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harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:53 pm

When I looked at the Elton John and Bernie Taupin songwriting team I wondered why their specialities weren't flipped around. I thought "Is it just a fluke that the music man Elton John happened to be left-handed and the lyrics man Bernie Taupin happened to be right-handed?"
Why wasn't it the other way around?

So then I thought "Google other famous songwriting duos, you fewl (as Inpector Clousseau might have said)". So I typed this search words in Google: composer lyricist duos

So, on page one of Google's results, the fifth article seemed appropriate and clicked that. The article's title is "It Takes Two: 10 Songwriting Duos That Rocked Music History | Billboard".
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... ic-history

Elton John - left-handed - music man
Bernie Taupin -right-handed - lyrics man

Joe Strumer - right-handed - "co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the Clash"
Mick Jones - right-handed - "best known as the lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, cofounder and songwriter for The Clash"

Jimmy Page - right-handed - not famous for being a lyricist but famous for being a master of riffs and guitar solos (composer too from my POV)
Robert Plant - right-handed - the primary lyricist and melody writer of Led Zeppelin

Mick Jagger - right-handed - listed as a lyricist in my other Google search using these search words: rock lyricist
Keith Richards - right-handed - NOT listed as a lyricist in my other Google search using these search words: rock lyricist

Carole King - right-handed - listed as a lyricist in my other Google search using these search words: rock lyricist
Gerry Goffin - left-handed - NOT listed as a lyricist in my other Google search using these search words: rock lyricist

John Lennon - right-handed - considered as being stronger at writing lyrics
Paul McCartney - left-handed - considered as being gifted at writing melodies and also at writing the right lyrics (sappy or not) for his melodies

Arrghh.
The duos Strummer-Jones, Page-Plant, Jagger-Richards... are not fully supporting my beliefs. But still, the lyricists in those duos ARE right-handed and does support my beliefs that way. Jimmy Page should have been a lefty. He seems like a lefty to me, he was interested in the arts, and is an artsy fartsy type to this day?

Yay.
The duos Taupin-John, King-Goffin, Lennon-McCartney... does support my beliefs.

Conclusion.
Still confused but beliefs or possible bias is still leaning towards the old science or "myth" as the consensus seem to be calling it now.

PS, it seems that Lennon and McCartney stopped being a duo around the time the Beatles stopped touring? So maybe Lennon and McCartney are not a true duo and doesn't belong in that list.

Delta Sign · Post by **Delta Sign** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 4:21 pm

Totally OT, but just a few random facts about that list.

harryupbabble wrote:Tom Waits

He actually rarely "wrote" his music, at least not on the first few albums. He just wrote the lyrics and just improvised the rest, while often even changing the lyrics on the fly. I think that's one of the big reasons why his music is so amazingly "narrative".

harryupbabble wrote:Thom Yorke

harryupbabble wrote:Michael Stipe

Micheal Stipe actually inspired Yorke's track "How to disappear completely". After a gig, when Yorke had a full blown panic attack and called Stipes, who then told him to close all doors and windows, sit in a corner and keep saying to himself "I'm not here, this isn't happening".

I love this live version with just him and three Ondes Martenots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If47eIpWWa0

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 5:53 pm

I think you're looking for a rule or a causation that doesn't exist. There are so many things that can lead to a person having strong or weak skills at [insert subject]. A dominant hand is no sure sign of anything, except whether or not a person finds the world is not designed for them (left-handed dominance being accommodated much less, for being less common).

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 6:00 pm

the only thing i know judging from this thread and the pic posted earlier, mr taupins barber was left handed and using right handed scissors.

and wearing a blindfold.

Delta Sign · Post by **Delta Sign** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 6:01 pm

Unaspected · Post by **Unaspected** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:22 pm

I think we might have learned that the majority of people are right handed.

Though I am surprised by the number of left handed people to have contributed to the poll. I think I've only met a couple of left handed guitarists in my life.

Nielzie · Post by **Nielzie** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:49 pm

Unaspected wrote: I think I've only met a couple of left handed guitarists in my life.

But I'm pretty sure you've met a lot of left handed masturbatists at the same time

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:01 pm

Nielzie wrote:
Unaspected wrote: I think I've only met a couple of left handed guitarists in my life.
But I'm pretty sure you've met a lot of left handed masturbatists at the same time

all at the same time is either an orgy or at the least a circle jerk.

apt, your icon i mean

Unaspected · Post by **Unaspected** » Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:39 pm

Nielzie wrote:
Unaspected wrote: I think I've only met a couple of left handed guitarists in my life.
But I'm pretty sure you've met a lot of left handed masturbatists at the same time

Well. Equal number, I would imagine. Though, of course, that can be an ambidextrous endeavour. As with the Google Images assumption, I don't think we can tell.

Actually...

So I typed "masturbation" into Google Images and I presume not many are virtuosos as I'm mostly just seeing a load of strumming.

harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 4:43 am

For the last part of my so-called "research" I typed these search words in Google: left-handed songwriters
On page one of Google's results, at the top is an article titled "Right, Left, Right, Wrong! - Other Handedness Issues - Handedness ..."
http://www.rightleftrightwrong.com/issues_music.html
Inside the article is a link to another article titled "List of Famous Left-Handers"
http://www.rightleftrightwrong.com/famous_list.html

I copied the list and pasted it here but I deleted the ones that are not musicians:

Albarn, Damon - Plays guitar right-handed
Allman, Duane - Plays guitar right-handed
Allman, Gregg - Plays guitar right-handed
Blackmore, Ritchie - Plays guitar right-handed
Bowie, David
Byrne, David - Plays guitar right-handed
Cobain, Kurt - Played guitar left-handed, but otherwise right-handed
Cockburn, Bruce - Plays guitar right-handed
Collins, Phil
Corgan, Billy - Plays guitar right-handed
Costello, Elvis - Plays guitar right-handed
Eminem
Fripp, Robert - Plays guitar right-handed
Gallagher, Noel - Plays guitar right-handed
Geldof, Bob
Gould, Glenn
Hendrix, Jimi - Wrote and ate with right hand
King, Albert - Played guitar right-handed
King, B.B. - Plays guitar right-handed
Knopfler, Mark - Plays guitar right-handed
Lennox, Annie
Lowe, Nick - Plays guitar right-handed
Lydon, John
Marsalis, Wynton
McCartney, Paul
Michael, George
Morse, Steve - Plays guitar right-handed
Pop, Iggy
Porter, Cole
Schumann, Robert
Simon, Paul - Plays guitar right-handed
Starr, Ringo - Drums and writes right-handed
Stipe, Michael

Whoa, error from my previous "rock lyricist" Google search because:

Elvis Costello and Eminem are not right-handed, they just play the guitar right-handedly.
Kurt Cobain is right-handed according to this article itself so why is he in this list?
Jimi Hendrix might be right-handed?

My presumptions about Google Images giving results of "overwhelmingly right-handed" songwriters who play acoustic guitars might also be erroneous because so many lefties in the above list are playing their guitar right-handedly.

Conclusion: there are a lot of lyricists in the above list and so maybe lyric-writing is not dominated by right-handers and therefore maybe the old science is wrong after all. But I still don't know for sure, that's why I created this thread's poll and did a lot of Googling. I wanted to know if the old science was not wrong. Does anybody here know for sure? Because if old science could be wrong then couldn't the new science be wrong too because the new eventually becomes old? And a third possibility could be that both the old and new are wrong?

Anyways, it's late here so, goodnight then ladies and gents.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 4:47 am

Ringo is left-handed. He was forced by his granny to write right-handed. He plays (or played) a kit set up for righties but his tom tom fills are backwards. There are right handed drummers who learned total ambidexterity for the drums. It's actually preferred.

You're barking up a tree to nowhere, man. First of all you've isolated and obsessed on song-writing duos. There are people, believe or not, who write the whole song themselves. The division of labor here is all about you and you creating a problem in the brain that is not a simple problem. You have one person here, mr woggle who actually knows from this but you appear to have zero interest in what he's had to say. This is bullshit.

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 4:48 am

harryupbabble wrote: Does anybody here know for sure?

Yes, I do.

harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:06 pm

harryupbabble wrote:I wanted to know if the old science was not wrong. Does anybody here know for sure?

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 7:42 pm

i think woggle does.

Delta Sign · Post by **Delta Sign** » Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:17 pm

When I do a google image search for "does woggle know for sure", I only get "did you mean "does google know for sure"", so I guess science isn't able to solve this complex problem.

I also once saw a left handed person eat an apple. Maybe there is a connection between apples and the left brain hemisphere.

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