The greatest left-handed musicians and how to become one
Christoph TostAugust 13, 2018
Paul McCartney, Phil Collins and even the late Jimi Hendrix are all known for being left-handed musicians. For Left-Handers' Day, DW presents 10 of the greatest "lefties" — and what you should know before becoming one.
Image: Getty Images
Advertisement
10 left-handed musicians from Hendrix to Barenboim
Does being left-handed make you a better musicians? These 10 stars are evidence it might. Plus, many of them adapted their instruments to suit the "other" half of their brain.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
Rebel to the core
Nirvana idol Kurt Cobain mostly played with his left hand — here on an inverted right-handed guitar. Once in a while he would pound Dave Grohl's right-handed drum kit. Cobain was a right-hander — and why he played guitar with the left is a mystery. The customized 1959 Martin D-18E guitar he played throughout the MTV Unplugged performance is being auctioned.
Image: Getty Images
The best left-handed guitarist
Although his dad tried get him to switch, Jimi Hendrix strummed his guitar with his left hand. He was able to play the other way around, though — and ate and wrote with his right hand. He famously played a right-handed Fender Stratocaster flipped over and restrung. For Left-Handers' Day, DW presents other musicians who've made it big — despite being left-handed, or precisely because of it.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
Lord of heavy metal
Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi (left) gave heavy metal its riffs. Iommi always played left-handed, which is almost a miracle: He lost his ring and middle finger tips at the age of 17 in an industrial accident. He could have switched hands, but "decided to make do with what I had, and I made some plastic fingertips for myself. I just persevered with it," he told "Guitar World" in 2008.
Image: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Sir Lefty
Sir Paul McCartney is a virtuoso on almost any instrument. He plays most of them with his left hand — including his legendary Höfner 500/1 bass. One exception: He plays a right-handed drum kit. After the Beatles dissolved in 1970, McCartney continued solo and with his band Wings.
Image: Getty Images/J. Dyson
The other lefty Beatle
Ringo Starr is a lefty too, but plays his drums like a righty. Any drum set can easily be rearranged for left-handed play, simply by mirroring the arrangement of all the pieces. Starr's left-handed activities limited themselves, however, to off-stage.
Image: Getty Images/M. Webb
Drum legend and pop star
Phil Collins plays drums, and everything else, left-handed. That means he has the hi-hat cymbal on his right — and played with his left hand — and kicks the bass with his left foot. The musician from London became famous with progressive rock band Genesis. When he was younger, the Beatles were among his idols: He saw lefties play from early on.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T. Bozoglu
Drums, tattoos, punk
Blink-182 have done a lot to boost punk rock's image. Move over Sex Pistols, here comes the pop punk of the 90s. Travis Barker is the tattooed, flamboyant drummer, and he's a southpaw. One could say he's a non-conformist through and through — except that he plays a right-handed drum set.
Image: Imago
An inventive southpaw
Elizabeth Cotten, an African-American blues singer, played in an unusual way: She simply took a right-handed guitar and turned it around — without reversing the strings. She is one of the few guitarists to have played the bass strings at the bottom with her fingers and stroke the melody with her thumb. Playing this way is therefore called "cotten picking."
Image: Imago
Comedy and music
Charlie Chaplin fled London's poverty early and emigrated to the States. There he reached fame with his short movies, including "The Vagabond" in 1916. In it, he plays the violin with his left hand. Privately he also played violin and cello quite well, always bowing with his left. "Every spare moment away from the studio is devoted to this instrument," read a press release from 1917.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
Conductor with a cause
Born in Buenos Aires, Daniel Barenboim learned piano from the masters of his day and is one of the world's most respected conductors. He is also founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the only joint Israeli-Palestinian orchestra. Since 1992 he has been the director of the Berlin State Opera, where the left-hander picks up the baton with his right hand.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/D, Nagl
10 images1 | 10
Fortunately, lefties no longer need to fear crude teachers tying left arms to chairs in order to "correct" their misbehavior. But a few misconceptions still exist about southpaws - especially in the field of music. In honor of Left-Handers' Day on August 13, we clear up a few myths.
1) Are there only left-handers and right-handers in the world?
Statistics are deceiving: Southpaws make up about 10-12 percent of the total world population. Yet this figure ignores ambidextrous people.
Psychologists mostly agree on a right-handed gene and a non-right handed gene. If you are born with the non-right handed gene, you could still be trained to write with your right hand.
That happens randomly or through force: Ronald Reagan was born a non-right-hander but was forced to use his right hand. Whether the switch had an impact on his brain is not recorded.
Most people who call themselves lefties are actually somewhat ambidextrous and might, for example, write with their left hand but use a computer mouse with their right hand.
According to an online survey involving 25,000 respondents, psychologists found in 2006 that ambidextrous people apparently have less spatial sense and are more likely to suffer from dyslexia and hyperactivity than people with strong hand preferences.
While it seems that being ambidextrous can be a limitation, the depth of the relationship between our dominant hand and our brain hemispheres is still not fully understood.
3) Isn't it useful to be able to do things with both hands?
For musicians, especially string players, it is useful. When playing violin or cello, both hands - hence, both hemispheres of the brain - need to be well coordinated. Ambidextrous people are much better at that, since their hemispheres work more closely together.
Some musicians even become ambidextrous through playing music. The Hanover Music Lab, a research institute for the psychology of music, found that all left-handed string players play comfortably with their right hand in orchestras. Otherwise, hell would break lose in the tight orchestra pit.
4) In classical music, do southpaws suffer under the tyranny of the right-handed majority?
The Hanover Music Lab also debunked this myth. They admit that perhaps individual players might feel restrained by having to use their right hand. Yet, the majority of lefties play with greater precision - even with their right hand.
Through hours of training, they are able to strengthen their right hand sufficiently. Thirty-five percent of the violinists in their study were lefties, so presumably there wouldn't be such a large number of southpaws if they felt suppressed.
5) So it's best for a musician to be right-handed or ambidextrous?
Especially for instruments like organ or piano, hardly any left-handed versions are available or affordable. True southpaws who want an adjusted instrument should then should go for guitars, basses or violins. They are more readily available, but still expensive.
Kurt Cobain got the guitar-maker Fender to produce a special left-handed guitar for him, the Fender Kurt Cobain Jaguar. If the 1,500 euros (some $1,800) for this model are still too much, southpaws may pull a Jimi Hendrix: He is the most famous (left-handed) guitarist and was perhaps the first to play on a DIY-southpaw guitar: Take a normal guitar, pull off the strings and re-string in the reverse order.
This article was originally published on August 12, 2015.
