While some guitar gods were initially inspired to play by the fretboard wizards that came before them, like shred-master Yngwie Malmsteen, who was introduced to Jimi Hendrix via a documentary he saw as a child, or Slash, who was blown away by Aerosmith’s Rocks after hearing it as a teen.
Still, others, like legendary Motörhead frontman Lemmy, were drawn to picking up an axe for less… artistic reasons. As the man himself recounted in a 2005 documentary, Lemmy began carrying his mother’s guitar around the schoolyard after he noticed a guitar-playing peer who was “surrounded by chicks”.
Despite not being able to play, “In those days just having a guitar was enough… that was it”. And if a recent UK-wide survey by eBay.co.uk is anything to go by, it’s not very different these days. According to the poll (via The Daily Mail), playing guitar increases a person’s attractiveness by an astounding 90 percent.
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Most interesting is that while it’s most often men who are learning to strum chords to better attract women, nine in ten Britons — male or female — say they find someone who plays guitar instantly sexy, and a quarter of the UK’s population openly admit to dating someone purely because they could play guitar.
Furthermore, Scottish women are apparently the most drawn towards guitar players, with more than half (54 percent) saying the ‘whole rock star thing’ makes men who play the instrument appealing.
Meanwhile, 45 percent of the ladies surveyed in Cambridge thought guitar players are irresistible because their axe skills prove that they are ‘good with their hands’.
Of course, some of the other findings were more predictable. For example, eBay UK found that one third of men across the UK have tried to impress someone by learning how to play a riff or two, which is unsurprising considering one in 10 women aged 18-24 say playing guitar is a ‘must’ in a man.
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When researchers queried why the six-string was such a coveted quality in a mate, 57 percent of respondents said they find it irresistible ‘when someone is passionate about music’, while 42 percent claimed it shows a sensitive side when people can ‘write songs and music’.
The reasons for why 50 percent of Britons found Jimi Hendrix to be the greatest guitarist of all time could perhaps shed further light on the pulling power of the instrument, with half claiming his talent made him the ultimate guitar god, while 38 percent credited his style and 21 percent his hair.
However, the questions remains: just what song should you use to serenade a potential mate? Well, Hendrix’s immortal rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ is the third most popular, with ‘Stairway to Heaven’ coming in second. First? Yep, ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis. Go figure.
