While notebooks and specialty scissors have been a small step for the left-hander, the world is still designed for the right-hander. Left-handed guitarists have a much more difficult time finding their work instruments on the market, but many of them have not only succeeded but have also managed to take advantage of it to become the best of the genre. If you’ve ever wondered about the best left-handed guitarists out there, here’s a list.
The Cars’ Elliot Easton
Co-founder and lead guitarist of the Cars, Elliot Easton is left-handed and plays left-handed guitars. Elliot’s guitar solo for the band was fundamental to the band’s success.
Kurt Cobain
Everyone is sick of seeing Kurt in all the rankings but the – for many – overrated leader of Nirvana is at the same time underrated by his talents as a guitarist and although he was not the most prolific, no one can deny that he had great gifts both in the six strings and when composing and that is because when it comes to being a good musician, it is not only the complexity of what he made but the connection he makes with it.
Dick Dale
Ah, the King of Surf Guitar! What to say about one of the most influential guitarists of the 60s … Dick Dale earned his nickname based on a tremolo picking that seemed more like a tornado unleashed on the neck, his use of exotic scales, and an ongoing obsession for turning his amps to such a huge volume that the “hitting 11” popularized by Nigel Tufnel could well have been attributed to him. Dick Dale is also one of those lefties who play the guitar with the strings backward. That is as if you literally took a standard guitar and changed hands, leaving the sixth string down.
Albert King
For those who do not know him, Albert King was one of the greatest legends of blues music. He played with the left but didn’t bother looking for a special guitar. Albert King played inverted, that is, he used right-handed guitars, but he inverted them. In his case being left-handed was not a handicap, he himself declared that since he started playing he knew that he had to create his own style when playing since he could not reach certain chords as a right-hander did. Boy did he get it …
Paul McCartney
When you are left-handed as a child and when you grow up you pick up a guitar, you know that you most likely have problems pulling chords from it, but McCartney’s case is different. The former Beatle did almost all of his daily activities with his right hand; however, when he began to play the guitar, he found that it was much easier for him to play with his left hand. Paul McCartney, although officially declared left-handed, can also do many activities with his right hand, but several of his biographers agree that when it comes to the guitar, he is much more comfortable with the left.
Tony Iommi
Yes, clueless friends: the father of heavy metal is also left-handed. And not only that, but some phalanges are missing on the fingers of the right hand. The one that, in your case, governs the mast. Although this story of the work accident that cost him some fingers and, almost, almost, his musical career to good Tony Iommi we already have it more than known, right?
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix had something that happened when he was little that now seems surreal, but a few years ago it was not so surreal. His father forced him to use his right hand because using his left was frowned upon. Jimi Hendrix’s quarrels with his father were so great that the guitarist learned to write and play with both hands (something that on more than one occasion has impressed those who sold him guitars). Of course, he had to modify the first guitar he had by changing the grid and the order of the strings to suit his left hand.