Well, back when I was 12, [last week. Ed.] My musical taste was questionable at best. Basically, it was the bad pop music my generation has been subjected to. So, my dad got two cheap acoustic guitars (one for me, one for him) and said "look here, we're gonna learn to play together" . This essentially meant that we were going to learn all the old country songs he liked, which i didn't. Through learning them, I gained an appreciation for them, however, and they are now some of my favorite songs.
Anyways, so we both took a few lessons, but learned more from chord books (The Beatles book taught me a lot) and just playing off each other, figuring out what sounded right.
Tom