“The director said, ‘Fine, why don’t you just mime in that case?’ So we did – and air guitar was born”: Have the origins of air guitar finally been found? Unearthed footage contests the Joe Cocker at Woodstock ’69 theory

It matters not if your jam is math-rock, lo-fi indie, hyper-shred metal guitar or sports jacket and jeans yacht rock – air guitar is the one style that we all play. But where did air guitar start?

Well, it’s complicated. As with most great guitar legends, air guitar enjoys a contested history.

The received wisdom is that Joe Cocker started it all at Woodstock ’69. Of course, most associate the O.G. Woodstock with a guitar god pushing air with an Olympic White Fender Stratocaster, as Jimi Hendrix transformed the National Anthem into an avant-garde work of electric guitar noise.

But history remembers Cocker’s hands at Woodstock. Backed by his Grease Band – with Henry McCullough playing a Goldtop loaded with P-90 pickups – in the spirit of the day, Cocker couldn’t contain himself when he heard McCullough vamp during the opening strains of With a Little Help from My Friends. We can relate. McCullough’s tone is reference quality, exemplary.

There is however archive footage of British psychedelic rockers Rupert’s People miming to camera over 1968 single, I Can Show You, in the verdant expanse of London’s Hampstead Heath.

The video, directed by a young Piers Bedford (he would go on to helm the Cure’s 10:15 Saturday Night), pre-dates Woodstock by a year. Experts in the field – including Juha Torvinen, judge at the World Air Guitar Championships – have pored over the footage, and told the Telegraph that this is the Big Bang for air guitar.

“This must be the first known recording of a person playing air guitar,” says Torvinen. “This discovery gives a whole new perspective to the phenomenon of air guitar.”

Rupert’s People featured Rod Lynton on guitar and vocals, John Tout on keyboards, and Steve Brendell on drums. Brendell tells the Telegraph how it all went down.

“The director brought along his 16mm camera and a reel-to-reel tape deck to blast out the song to make sure we were in sync,” he says. “But the plans changed because we didn’t bring any of our instruments. We just turned up, dressed in our stage outfits.”

That didn’t bother Bedford. It would be the following decade when he’d start working in the UK punk scene, shooting videos for Sham 69 et al, but he was already pretty punk as far as his shooting style went. No instruments, no problem.

“It was all, ‘Hey, man,’ very laid back in the 1960s,” continues Brendell. “The director said, ‘Fine, why don’t you just mime in that case?’ So we did – and air guitar was born.”

Or was it? This is Guitar World, not Air Guitar World, so we’ll cede to Torvinen here as a higher power. But surely people were playing air guitar before that. When we think of the origin stories of some of our favorite guitarists, they, too, must have mimed the actions before getting their hands on an instrument. When a young Buddy Guy saw Lightnin’ Slim play Boogie Chillin’ on electric guitar, you can imagine his arms copying the motion.

It would have been harder to not play air guitar, which is why, when we see B/W footage of the Rolling Stones playing Satisfaction (I Can’t Get No) from 1965, we have to salute Mick Jagger’s discipline to stick to handclaps as Keith Richards is playing that fuzz riff.

But are the Telegraph, Torvinen and Brendell correct? Did Rupert’s People – or to be exact, Rod Lynton – inaugurate air guitar as a cultural phenomenon? There are a lot of old videos on YouTube. Cocker might still have it.

There is one performance of With a Little Help from My Friends marked as 1967 – the same year it debuted on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and a year before Cocker released it – and Cocker looks like he is playing a primitive form of air guitar there.

That debate might run and run, certainly until August 20 when the World Air Guitar Championships are held in Finland – an event that is not just about celebrating self-expression, a form of dance that only makes sense with guitar music, but one that promotes world peace. As its tagline reads, “You can’t hold a gun while you play the air guitar.”

Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to publications including Guitar World, MusicRadar and Total Guitar. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.