I would say Lisp is a fine beginners language, but it all depends on the teacher.

One reason why SICP works so well is that the authors are very passionate about Lisp. K&R accomplishes sort of the same thing for C. Many languages have these kinds of books.

I got into Lisp from reading Paul Grahams essays and books.

One of my younger brothers eventually found his way into programming heaven via Bash scripts.

My point is the medium matters less.