MusicRadar

We'll tell what the sleeve of X&Y means

View in gallery

Think you know a lot about music trivia? So did we, until MusicRadar started researching its New Year trivia blowout where you'll find more useless (and some useful!) musical facts than you thought ever existed.

MusicRadar's 101 facts… come in four parts over the next four days. Today, you'll learn about John Lennon's eyesight, the honour George W Bush bestowed on Texan boogie trio ZZ Top and just how you really pronounce 'Moog'.

There are no prizes. Just the warm glow that you know more than your friends. Enjoy!

101 facts you never knew about music: part 1

1. Leo Fender, inventor of the Stratocaster and Telecaster, couldn't play the guitar.

2. John Lennon's eyesight was so poor that he was legally blind without his glasses.

3. Noel Gallagher, Gary Moore and Mark Knopfler write left-handed but play guitar as if right-handers. Coldplay's Chris Martin plays guitar and draws right-handed, but he writes left-handed. And the world's most-famous 'left-handed' player, Jimi Hendrix, wrote with his right hand.

4. Kiss's Gene Simmons can speak Hungarian.

5. Queen's multi-millionaire drummer Roger Taylor was once spotted in Guildford's Sainsbury's supermarket filling out a National Lottery ticket. Question: why?

A Moog synthesiser

6. The surname of the late Robert Moog, inventor of the legendary Moog Synthesiser, is actually pronounced 'Mogue' (rhyming with 'rogue'). But everyone has said 'Moog' for so long, no-one bothers to correct it anymore.

7. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is a keen modern art collector. In 2008 he auctioned his "last Basquiat" for $13.5 million.

8. Slash was born in Hampstead, London. (Not Stoke, England, as is usually reported.)

9. Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus, 63, suffers from severe memory loss and no longer remembers much of his life. MusicRadar bets his accountant remembers everything.

Around the web: