Famous Lefties in Music

Music, specially rock music has seen many gifted left-handed. Left-handedness may be a problem when learning an instrument, sometimes because the instrument itself has been designed for a right-hand use such as guitars, but mainly because teachers are right-handed and may find it difficult to teach a lefty, who might end up learning by themselves or looking for a lefty teacher. A popular anecdote comes from one of the most popular lefty musicians, Paul McCartney, who started learning to play the guitar by copying his friend John Lennon’s positions on a mirror.

Left-handed are more inclined to artistic professions, to give an instance, lefties are about 5% to 10% of the general public, while among entertainers they are roughly 40-50%.

Here is a list of just some of the most famous left-handed musicians:

Classical Lefties

Some left-handed classical musicians, whether performers or composers have been the greatest and most renowned in History.

To give a few examples two of the most widely music geniuses ever were lefties: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig Van Beethoven. Some other widely recognised classical music composers are Russians Serge Prokofiev who wrote the beautiful “Peter and the Wolf” and Sergei Rachmaninoff, pianist, composer and conductor who resided extensively in the US. One of the greatest opera singers ever, Italian Enrico Caruso, and French composer Maurice Ravel were also other talented lefties.

Rock Lefties

If you look at any list of the best rock guitar players in history, most of them are lefties, it seems like even the difficulty of having to learn mirror-like or having to change the cords have been compensated with huge amounts of talent.

The one and only Jimmi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Dire Strait’s Mark Knopfler, are on top of any best rock guitar players list and are or were all lefties. The ever sweet Everly Brothers, who were real-life brothers, were both lefties (although there is no evidence of the genetic behavior of left-handedness it may run in the family).

Even some bands have more than one lefty. The Beatles had two talented lefties: Sir Paul McCartney on the guitar and Ringo Starr on the drums. In fact, there is an American jazz band whose four members are all lefties: The Manhattan Transfer.

Other equally famous if not legendary lefties in rock music from the US are Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain or Paul Simon, just to name a few.

From the other side of the pond, however, many famous British musicians are lefties: David Bowie, drummer Roger Taylor, drummer and singer Phil Collins, David Byrne, Seal, Annie Lennox, George Michael, Bob Geldof and Sting. Most of these musicians can play more than one instrument, which shows that being a lefty is not an obstacle to being a great musician.

Being a left-handed musician or musician-to-be is not easy (being left-handed is not easy, period). Instruments designs, teaching, even music has been written by and for right-handed people. However, the above short list shows how many lefties are in the top lists of most notable and gifted musicians ever.