A Scottish guitarist has taught himself how to play guitar one-handed and has made a triumphant return to the stage after a severe stroke left him unable to use his left arm.
The history of guitar has its examples of players who have triumphed over adversity, players such as Django Reinhardt and Tony Iommi overcoming physical injury to play again, but by any measure Tony Romaine’s story is remarkable.
In 2022, he suffered a stroke that put him in hospital for seven months. He could not move or speak, had trouble breathing and could not swallow. For weeks he had to be fed through a tube.
But having being told he might never play guitar again, he has developed a one-handed technique, is back onstage, with gigs booked for 2025, and a new single, Standing Stone, available on streaming platforms.
He is lucky to be alive. Speaking to the BBC, Romaine says is family was told to expect the worst. But music was always on his mind. While his physiotherapist was teaching him how to sit up again, his mind was wandering. Could he play again?
“When people said I probably wouldn’t be able to play again, I wasn't going to listen to that,” he said. “There was probably a part of me that was like ‘I'll prove you wrong’ but I just had to get back to playing again.”
The question was how. There is no manual for this kind of thing. Without the use of his left arm, he had to develop a technique in which his picking hand fret did all the work. With a guitar capo at the eighth fret, Romaine uses his right-hand to play melodies.
“I had no idea how I was going to do it,” said Romaine. “It’s not like I could just go to a guitar teacher, but once I figured out a couple of techniques it became a case of practising them, which was easier.”
One year on, Romaine was back onstage for a half-hour set at the Rose Street Foundry. He posted his new band’s performance of the Doors’ Riders On The Storm on YouTube as “The Tony Romaine Experiment,” demonstrating his new approach, using his pedalboard to fill out his sound.
And he also had some unfinished business. Standing Stone was written in 2022, just three days before the stroke. He had to return to the studio to finish it off. In the video, he plays lead guitar on his Fender Telecaster one-handed, again, with the guitar capoed at the eight fret.
“When I finally left the hospital I was still in a wheelchair and couldn't use my left arm/hand (I still can’t) but I was determined to make music again,” he wrote on YouTube.
Two years on, Romaine is getting stronger, and hopes to extend his sets to an hour-and-a-half. His 2025 gigs will raise funds and awareness for Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland and The Oxygen Works. You can follow his progress on Tony Romaine’s YouTube channel and on Instagram and read more about his remarkable recovery at the BBC.
