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Jimi Hendrix was known for his showmanship on stage, which included playing the guitar upside down. He did it for a surprising reason.

Published on October 19, 2022

Jimi Hendrix was a beloved rock icon known for his out-of-this-world guitar skills. Before his death in 1970 at the age of 27, Hendrix became known for his music as well as his unique style of performing.

Why Jimi Hendrix played guitar upside down

Jimi Hendrix‘s electrifying stage presence was complemented by his larger-than-life style of performing. He would often play guitar with his teeth or behind his back, and even without touching the guitar strings.

He also played the guitar upside down, but it wasn’t an artistic choice so much as it was done out of necessity: he was left-handed. His left-handedness became a problem for his father from an early age, as he tried to get his son to play right-handed.

His father punished him for using his left hand

Hendrix’s father’s resentment of his son being left-handed stems from his own childhood trauma. Philip Norman’s 2020 book Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix explores just how his father’s upbringing affected Hendrix’s own upbringing.

“The youngest of their four children, James Allen — always to be known as Al — arrived in 1919, strong and healthy but with an extra finger on each hand,” Norman wrote. “Back then, such infant deformities were widely believed to be marks of the Devil for which, not long previously, the luckless infant would have been quietly suffocated. However, infanticide had given way to do-it-yourself amputation: Zenora [James’ mother, Jimi’s grandmother] was advised to bind the superfluous digits with silk cords, starving them of blood until they simply dropped. This they did, only to grow back in an undersized, shriveled form, complete with miniature nails.”

Hendrix’s father confronted his demons once again after his son’s birth. “Far more serious was the discovery that [Jimi] was left-handed, which many people still considered not far down the scale of Satan-signatures from surplus fingers,” Norman said. “That such a further stigma should be added to the midget digit on each of his own hands horrified Al, and he set about correcting it in the only way he knew how. If ever [Jimi] were caught using the ‘wrong’ hand, he could expect an angry swipe around the head.” 

He still performed with his guitar upside down after being able to afford left-handed guitars

Jimi Hendrix eventually became a beloved rock star as he performed with his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. He continued to play left-handed as well as show off his other guitar-playing skills on stage.

But despite becoming a successful musician, he opted not to spend his money on left-handed guitars. At the Woodstock Festival in 1969, for example, he played a white Fender Strat guitar upside down, even though he could’ve afforded several custom left-handed guitars by then.

Hendrix isn’t the only iconic rocker to play with their left hand; he’s joined by the likes of Paul McCartney and Kurt Cobain.

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