so I was in the next room but I could listen to the music...it was strange but fascinating. This guy kept singing about a musical box. After their listening session was over and they had left, I ran to the living room to check out the LPs. First one I picked up had a picture of a man with a flower around his head. It turned out to be an earlier Genesis album. I started playing some of it on the 'forbidden' stereo and I was hooked for life. Grandma gave me money the following Xmas to buy me some records: I remember buying Marillion's Real to Reel. Since then I started spending endless afternoons in record stores browsing the most eclectic sections (these records had the best covers period!) I am talking about Marillion, Gentle giant, jethro tull, genesis, king crimson, yes.....
oh boy....those were good days.