never heard an instrument like that before. It just
leapt out of the speakers. It still sounds fresh today.”
Paul McCartney recalled that during The Beatles’
early days in Liverpool they kicked off every
performance with that song. “That would get the
crowd’s attention right away,” he said. “Everybody
was trying to be a Les Paul clone in those days.”A
s he and Mary became international stars,
Les finally had the clout to realise his
dream of perfecting a solid-body guitar.
A few years previously, the Gibson company had
dismissed Les’s prototype as “a broomstick with
pickups”. Now, with competitor Fender Guitars
successfully launching a line of solid bodies, Paul
said, “Gibson woke up and went, ‘Find me that
character with the broomstick!’”
He recalled the meeting that led to his namesake
guitar: “We all faced the fact that the dense wood
would be too heavy, and we had to lighten it up.
As for the shape, I had presented this flat-surfaced
guitar to the chairman of the board at Gibson. He
said: ‘Do you like violins?’ I said: ‘I love them.’ We
went back to his vault and looked at the
Stradivariuses. He said: ‘We could make a beautiful
guitar with these kind of contours.’ And right
there we decided to make the shape of the guitar
like we did. The next thing that came along was
how beautiful you could make it and what a great
friend it could be. It turned out to be beyond
anybody’s dream.”
The first Les Paul guitars debuted in summer
1952, with Les and Mary giving them a concert
debut at the Paramount in New York. (For the
stage, Les devised a black box called the Les
Paulveriser that replicated his multi-tracked sound
on records, an invention anticipating ‘looper’
pedals by decades). The Gibson Les Paul’s solid
body, and other design innovations like
humbucking pickups and a tune-o-matic bridge,
soon made it the favoured instrument of the new
generation of rock’n’rollers.“The sustain, the ache and roar and ferocity and
subtleness is just limitless,” Bonnie Raitt said of the
Gibson Les Paul guitar.L
es and Mary’s chart run continued until
they split in 1964. “We never stopped
loving each other,” he said. “After the
divorce was settled and the pressure was off, we
became very close again.” Mary remarried, stayed
in California, and did occasional performances.
She struggled with diabetes and alcoholism until
her death in 1977. During the 60s, Paul went into
semi-retirement, working as an A&R man for
Columbia Records. He also began suffering from
both arthritis and hearing loss. Rather than
despair, he re-taught himself
to fret the guitar with two
fingers rather than four –
similar to the style of Django
Reinhardt – and designed
a custom hearing aid. In 1978
his old friend and guitar great
Chet Atkins lured him out of
retirement, and the pair
recorded two acclaimed duet
albums in Nashville: Chester
And Lester and Guitar Monsters.
During the last three
decades of his life, Paul held
court with Monday-night
residencies at two New York
City clubs, Fat Tuesday’s and
Iridium. The list of musical friends who sat in on
these nights was like a Who’s Who of rock, including
Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith
Richards, Brian May, Steve Howe, Peter Frampton,
Steve Miller, Billy Gibbons, Mark Knopfler, Richie
Sambora and Slash.
“It’s been a chance to stay active and make new
friends,” Paul said. “Also, it makes me continue to
learn. It’s great therapy for a ninety-year-old fella
like myself. Much better than taking a pill!”Appropriately, and maybe uniquely, Paul was
inducted into both the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame
and the Inventors Hall Of Fame, keeping company
in the former with Chuck Berry and the latter with
Nikola Tesla.
“Kids nowadays don’t even really know that kind
of history,” Slash said. “But it’s important to have
an understanding of that delay pedal that you’re
using and where the original concept came from.
Whenever you hear guitar harmonies recorded,
like Brian May used to record harmonies on all of
Queen’s records, that was all Les Paul stuff. He
invented the technique where you could layer
guitars. Before that, people just had to play live and
that was it.”
“It’s hard to tell how many
people he put on the path,”
said Steve Miller, who was
Les’s godson. “He was my
musical guide and my main
inspiration. And the most
generous man ever. Just
a wonderful, wonderful spirit.”
Les Paul was also the first
famous musician to make it
to 90 and still be active. His
attitude on aging remains an
inspiration. “You can’t be
a sissy,” he told me. “It may not
dawn on you until you’re in
your sixties that you’re on the
ass-end of the boat, but you
have to face the fact. For me, I’m pushing a hundred.
Every tick of the clock means something. There are
times when I’ve got to sweep the fact under the rug,
but the rug is pretty crowded. The way to handle it
is to keep your mind occupied. Love your work.
Otherwise you’re sitting around and drying up. I’m
a person who says I can’t wait to get out of bed
because I’ve got so much to do. Every hour that I’ve
got, I’m busy. I look forward to tomorrow, no
GET matter what.”
TY^
x^2
“Whenever you
hear guitar
harmonies
recorded, like
Brian May on all
of Queen’s
records, that was
all Les Paul stuff.”
Slash
Husband-and-wife duo Les
Paul and Mary Ford in 1950.“Ah, yes,
I remember
designing this...”
Les Paul and
Paul McCartney.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 53LES PAUL