Courtesy of Les Paul







Capitol

A CONVERSATION WITH LES PAUL


Every musician who records owes Les Paul a great deal of thanks. Les Paul invented one of the first solid body electric guitars, tape recording echo, and multi-track recording as we know it today. Les Paul is the mad scientist of musical inventions - forever obsessing over both his inventions and musical compositions. Of course, he has his own line of guitars and his fingers are responsible for lightning fast guitar picking that has inspired legions of guitar players since the 1950's such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and even my dad, Stan "Hank Snow" Stets. Together with his wife and singer, Mary Ford, Les Paul released a string of pop hits in the 1950s. Now 85, Les performs with the Les Paul Trio regularly on every Monday night in Manhattan at the Iridium Jazz Club/Merlot Bar and Grill (phone: 212-582-2121). What follows is a telephone interview I conducted with Les, who was speaking from his home in Mahwah, New Jersey.


SCOTTY STETS: What have you been up to? Are any new releases planned on record?

LES PAUL: Yeah, I want to dig into my archives and do something, and also probably release some of the stuff from down at the Iridium.

SS: You've done some great shows down there.

LES PAUL: Yeah, some of them are a lot of fun.

SS: Mary Ford: How did you two meet? Did you hit it off right away?

LES PAUL: I needed a person to sing right there when my dad and brother opened a tavern and there wasn't anybody around. So, I looked at Mary and Mary said: "Don't look at me! I can't sing pop songs or anything; I've never done it!" So I said: "We have to do something!" So that night they were writing the lyrics out for her at the bar, some of the customers! And she was very nervous but got up and sang and the people liked her. And I discovered the girl I wanted in my trio and that was Mary.

SS: And you discovered the girl you were going to marry too. Could you tell me a little bit about playing for President Roosevelt in the White House in 1939?

LES PAUL: Oh, boy, that was a treat-of-all-treats! It was 1939. It would seem like the biggest time of my life. And to play for the President of the United States! We're at the brink of war, the fact that we did the very first TV broadcast from NBC (it was a test program), to drive down Broadway, right down Broadway and LaGuardia. So many things happened in 1939 We put out our first records with the Les Paul Trio. '39 was a tremendous year, and you end up being with Franklin D. Roosevelt! And to meet him, and see him speak, to be in the White House was so…devastating just to have something that powerful.

SS: Let's talk about "The Log". (The Log is one of Les' earliest, experimental models of the solid body electric guitar) Did it come to you in a dream? (laughs)

LES PAUL: No, it didn't at all. It started out way back in the 20's and what happened was that I was at this little barbecue stand and I had rigged up a telephone to sing into for a microphone. And some guy in the rumble seat of one of these cars gave one of the gals a note for me. It said: "Red, your voice and your harmonica's fine; but your guitar is not loud enough." That critic, he hit a spot with me. And so, it sort of forced me into thinking about how to make the guitar louder. For years I built guitars. First, instead of having a hole in the top of it, I plugged the hole up, left it all wood, so it had a solid top and the rest of it was hollow. Well, it was very heavy and it still would feedback and it wasn't the answer to the problem. So, by 1941… now this is from '31 to '41, a couple of more years I fooled with that thing and fooled with that thing and it kept pushing me more and more and more toward a solid body guitar. So finally I says: "Hell, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna take a log and make it a 4x4!" When I made it a 4x4, I took it into the little club - I'm now in New York, 1941 - and I played that piece of log, nobody responded to it at all… I was like a freak with that 4x4!

SS: Or David Hasselhoff.

LES PAUL: So I thought about it and said, "Well, maybe if I put wings on it and it looks like a guitar, I'll see what the reaction is." Then they went mad over it!

SS: Like David Hasselhoff in front of a German audience.

LES PAUL: They went mad over it…everybody in the place! The same song, but I got wings on it. So I found out that sometimes people hear with their eyes. So I took it to Gibson in Chicago and they didn't think it was a good idea. And for ten years, they procrastinated to get up enough nerve to put it out and make a solid body instrument. Finally they says, "OK, we'll do it." And, again, the rest was history.

SS: Yes, it was. It's funny too, 'cause nowadays you see guitars like the Steinbergers which kinda look a little like The Log did and people are nuts over that now! (laughs)

LES PAUL: Yeah! (laughs)

SS: It's funny how it all came back around, I guess.

LES PAUL: Oh, I'm very lucky and to this day I'm so happy that it wasn't rejected.

SS: So are many other players, Les.

LES PAUL: Eric Clapton and all the other players out there, all of them accepted…or were wishing for the same sound, the same idea. And so all those people fell in line and (though) a few die-hards wouldn't be caught dead with a solid-body guitar, but more and more it's proven to be a very, well…uh, what am I trying to say? This is what they were looking for also.

SS: Any words of wisdom for us guitar players aspiring to follow in your footsteps?

LES PAUL: Well… I guess the first thing would be that whoever the person is that wants to do something - that he is gifted or qualified to do it. And the other part - and there's a lot of controversy over this - but you have to be lucky. If you're there at the right time with the right thing, yes, it happens. And I've seen many a person that didn't make it because it just…the timing wasn't right. I remember the times when I invented the multi-track machine, and it was turned down. "No, it won't work, it won't work." And when I got the echo, and the delay, with the solid body guitar, it was so many things that (the nay-sayers)… "Well, it's here today and it won't be here tomorrow." Or "maybe we'll sell four solid bodies."

SS: How does it feel to have turned the recording industry upside down? To have every musician owe you for your multitracking and guitar discoveries?

LES PAUL: (pause) Well…somebody handed me an awful lot for which I'm extremely grateful. I'm very happy that the toys that I managed to squeeze out of me are so well (accepted). They're used and I wish them well for it. They don't owe me anything, you know? That's just…it was something that I just…it wasn't there so I made one. If it wasn't for all these Jeff Becks, Jimmy Pages, all these fellows that were buying the Les Paul guitar when it was struck off by the guitar industry as something that was not gonna fly…. (Gibson discontinued the Les Paul in the sixties before the boom of British guitar heroes came in). When I went to the Gibson people and said, "There's young fellas out there who are guitar players that are paying ten thousand dollars for a Les Paul!" One that was then selling for two hundred and something dollars. And they said: "Do you really believe that?" I says: "No, that's the truth!" And so they says: "We'll try it again." And they tried it a second time and, boy, it took off. And it was all these young guys with rock and roll coming in that played the guitar and made it happen. So, I owe a lot to them. So it works both ways.

SS: (very nervously) I was wondering…uh, if I'm… see, I've seen you perform a few times and I've been playing for a long time - I mean nowhere near as long as you - I mean, would I be able to sit in sometime in the future if you're up there on stage at the Iridium and you get a moment or… .

LES PAUL: Well, come on down!

SS: (after I picked myself off the floor and came back to consciousness) OK! I'll be there in a few months maybe.

LES PAUL: OK.

SS: Have you heard from Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen or Steve Miller lately?

LES PAUL: Every once in a while. Steve Miller was down, oh, I guess about three months ago and sat in. We had a wonderful night together. Yeah, he was down there at the club. I haven't seen Jimmy Page for a while.

SS: One last question and I'll leave you go: In working on the sessions with Chet Atkins, what were some memorable moments? I mean, listening to the CD, you two seem to be having quite a ball right there in the studio.

LES PAUL: Jimmy Atkins was a singer and guitarist with my trio in the late '30s with Fred Waring and NBC and when we played for the President. And so, we had a relationship from the beginning on. I remember when Jimmy Atkins said, "I went down for a death in the family and I saw my half-brother (Chet) and he's playing the guitar. And he's copying all your stuff; you better watch it 'cause my brother is getting pretty good!"
And I asked: "What's his name?" "It's Chet. Chet Atkins." And so one day in the future, we met each other and we became very good friends. And over the period of time, one day Chet called and says, "Would you like to reunite and make an album together?" I says, "Well, what do you have in mind, Chet?" He says: "Well, I'll play the violin and sing, and you play the banjo and the harmonica and we'll do the rhythm section, and we'll do some hoe-downs." So I said OK. So I went down there with my songbooks and everything to be (his country music persona) Rhubarb Red and Chet Atkins doing country. And we got together in a hallway somewhere and started to play but it was so bad, I says, "I think we'd better go eat!" (laughs) So we were eating at this truck stop and Chet came up with an idea while we're eating: "Why don't we do good songs and play what we're known for? You play your guitar and I'll play mine. We'll forget about that banjo and the other things." "Well, I don't know." "Yeah, and why don't we put a mike between us and we'll talk?" Chet says. "I don't like to talk (Which, by the way, you wouldn't know by my wonderful conversation with him); I don't think so." So when we got back to the studio, I'll be darned if he hadn't gone to the men's room at the truck stop and made a phone call and told them to set it up the way we were talking about it. And when we got over there it was a set up to do a pop album and talk. And the whole idea of talking was that if we don't like it it's on a separate track.


Les later mentioned that he and Chet were thinking of doing another album soon. Les and I spoke about his Mom and how we may have some mutual blood relations: his family on his mother's side are the Stutz's from Berlin, Germany (makers of the Stutz Bearcat car) and some of mine were the Stetz's of Gorlitz, Germany. Since Les and I did this interview, I have been honored to have played with this venerable guitar legend. And whenever I get the urge, I call him every now and then to see how he's doing. I am grateful to have a friend in Les Paul.

Scotty Stets is the guitarist, singer and songwriter for his band, Phoenix Rising. He has played with Les Paul as a guest along with Tony Bennett at the Iridium in New York. Scotty's latest CD will be out soon as he searches for a record label contract, and will be available on his web site: www.angelfire.com/band/phoenixrising.