Sad news
Guitar legend Les Paul died today, at age 94. As a rock and roll fan, I obviously knew Les Paul was a crazy influential guy, but holy smokes, that’s barely half the story. This guy was like, the da Vinci of rock. Inventing the solid body electric guitar, without which the entire genre of rock and roll (and hence metal, punk, alternative, and c.) wouldn’t even exist? Check. Pioneering all sorts of variations in recording speed and microphone position? Check. Creating the eight-track multitrack recorder? Check. When we turn on the radio or listen to a track on the computer, we don’t even think about how each element of that track was recorded and edited separately to achieve the professional, seamless sound that we take for granted. That kind of process didn’t always exist! Look at this amazing quote from the Times:
“Honestly, I never strove to be an Edison,” he said in a 1991 interview in The New York Times. “The only reason I invented these things was because I didn’t have them and neither did anyone else. I had no choice, really.”
No choice! Genius!
And then there are the just amazing stories from his life. Like the well-known story of the car accident he was in in 1948 necessitated that his elbow be fused and made immobile forever. He had the doctors position it so he could still play. This was 60 years ago.
The Les Paul guitar he designed for Gibson hasn’t changed since 1958. That was 50 years ago, and it’s still good enough for Slash.
He broke an eardrum in 1964.
He had quintuple (!) bypass surgery and suffered from arthritis so badly that he had to relearn how to play the guitar. Some people never learn how to play once! So when you listen to the clip below, of Les Paul playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the age of 93 (h/t to Brow Beat for the vid), you’re listening to a guy that learned to be a guitar virtuoso twice.
He’ll be missed, of course. But I think that Les Paul has reached that sort of legendary status that as long as you live, you won’t be able to go a day without engaging his influence. Guys like that are never really gone.
Tags: guitar, innovation, Les Paul, rock
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Current Events, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.