Nailing all of the nuances of Slash's solos on Guns N' Roses' cover of Bob Dylan's "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door" is difficult enough with two hands. YouTuber Gondorian_tomatoes_, however, pulled it off with just one.
With a prosthetic attached to his left elbow, the guitarist not only hits all the notes, but Slash's tone, dead-on in his own version of the two solos, which you can check out in the video above.
"I was born missing my left arm below the elbow," Gondorian says in the video's caption, "and play my guitar with a prosthetic arm using an attachment that holds a guitar pick."
In response to a commenter, he added that “The prosthesis is model[ed] around a forearm shape (as I have my elbow but not much below it) and where the 'wrist' is there's a screw thread attachment.
“So the attachment onto the prosthesis is a ball and socket joint with a piece of metal on. In that piece of metal there's a slit cut out that can fit a guitar pick inside that is then secured with screws. I hope that makes sense haha it's difficult to describe it without showing in person.”
Gondorian_tomatoes_ has also filmed excellent takes on the "Bohemian Rhapsody" solo, James Hetfield's solo from Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters," and Tom Scholz’s towering lead on Boston’s "More Than a Feeling."
You can check them out on his YouTube channel (opens in new tab).
Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com and GuitarPlayer.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.
