I got an email from some dude called Dave, in response to what I’d posted about the video of the blind dude playing some killer electric guitar. He had a link to a youtube video of a great guitarist.. with one of his arms amputated above the elbow. Check it out:
This is the first clip I’ve seen of anyone playing the guitar quite like this, but it’s far from the first time I’ve heard of a guitarist recovering from a horrific accident to play well. In England in the ’60s there was a teenage guitarist called Tony Iommi, who cut off the tips of two of the fingers on his fretting hand in an accident at a sheet metal factory. This was on his last day of work before he was to quit to make his living just from playing the guitar. Following the accident, Iommi attempted to switch from left-hand guitars to right-hand guitars, until devising a way of playing with very light strings, and plastic covers on his damaged fingers. Iommi not only managed to play guitar again, but went on to lay the foundations for an entire genre of music with his pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath. I saw him play last year with the band Heaven and Hell and he is still a phenomenal player.
In interviews and instructional columns, Iommi has revealed that he considered giving away guitar completely following his accident, until he learnt of a jazz guitarist from the ’20s called Django Reinhardt. Django had played guitar from a very early age, then as an 18 year old sleeping in a caravan that caught on fire he suffered first and second degree burns all over his body. Two of the fingers on his fretting hand had been made useless for guitar playing, but he persevered and invented a way of playing with just the remaining 2 fingers. Django Reinhardt went on to become one of the most popular jazz guitarists of his day and one of the most influential of all time, with many of his compostions becoming jazz standards.
I think these stories of people overcoming misfortune put most of our excuses for not practicing into their right perspective. Whatever obstacles you might be faced with, with perseverance and the right attitude you definitely can learn to play music, and perhaps you should do something about it today.