Guitar, Studio Wizard Les Paul Dies At 94 227
beeshman noted that Les Paul has died.
Paul was quite the hardware hacker of his day, innovating with guitar hardware, and later multi track recording. The Gibson Les Paul is one of the single most iconic instruments associated with Rock 'n Roll, and was of course played by Pete Townshend. Someday I'm going to get me one.
Re:Chet Atkins and now Les Paul (Score:5, Interesting)
As a kid, my favorite story about Les Paul was the one briefly alluded to here [aarpmagazine.org]. Apparently, Les broke his arm badly (shattered would be a better description). So, he had the doctor set his arm in a bent position so that he could still play the guitar since it would never really be mobile again. That is a true guitar player.
Thank you, Les, for everything. We will rock on in your honor.
Re:Played by? (Score:4, Interesting)
Townsend also played/smashed a lot of Fender Stratocasters.
If there's any rock artist closely associated with the Les Paul, it's Jimmy Page. He played the occasional Telecaster on some album tracks, but almost never played live with anything other than an LP.
Which is kind of a silly thing to bring up when talking about the inventions of Les Paul anyway. His total contribution to that design consists of a tailpiece (which they ended up not using), and his signature. Everything else about the guitar was designed by other people.
Re:Played by? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not always [thewho.net] .
This has always been one of my favorite pics of Pete.."This Guitar Has Seconds To Live"
Re:A true innovator (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Chet Atkins and now Les Paul (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't always believe the doctors' prognosises. A guitarist friend of mine cut his left arm nearly completely off, and the doctors told him he'd never be able to play again. It seemed to me that although he didn't have complete use of his fingers, they still worked. I told him to play anyway, and the guitar playing was actually a good therapy. He's not the guitarist he was before going throgh the plate glass window, but he's not all that bad, either.
Les Paul's accident and the story you linked are also referred to in the Wikipedia article about him, and similar to my friend's story.
Re:Chet Atkins and now Les Paul (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], Les Paul was the first, and didn't use tape.
So one of the wikipedia articles is incorrect, most likely the one about Les Paul. Or misleading, possibly. From your link:
Even though Bichet beat Paul by nine years, Bichet's wasn't released until far later.
Looking at the AP article [google.com] on his death, I see the Gibson Les Paul was born the same year as I was, and coincidentally the same year the name "rock and roll" was coined by Ohio disk jockey Alan Freed.
Re:Chet Atkins and now Les Paul (Score:1, Interesting)
It wasn't a simple break; he was driving from Chicago to LA along the old original Route 66 (thanks, Bobby Troup), taking the tapes of his first record out to Capitol. As was quite customary in those days, he drove with his left arm out the window, holding the top of the car -- and he went to sleep at the wheel, rolling off of an embankment just a few miles east of Oklahoma City! He spent weeks in St. Anthony's Hospital here in OKC. At the time, he wasn't famous and it was really a non-news item except for his amazing survival and refusal to let the doctors amputate the crushed arm. He insisted that they fuse the elbow joint in playing position, and once out of the hospital, continued his trip to LA with the results we've all heard...
Re:Played by? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll add Slash to the list. Not that when I think of a Les Paul I think of Slash, but when I think of Slash I do think of his black LP. Zakk Wylde has a spot in there also.
Re:Played by? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think I've seen Slash play anything but a Les Paul.
Right, with a notable exception: The screechy sound in "Since I don't have you" is Slash playing Gilby Clarke's Telecaster
Re:What the world would could have been like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps innovator would be a better term. No doubt, I am sure that folks were making hollow acoustic guitars with electric pickups before the solid-body electric guitar. Some sources do claim that Les Paul did, in fact, invent the solid-body electric guitar some time between 1939 and 1941. A story on NPR claims it was a collaboration between Les Paul, Paul Bigsby, and Leo Fender [npr.org]. According to some other sources I found via google. It seems that until Les Paul sawed his spanish-style hollow guitar in two and glued the front and back pieces together to create a solid-body, many musicians would stuff socks or towels into the cavity of the guitar to muffle the feedback loop created on the electric guitar of that time. I suppose, I am going to have to pick up a copy of this book [amazon.com], referenced in that article, and find out the whole story.
The grandparent's point remains that the solid-body electric guitar has brought us a great deal of enjoyable and creative music over the years, such as this [youtube.com]. The grandparent poster was not contending what type of guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, or that Fender produced and sold the first mass-marketed solid-body guitar. Les Paul was certainly an early innovator, and had a hand in making the modern guitar what it is, even if it was a small part. That, however, is the difference between invention and innovation, small increments and changes in a design can have a large impact on the way something works.
Les Paul was a great man (Score:3, Interesting)
...but the Gibson Les Paul has never really been my kind. I did play on one, for a while, and it is nice but not my favorite el. guitar. The Fender Telecaster's simplicity and directness suits me much more.
Rest in peace, Les Paul, and thank you for the music.