You'd think that being with only one hand would be a barrier to becoming a guitarist, but try telling that to YouTuber Gondorian_tomatoes_.
Gondorian – as we'll abbreviate him from now on – has uploaded a video in which he plays both of Slash's solos from Guns N' Roses' version of the Bob Dylan classic Knockin' On Heaven's Door.
Knockin' On Heaven's Door joins the other videos he's filmed – including two that feature the solos from Boston's More Than A Feeling and Metallica's Nothing Else Matters – in proving that physical barriers needn't be an obstacle to learning an instrument if you're determined enough.
"I was born missing my left arm below the elbow," says Gondorian, "and play my guitar with a prosthetic arm using an attachment that holds a guitar pick."
Gondorian joins a long list of fellow guitarists who've overcome physical limitations to master their instruments, including (famously) Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, who lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident at the age of 17, jazz great Django Reinhardt, who lost the use of two fingers after being burned in a fire, and Keith Xander, frontman of Liverpool-based blues outfit Xander and the Peace Pirates, who, like Gondorian, was born without the lower part of his strumming arm and cradles his plectrum in the claw of a prosthetic limb.
Gondorian is currently learning the solo from the Eagles' classic Hotel California.
