Since 1992, August 13 has been celebrated as Worldwide Left Handers Day, honoring the roughly 10 % of the worldwide inhabitants with a dominant left hand.
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In a right-handed world, lefties can battle with issues like scissors and baseball gloves. Musical devices are equally designed with righties in thoughts, and their left-handed counterparts are costlier and more durable to come back by. Whereas some lefty musicians may need been compelled to be taught to play with their non-dominant hand, others famously flipped their guitars or rearranged their drum kits to make issues work.
Regardless of their small inhabitants dimension and the challenges they face, lefties have nonetheless develop into among the most gifted and awarded musicians on the planet, from guitarists and bassists to drummers. Bands like The Beatles, Foreigner, Black Sabbath, The Seashore Boys, Nirvana, and The Monkees all had left-handed members.
These are 14 of essentially the most well-known left-handed musicians.
Billy Ray Cyrus
Billy Ray Cyrus’ musical expertise reached new heights when he lastly bought a left-handed guitar in faculty. The “Achy Breaky Coronary heart” singer taught his equally left-handed daughter, Miley Cyrus, learn how to play a right-handed guitar when she was younger so she wouldn’t face the identical battle he did.
Ed Gagliardi
The unique bass participant for Foreigner, Ed Gagliardi famously performed a left-handed Fireglo Rickenbacker bass guitar — regardless of being naturally right-handed — out of admiration for lefty icon Paul McCartney.
Picture by Gus Stewart/Redferns
Dennis Wilson
Lefty Dennis Wilson was a co-founder of The Seashore Boys and the center brother of Brian and Carl Wilson. A backing vocalist and drummer within the band’s early days, Dennis Wilson was one of many first identified “open” drummers, that means he didn’t cross his fingers when he performed.
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Iggy Pop
Though he often has a microphone in his hand, when Iggy Pop does play guitar, he performs it lefty. The “Godfather of Punk” and inventor of the stage dive, Iggy Pop most ceaselessly picks up the guitar when he performs “I Wanna Be Your Canine” with The Stooges.
Jimi Hendrix
Some of the well-known left-handed musicians of all time, Jimi Hendrix usually utilized right-handed guitars turned the other way up and restrung for left-hand enjoying. He’s most frequently related to the Fender Stratocaster, which created a novel sound when flipped as a consequence of its bridge pickup.
Picture by David Redfern/Redferns
Joe English
Joe English performed drums in Paul McCartney’s band Wings within the Seventies. Equally to Dennis Wilson, Joe English performed drums “open handed,” hitting the snare together with his proper hand and the hi-hat and trip cymbals together with his left with out crossing them.
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Justin Bieber
Though he’s most well-known for his singing voice, Justin Bieber realized to play piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet as a toddler. He solely had his mother’s right-handed guitar at residence, which he tried unsuccessfully to play left-handed till he was gifted a left-handed guitar. When signing autographs, he at all times holds his pen in his left hand.
Kurt Cobain
Though he was compelled to be taught to write down right-handed, Kurt Cobain was naturally left-handed. Like Billy Ray Cyrus, he struggled to seek out reasonably priced left-handed guitars as an up-and-coming musician. This mix more than likely lead him to develop into ambidextrous, and the Nirvana co-founder alternated between enjoying right-handed guitars usually and inverted all through his profession.
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Micky Dolenz
Drummer and one in every of two major vocalists for the Monkees, Micky Dolenz performed the drums partially left-handed due to a childhood sickness. Perthes illness triggered his proper leg to develop into weaker and shorter than his left, so Dolenz created a “half-right, half-left” setup, he advised Trendy Drummer. “The underside half is left-handed and the highest is right-handed. I play the kick with my left foot and the snare with my left hand.”
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Paul Grey
Paul Grey, often known as The Pig or #2, was a bassist, backing vocalist, and co-founder of Slipknot. He usually performed the Ibanez PGB1L Paul Grey Signature — a customized model of the Ibanez ATK bass — tuned to B, F#, B, and E, left-handed, with a lauded “slapping” method.
Picture by Daniel Boczarski/Redferns
Paul McCartney
As a teen, Paul McCartney realized it was potential to play guitar left-handed when he noticed a poster of lefty Slim Whitman holding a guitar and realized he might reverse the strings. Though he primarily performed bass in The Beatles, McCartney can also be a talented keyboardist, guitarist, and drummer. He’s believed to have mastered over 50 devices in his lifetime.
Phil Collins
English musician Phil Collins, identified for his time in rock band Genesis and as a solo artist, is a real left-handed drummer. Sadly, he struggled with nerve harm and backbone issues later in his profession and may not drum.
Ringo Starr
Paul McCartney wasn’t the one lefty in The Beatles. Drummer Ringo Starr can also be left-handed, though he performs a right-handed equipment. This adaptation helped outline his distinctive and legendary enjoying type. Whereas the right-handed equipment leads him to look right-handed whereas drumming, it’s mentioned {that a} educated ear can select how he favors his left hand.
Tony Iommi
English guitarist Tony Iommi co-founded Black Sabbath with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Invoice Ward. Famously left-handed, Iommi truly misplaced the information of two fingers on his proper hand in a sheet metallic manufacturing unit accident. To proceed enjoying, he original thimbles out of dish cleaning soap bottles to guard his fingers and used slackened, light-gauge guitar strings, thus altering his sound. “Some individuals consider the accident invented heavy metallic. It helped me invent a brand new sort of music,” Iommi mentioned in a 2016 interview.
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