Photograph by Neal Preston/CORBIS
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Les Paul: Father of the Electric Guitar
By Gwen Gibson, May-June 2003
Les Paul invented the solid body electric guitars at the heart of the rock and roll revolution—and at 87, he is still playing them.
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In 1928, a precocious 13-year-old musician rigged up a microphone from
telephone parts to get a bigger sound from his acoustic Sears Roebuck
guitar. Then he took the needle from his family phonograph, put it
under the guitar strings and wired the contraption into two carefully
spaced radio speakers, thus getting not only amplification but also a
crude stereo effect.
It was one of Les Paul's earliest electronic breakthroughs. The
pioneering guitarist went on to invent, or perfect, scores of
ingenious recording techniques as well as the solid body electric
guitars that were at the heart of the rock and roll revolution.
And he is still at it. Spry and fun-loving, the 87-year-old showman
performs every Monday night with his trio (and sometimes his quartet)
in New York City's Iridium Jazz Club, at 51st and Broadway. Other
days he works at his home and studios in Mahwah, New Jersey,
recording, designing and writing.
Paul says his philosophy has always been to "give the audience
what they want to hear; keep 'em happy." He did just that on
a recent Monday night before 150 fans as he played classic pop tunes
he recorded with his late wife, Mary Ford, in the 1940s and '50s.
Like "How High the Moon," "East of the Sun" and
"I'm Confessin'" and "Someone to Watch Over
Me." The Les Paul sound—"the big, fat, round, belly sound
with the bright high ends," as he puts it—came through loud and
clear.
The old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist is backed by three much
younger musicians: Nicki Parrott, bass; Frank Vignola, electric guitar
and Lou Pallo, acoustic guitar. "I never have a set
program," Paul says. "This keeps the other musicians on
their toes. They never know what I'm going to do...and neither do
I."
Les Paul shows these days usually feature a "surprise" guest
artist. Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Tony Bennett, Steve Miller,
and Slash are among those who have shown up to jam with Paul. The
guest this Monday night is Zakk Wylde, (Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist)
who tears into Jimi Hendrix' "Voodoo Child" using a
spare Gibson Les Paul Standard that Paul keeps on hand for such
occasions. "This guy can play," Paul tells the audience.
Watching Les Paul perform so enthusiastically, it's hard to
believe this affable award-winning guitarist-inventor has suffered a
lifetime of health problems. Paul's right arm was so horribly
crushed in an automobile accident in 1948 that there was talk of
amputation. But a surgeon reconstructed the arm and put it in a cast
at a 90-degree angle, pointing at Paul's navel.
"This arm is fixed in this position," Paul says as we talk
in his crowded dressing room. "It doesn't go anywhere. I
can't move it, but I can hold a guitar."
He's proven that he's both a trouper and a survivor.
"Lying in bed in the hospital in Oklahoma, I had the privilege of
reading—Freud, Adler, electronics materials. And I did lots of
thinking, creating, inventing, and writing songs. I found you can take
all this drive you have and channel it into positive thinking."
Paul has also suffered a stroke, a broken eardrum, Meniere's
disease and acute arthritis that has crippled the fingers on both
hands. "They're frozen," he says. "I can't bend
them." But he can hold a pick and he has revised his playing
techniques to compensate for the loss of agility.
"Tonight, for instance, we were rehearsing "Deed I Do,"
and I said, 'I can't do this.' Then I stopped and figured
out how I could."
Once a five-pack-a-day smoker "with terrible eating habits,"
Paul began suffering from heart problems in the 1970s. In 1980, he
underwent a quintuple bypass operation, one of the first of its kind,
at the Cleveland Clinic.
During his recovery, Paul set up a "nightclub" on his
hospital floor. "I played guitar," he says. "I found
one doctor who played bass and another who played rhythm guitar, and I
took the singers out of the audience. There were several in this ward,
and we played country, rock, blues, jazz, whatever the people
wanted."
Paul says he had to laugh at times to keep from crying. "But with
each setback I became a wiser person. I took advantage and decided it
was a privilege—in a very sad way."
Les Paul was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. He was a
natural-born whiz in music and electronics, despite the lack of formal
training in either field. At age seven he started
"composing" on his mother's player piano by punching
holes in the rolls to add notes and taping over other holes to
eliminate notes. He did his electronics experiments in a garage owned
by his father who was an auto mechanic, and by age 10, Paul had built
a recording machine using a flywheel from a Cadillac and a belt from a
dentist's drill.
Paul was playing with concepts for a solid body electric guitar as
early as 1930. By 1941, after multiple experiments, he had built his
first famous "Log" by attaching an Epiphone neck,
fingerboard and body parts to a 4"x 4" board from a railroad
tie. "I attached two guitar body halves to make it look
respectable," he laughs.
The Les Paul Standard solid body electric guitar was first marketed by
the Gibson Guitar Corporation (now headquartered in Nashville) in
1952. Paul describes this as "a single-cutaway arch-top solid
body with a mahogany back and neck, 22 frets, two P-90 soap bar,
non-hum bucking pickups with cream-colored plastic covers, and a
trapeze-bar combination tailpiece bridge."
With Paul as consultant, Gibson has made many revisions to this
prototype, adding various finishes and colors. "But it's
basically the same guitar," Paul says. "In this sense
it's like the Stradivarius which hasn't changed much either
over the years."
He reveals, however, that Gibson Chairman Henry Juszkiewicz has
promised to build a "dream guitar" designed especially for
Les Paul. "It will be something radically different, not designed
commercially for money." Meaning, of course, that Paul intends to
keep right on playing. "I have younger friends who don't
work, and they aren't doing so well," he laughs. "My
secret is to keep going, keep working. I can't wait to come down
and play this club."
Gwen Gibson is a freelance writer specializing in arts and
entertainment.
Now, check out AARP The
Magazine's online jukebox, read about
Chuck Berry: Creator of Rock and Roll, and find out who ranks
among the
Top 10 Pop Stars ever.
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