The Legendary Les Paul - Part I
Interview By Bob Goldman

This interview took place at the Irridium Jazz club in New York City. When I first talked to Trent about doing this interview, I came up with a problem. Here I am interviewing the legendary Les Paul. Where do I start? There are so many things to ask him. He is full of so much information. Here is the man who invented the solid body guitar and multi-track recording. Probably the biggest contributions in the history of rock music and all of recording. His sunburst guitars from 1959 have had offers of a million dollars and a '59 sunburst with a plain top and not in great shape can get $30,000.00 for it. This is the most sought after guitar in the world. I decided to make calls to some of my friends at some of the largest dealers in the world for questions. So I called Eliot Jacobs at the Guitar Center, Keith Gregory at Gruhn Guitars, Steve Mesple at Wildwood Guitars, Vic Dapra at the Guitar Gallery, and Greg Levy at High Test. So I went to New York with my former supervisor Liv Pomeson. There was a huge rainstorm and the road was flooded so that we had to take another route. Then Les Paul arrives with his band and son. The amazing thing about Les Paul, is that with all of his accomplishments and who he is, he always has time for everyone. He plays for his fans and it seems almost like a family of friends. He always signs autographs for everyone. Someone there even told me that he said, don't you realize that some people take what he signs and sells them on Ebay the next day and he said he doesn't even care. He would rather do that than to turn someone down who wants an autograph.

I remember when I was only fourteen years old and I wrote to him and he wrote back a personal letter to me. Not just a form letter, but a letter that he typed personally. In fact he wrote me three different time. It is a real pleasure to work with someone like him. He gave me about an hour and a half of his time for this interview during his sound check. I must also thank Mike Penella in the pro audio section at the East Brunswick Guitar Center, who saved this interview. The first half hour of tape was done and the micro-cassette tape was not attached. Mike was able to take apart the tape and put it together for me.

BG: Do your personal guitars still have the bar in them? I read in an article that you had steel bars in your guitars.
LP: No, No.

BG: What was the purpose of that and what did the bars look like?
LP: The steel bars were just on a prototype model. They were used to divorce the wooden body from the strings and the bridge.

BG: And that gave it more sustain?
LP: More sustain.

BG: Why did they break away from doing that?
LP: They never did that.

BG: Why did you stop doing that yourself?
LP: I did it only to prove a point. It was a prototype and it was meant that we should use it as our absolute and ma other instruments without steel bars so that it would do the same thing.

BG: Where do you see guitars going in the future since they are running out of wood and having a scarcity of the good woods?
LP: I assume they will continue the same way as long as the kid wants to play one there will be one there. Not just the kid. Anybody out there that loves guitar and that's very many.

BG: Do you see them using different materials or what materials will be a good substitute for wood?
LP: Well I haven't seen a good substitute for wood. There are problems when you go to plastics and so forth and we have sure gone through that where plastics and metals, they will vary with the frequency when you go in to a room and they put the spotlight on you or you're up there on the stage, the whole instrument starts to change keys and you have expansion and contraction. I got caught on the stage at the Paramount in 1946. It was the Andrews Sisters and Django. Django Reinhardt came over to visit me and I was out on the stage playing an aluminum guitar. I just designed it. The headless wonder. It had no tuning pegs on the top and it was aluminum.

BG: It had the tuning pegs on the bottom?
LP: Yeah, I got out there on stage (jokingly) and said geeze, that drinking has got to go. That beer just got to be it, I can't even tune that thing. Then I found out after a couple of shows what the problem really was. It was the aluminum.

BG: (Jokingly) Maybe you should have had a few more beers then.
LP: (Laughs) Yeah.

BG: What changes in the electronics do you see in the future, pickups or anything else.
LP: I see a lot of changes in the future. Some that I don't want to talk about and some that I would talk about.

BG: Let's do the ones that you do want to talk about.
LP: There you go. Definitely I believe, more and more the guitarist who wishes to get an acoustical sound should work with a piezo although the piezo has its faults. The pickup under the string has that basic characteristic sound of a magnet coil under the string and where you place it differs the sound and all that jazz and yes, they do have to go to better improvements. After all, just look at the pickup under the guitar - it's no different than 1915 when I took my mother's telephone apart. It's the same thing. Nothing has changed since 1915. That's a long time.

BG: I also use the telephone to tune my guitar.
LP: (Laughs) There you go.

BG: The dial tone is an A.
LP: Sure, sure.

BG: Anything else you want to say about electronics?
LP: For the different sounds - selecting the different sounds that you would like to hear, you program them in there and you get them back out again. And what you can do on one string you can do on another string, something you can't do now. Every string has a different world. There's an awful lot that can be done.

BG: So you see it as each individual string will be almost like its own sound?
LP: That's right.

BG: Kind of like synthesizers?
LP: I hope not (Laughs).

BG: What are your favorite models of Les Pauls?
LP: That varies too, sometimes I find a very inexpensive Les Paul and it feels good and it plays good. It's just a combination of things that sometimes I analyze and sometimes I just accept it and run with it. There may be three guitars identically alike. They look alike, supposedly they are a clone, they're all alike.

BG: Same tree?
LP: Yes, but they are not alike. They have different resonancy, different sounds, it has nodes. It just has a lot of things that you may like of may not like. Combine all of those together and you got an individual instrument. It's almost like looking at three apples. They're just not alike. They are apples and it's very hard for anyone to take this wood and glue it together to come out exactly the same. Very hard.

BG: Are there any particular guitars you like or do you just grab a guitar? It doesn't matter what model it is, you just go for one that sounds good?
LP: No, I think that a sound that I am most impressed with, the one that I like the best, the one that I usually use would be like a custom.

BG: You used to use Recordings, right?
LP: Yeah, but they were custom guitars.

BG: Any particular years that you think were better?
LP: Whatever year they had their act together and used the right varnishes, they used the right everything. That varies all over the place too. So every once in a while you get a run of guitars, if I see one, I'll call the company and tell them, "hey I got a turkey here", how did that get in? . . . . if that happens.

BG: If you get a good one, you just say, "hey put my name on it", and they say we already did.
LP: The odd part about it, I guess, is it is like a review - if someone writes a good review. This happens in many cases where the artist never calls the author to thank him for it, but if he gets a bad review, he calls that guy in a minute and reams him out.

BG: Do you still go back to do quality control with Gibson?
LP: I guess about a year ago they sent me a guitar to evaluate and put my comments down to call them and discuss it - Why they did this, why they did that, this is real good, how they accomplished this, and what their problems are. A lot of times they'll say the reason for this is there, this is why the problem exists because of . . . . And in most cases, like the Epiphones that came in, I had to call them and tell them that it was very encouraging and they were doing an excellent job.

BG: So you like your new Epiphones?
LP: Oh yeah, they play equally as well and sound equally as well as the Gibson. If anything, they would say could you make it sound not quite as good? (Laughs)

BG: There is quite a difference between the price of an Epiphone and a Gibson.
LP: Well it took a long time to convince Gibson to do that and I was probably the one to give them the worst time. For many years, the Gibson belief was not to put their name on anything cheap and of course if we come out with this Epiphone line that's related to the Gibson and it's more than half as expensive, this would be looked at as cheap.

BG: They're not cheap now.
LP: No, no, they are making a very fine instrument at a more reasonable price or a lesser price than the very good stuff and it's just great. Makes me happier than hell because young guys starting out can have a very fine neck on a guitar and he can learn on much better conditions than I did when I was a kid sending out to Sears and Roebuck and come back with a bow and arrow and had to play this thing through a terrible amplifier. No, things are a lot better now.

BG: Talk about a great ad for Epiphone.
LP: (Laughs)

BG: If you were to buy a new guitar today, not a vintage one, but right out of the factory, what would you buy?
LP: Like I said, the Custom.

BG: What is it about the Custom that you like?
LP: Well, it's solidly built and they use the ebony fingerboard. Any of this stuff can be on any of the other models, but if you want all of it . . . . You want the cosmetic aesthetic things and you want them to sustain and you're going through the whole nine yards and it is important because his left nut's gonna be dragging. (Laughs)

BG: Would you go with the Historic Custom or the USA Custom, since the Historic has the mahogany top and body or the USA one with the maple top and mahogany body?
LP: Well the original way that I presented it to the Gibson people, the very first one, was a maple top, mahogany body and I still stick to that, although I have had several great Customs that were mahogany all the way through and an ebony fingerboard versus the rosewood. Sometimes they're theory and in spite of the theory and all of the known things that you have, not only is it theory, they're facts. They just know that the ebony board is harder, and then you get down to the size of you frets, it just goes through how much weight do you want to hang on the neck of the guitar. Do you want a metal nut, or do you want a plastic nut. Every choice that you make, you put them all together and sometimes the rules are broken. You say the favorite guitar is that one, it only has half of the the things that I mentioned or the other way around, it has all of the things and that's the reason you like it better.

BG: I was talking to a manufacturer about a custom guitar and they said, why don't you get a custom guitar made. I said that I can design it with the best body shape, best woods, best bracing, and everything, and when it's done, it just won't sound right. I'd rather let them do the work, show me the guitar and see how it sounds.
LP: I remember 1928, I drove up to Gibson to get my first guitar, my first L-5 and there was only five of them there and we had some pro players that were there and we helped each other pick out the guitar. We'd stand across the room, we'd stand over here, we'd listen for this and listen for that and discuss it and those five guitars that were made as close to identical. They were entirely different. It depends on what the player wants. Does he want something that projects? Does he want a thin bottom end but, one that penetrates like a banjo? This is 1928. Does he want one that rumbles down in the bottom end like a Martin and the reason why you want these things. Because when a fellow sang in 1928 he had his face in the microphone and the guitar had to come from where it was hanging by this belt and he had to play that guitar which was actually under the microphone and he's down there just clear enough away that he's not hitting the stand and so how does that sound travel up? You know the bass response is exaggerated on the flat dreadnoughts and the guitars were just excellent so every guy that was in the place was using a Martin guitar because you could get that excess bass, but by the time it got to your microphone, boy it was just right. Then you get a guitar that sound right in the room and then you hang it underneath the microphone. Gene Autrey and all those guitar players back there at WLS in Chicago, I was there and I don't know that they all did their analysis on it, but it was just my nature to figure out just how that Martin sounded so good when the country guy strummed it and played it.

BG: Remember how you learned the F chord as a kid when Gene Autrey played at a parking lot and you turned on the flashlight to write it down?
LP: We were talking about that with Gene just before he passed away. We were up there with Pat Burtrom and Gene. We spent a whole day and we video taped it and it's priceless. We talked about those days and I think about them. I guess there's no time that my mind doesn't remember. Something reminds me and I go back 100 years and think about how different it was when I got that flashlight and I'm sitting in the front row trying to figure out what fingers Gene put where to get that chord which gave me chills. I didn't have it and I wanted it.

Look for Part II in next month's issue.

-Photos courtesy of Bob Goldman-

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