Musicians confined to a wheelchair

cloptrop · 11-03-2012 2:48pm #1

I seen a video the other day for hard fi and seen one of them was using a wheelchair, even though there is no reason a person in a wheelchair shouldnt be able to play a guitar as good as one standing it still caught me unawares , simply because you dont see it often.
For all I know he was just using it in that video because there was one lying around , it wasnt an official video like.
We have all heard of the one armed drummer , but are there many successful musicians in wheelchairs. Apparantly the fella who wrote save the last dance was in one.
Can anyone think of any more.

uncle ernie · 11-03-2012 2:57pm

vic chesnutt, left partially paralyzed after a car accident when he was 18.

john martyn in his later years after having a leg amputated below the knee. dunno if he was 'confined' to one but anyway...

delbertgrady · 11-03-2012 5:01pm

cloptrop wrote: »

Apparantly the fella who wrote save the last dance was in one.

That would be the legendary songwriter Doc Pomus, who had polio as a child which resulted in him using a wheelchair most of his adult life. He's immortalised in a song by Ben Folds (on his album Lonely Avenue, lyrics by novelist Nick Hornby) and Lou Reed's Magic and Loss album is co-dedicated to him.
Pomus and Mort Shuman wrote a lot of major hits in the fifties and sixties: Save the Last Dance you've mentioned already, but also A Teenager In Love, Viva Las Vegas, Suspicion, (Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame, Surrender and Sweets for My Sweet.

Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine is a highly respected musician. He was the drummer in Soft Machine and (later) Matching Mole, but was paralysed after falling out a window. His subsequent solo albums are all very highly regarded, especially Rock Bottom, which regularly features in "classic album" lists. I'm also pretty sure that David Bowie rates Wyatt's version of Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding as one of his favourite tracks of all time. There was also some controversy when the BBC had "issues" with a wheelchair-bound Wyatt appearing on Top of the Pops performing his version of I'm A Believer. Wyatt won out.