I had known Les Paul, the electric guitar by Gibson, years before I had learned of Les Paul the guitar player, which was years before I had learned of Les Paul the inventor. The first time I saw the names Les Paul and Mary Ford together was in TV Guide; I figured she must be an exceptional musician since her instrument got top billing. I made a point to watch what turned out to be an old black-and-white clip from their TV show. Ford stood and sang, and her Les Paul was in the hands of some science teacher in an uncool (for my generation) suit and tie. I was lying on the living room floor and I turned and asked my dad who that guy was playing the Les Paul. He said, “That is Les Paul.” And I said, “No, the guy, not the guitar.” This went back and forth for at least a minute because my dad was also reading the paper and I figured he just wasn’t paying attention. Through this conversation, Ford was singing in a lovely fashion that did nothing for my rock ‘n’ roll heart, for I was young and my palette was narrow. While she sang, the science teacher played a bunch of jazz chords that also did nothing for me, mostly because the guitar sound was clean and pure and not roughed up by overdriven tubes and menacing effects. Their music gave me the same feeling a surfer probably gets when looking at a flat sea—beautiful, of course, but that’s not why I’m here…

Then came the guitar solo.  

It was one of the best guitar solos I had ever heard—still to this day—thanks to how it fused melody, technique, and fluidity. It all seemed to come out easy yet fast, and was done without distortion, wah-wah, platform shoes, or makeup. Discovering that not only is there a Les Paul guitar, but also a Les Paul human, was like discovering the Big Bang. Not just discovering it, but also watching it dance within the universe it had created. I knew this was an important lesson, and I knew I was too young to learn it. Thankfully, these things can lie dormant inside of you and then unfold when you are ready to receive them. I think that probably happened to many guitar players the day Paul died. Paul, who was not a rock ‘n’ roller, gave rock ‘n’ roll the things it needed to express itself. All Mr. Paul seemed to want in exchange was to be a guitar player with a long lifetime of gigs. Wish granted, the man who helped invent the dream lived it too. And he shared it through his inventions.  

If decades are your timeframe, then the invention of the solid-body electric guitar is a three-way tie between Paul, Leo Fender, and Adolph Rickenbacker, all of whom invented some sort of solid-body electric in the 1930s. Paul’s first electric was dubbed “The Log” and consisted of a 4×4 stud with guitar hardware mounted on it, as well as a neck and two halves of an Epiphone archtop body glued to the sides. It was the Frankenstein’s monster of the electric guitar world. Solid-body electric guitars were built in earnest in the ’50s, thanks mostly to the late Leo Fender. While Fender was the first one out of the chute with any American-style success, Gibson, with their Les Paul, quickly became the standard. The lesson here is that, with a little backing and patience, maybe Mary Shelley’s mad scientist would have gotten quite good at creating life. 

They say Paul had little to do with the design of the Gibson Les Paul, and technically that may be true. However, as a guitar player and pioneer, he was crucial to the instrument and its success. After all, while the late great Leo Fender invented the Fender Stratocaster, Jimi Hendrix made it iconic.  

Paul once described the guitar in its pre-solid-body electric days as “an apologetic little instrument that doesn’t have much force to it.” That statement reveals how much the Gibson Les Paul (and Fender’s Stratocaster and Telecaster) changed the instrument and shaped rock ‘n’ roll.

Paul naturally played a Les Paul until his dying days, but the casual observer may not recognize it as such since he put his own hand-wound pickups and custom electronics in it. Like many great musicians and songwriters, much of Paul’s career was spent trying to put into existence the sounds he heard in his head. Did he ever succeed at this? Can such a thing ever be? If so, then what?

Had his namesake guitar and brilliant playing been his only contribution to rock ‘n’ roll, the man would deserve sainthood (St. Paul the Electric). However, he also invented multitrack recording, which extends to delay, chorus, and reverb techniques applied to music. Although less sexy and romantic than the guitar, this contribution is perhaps the most important. He conducted his early multitrack experiments without the benefit of magnetic tape, let alone computers! He used multiple acetate discs (an early, recordable form of the vinyl record), meaning he had to do the whole song in real time, from start to finish—damn the itches, full steam ahead—over and over for each track, comp, and pass. He would record himself on one disc, and then record himself on another while accompanying himself on the first disc, and so on and so on. He would then record some discs at half-speed so when played at regular speed it gave his songs a lush, chirpy quality like a flock of cartoon birds whistling jazz. Soon after his disc multitracks, Paul hooked up with Ampex, who developed for him the first multitrack tape machine. And that’s how rock ‘n’ roll has been recorded since at least the ’60s, be it digital or analog. Maybe “science teacher” wasn’t so far off the mark. 

In his 90s and on his way to his regular Monday night gig at the Iridium in New York City, Paul said about the gig, “Monday night is the greatest therapy for me. It [gives] me a reason to get out of bed.” That most guitar players feel this way may be cliché, but it is an honest cliché. To think it’s still considered therapy after all those gigs, notes, rhythms, and melodies, is to learn that there is no cure for the condition. I do not know if this is due to the things that make us love music to the point of getting calluses, or the simple fact that life is both beautiful and hard, and sometimes tears and whisky are not enough. I think it may be both—the alternating heaviness and grace of humanity, and the way some people mourn and celebrate it. And that is what the Les Paul guitar, the multitrack recorder, and an old man playing Monday nights in a jazz club are all about.   

Lester William Polsfuss, aka Les Paul (June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009)

Vaya con Dios, padre

Watch: Les Paul & Mary Ford Show, “World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” [at youtube.com]

Tags: Les Paul, electric guitar, multitrack recording, Gibson

Read past installments of Riot Gear!:

The Spectre of Spector 

Strobe Stomping: The Intricacy of Tuning Instruments 

The Prog Rock Economic Stimulus Plan