Ailing guitarist gets 2nd chance changing hands

Normally muscles work together to raise or lower a joint, but in focal dystonia the muscles don't act together and instead are in a "tug of war," explained Dr. Mahlon DeLong, a neurology professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

After his diagnosis, McLaughlin called renowned concert pianist Leon Fleisher, whose own career was derailed by focal dystonia that affects the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand. Fleisher, 80, switched to a left-hand piano repertoire before undergoing Botox injections in 1995. The injections, combined with deep tissue massage, allowed him to resume playing two-handed (he recently released his first two-handed recording of concertos in more than 40 years).

Fleisher told him the skills McLaughlin enjoyed at his height were gone forever. But McLaughlin said he was relieved just to talk to someone who understood what he was going through.

For a musician, according to Fleisher, focal dystonia is "truly, profoundly tragic."

"Your life is over, and it takes a special kind of courage to do what Billy has done," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Baltimore.

For McLaughlin, who didn't want to give up music, the answer was to switch hands. He had his two guitars refitted and restrung for left hand and is about to receive his first custom-made left-handed guitar.

"What allowed me to do what I'm doing now is making a mental break from 'What's wrong with me?' to 'What do I have that still works?'" McLaughlin said. He took a left-handed guitar with him on vacation and for two weeks worked out his pieces note by note.

"The biggest hurdle initially was me allowing myself to sound like crap," McLaughlin said. "I'm a beauty addict, and to not be able to create anything that sounded beautiful was difficult to get through."

Jim Mone / AP McLaughlin demonstrates how he relearned how to play the guitar left-handed.

Ron Tracy of Hoffman Guitars in Minneapolis was the one who turned McLaughlin's right-handed guitars into left-handed models.

"He basically had to start like a kid learning to crawl and walk, and did it," Tracy said. "It's really starting over. He had the noise in his head, but couldn't make it come out his hands."

When he was ready, McLaughlin debuted as a left-handed guitarist at a solo performance in Detroit in late 2005, an event captured by the "Changing Keys" documentary.

"We didn't know what the story was going to be yet. We didn't have an ending. It was a leap of faith," said "Changing Keys" producer and director Suzanne Jurva. The documentary has been shown on Twin Cities public television and is looking for national distribution.

In April 2006, McLaughlin made what he calls his "comeback" performance, rounding up his old bandmates and playing a mix of old and new music with a string orchestra in suburban Maplewood for a self-released CD, "Into the Light."

"That was me saying, 'If I never play again, this is how I want to go out,'" McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin tours Texas in July. He's busy being a single dad to his 16- and 13-year-old sons and believes his best days of playing lie ahead. He lives with the possibility that his dystonia will migrate to his healthy hand.

"You know the vase hits the floor and in that moment that it shatters and that sound comes out you realize, 'Oh, oh, that's gone forever,'" McLaughlin said. "And in my case, there's no new hand to put on. But I found another way around it. And that's a lesson for every area of my life."

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