Air guitar has been around for years, it may have become popular somewhere in the 70's when fans of heavy metal pretended to play guitar leads from their favorite heavy metal music, or rock guitar music. Air guitar may have originated from when some band members in the heavy metal band Iron Maiden said that some of the fans had made cutouts of guitars, and would bring them to the Iron Maiden shows, and then they copied the motions of the guitarist on stage with their guitar cutouts, and when some of the fans didn't have any cutouts of their own, they would just riff out on air guitar. Although, Joe Cocker actually did play air guitar on stage in the year 1969 while playing at woodstock when he performed "with a little help from my friends" There are actually air guitar contests in all kinds of different countries. Some of the first contests came into existence some near the start of 1980. The air guitar competition from that year were in the U.S., and Sweden. Finland has had the Air Guitar World Championships Contests.