Les Paul tells how he reinvented music and what's next

By MARK BROWN
Scripps Howard News Service
Monday, August 13, 2007

On the phone from his home in Mahwah, N.J., the 92-year-old legendary inventor/musician Les Paul is brilliantly focused, full of ideas, healthy despite years of crippling arthritis, brimming with energy and not about to quit his inventing ways.

What's his next project? Read on -- you might need it someday.

Q: It's amazing how much memorabilia you've saved -- your first eight-track recorder, the prototype for the first Les Paul guitar. Why?

Paul: Most of the stuff I lost. And what I have left is what I deliberately saved, knowing one day I'd want to put it together, put it in its proper place. When I was younger my mother called me and said, 'We're selling the house. They're going to plow it under and make condominiums there. If you want your stuff you better come and get it.' I thought 'Oh, to hell with it.' I should have done it.

Q: . . .You say every time you do something as simple as turn on a light switch you wonder how it works. Where did that curiosity come from?

Paul: I guess I was just born that way, to be devilish. That curiosity was there no matter what it was. Whether it was the light switch or whether it was something else. What made a string vibrate? When you plucked it and it did vibrate what was that string doing? I was always curious about what made a plank of wood have a resonance and tone to it. I was always curious, always interested in improving something if it didn't do everything I thought it should do.

Q: Were you always a stickler for sound quality?

Paul: Oh yes, yes. That was almost the extreme. It had to be right, it had to be just as perfect as you can get it. When I moved to California I didn't go to the recording studios. I went over to the movie lots. I would go over there and see how the movie guys were doing it. The movie guys were far ahead of studios. I'd go over there and hang around with the guys who knew what was going on -- with the speakers, with the sound, with the theaters. Then I'd improve on that.

Q: When you had your car accident in 1947, you quit music for a while and instead invented multi-track recording. Why?

Paul: As far as I was concerned I wanted to play it all -- I wanted to do the whole thing, I wanted the quality to be good, I wanted it to be right.

Q: Why didn't you get a patent on multi-tracking and get a cut of every record made in the past 60 years?

Paul: I must admit I'm not the best businessman in the world, though I've made some pretty good moves.

Q: You tried to get Gibson to make the electric guitar for a decade before they finally came to you in 1951 with their hats in hand. Was that sweet vindication?

Paul: (chuckles heartily). Yeah, it was a downer. I knew I had something good, something that good that proved itself. It just didn't prove itself to others. Others weren't about to make such a drastic change as that, as a solid body guitar versus an acoustical guitar. So it took a lot of convincing, took about 10 years, for them to come rapping at the door and say, 'Hey, bring that gadget in. Let's look at it.'

Q: How great is it to have Keith Richards, Paul McCartney and others getting onstage to say how brilliant you are?

Paul: I'm very proud of it. At the same time I want to remain just another person. Let's say a guy has come a long way. He wants his guitar autographed or he just wants to shake my hand. I know he came off from some far-off place -- Moscow or Nova Scotia or somewhere. They saved their money for two years to get a plane ticket to come down, meet me, shake hands, whatever. I think of that all the time and think about how I'd feel if I was way back there and held high hopes only to be disappointed. Consequently I do appreciate everything that has turned out good for me. I'm proud of it. I only wish I could have done more.

Q: What's next for you?

Paul: What I've got going for me is a dozen things at one time. One of them is hearing aids. I see all the faults of a hearing aid. A guy puts a Stradivarius under his chin and it doesn't sound like a Stradivarius. It sounds like a piece of tin made in China, for sure. The same thing applies to many other things with hearing aids. You get in with a crowd of people and you can't separate them. The ear is a very intricate part of the anatomy. I feel something should be done about it. So that's where I am now.