Les Paul On Electrifying His Guitar
The man who built rock's Excalibur reveals why he needed to crank things up.
JUST BEFORE HIS 90TH BIRTHDAY, the late guitar pioneer Les Paul sat down to explain how he went from working at a drive-in barbecue to inventing the hallowed six-string instrument that bears his name. It seems he was inspired to create his trailblazing solid-bodied electric guitar - which would give the world the tool to rock - because his audience of passing customers couldn’t hear him over the traffic. “People would drive up and listen to this guy – me, I was Red Hot Red then,” he explained in an interview filmed four years before his death in 2009. “A car hop came over to me with a note saying: ‘Your voice and your harmonica and your jokes are funny, I can hear them well, but the guitar is not loud enough.’
“That really, really interested me so I went home and started work on the electric guitar."
MOJO's friends at Q Magazine are set to bestow a very special artist with the Gibson Les Paul Award at the Q Awards 2014 tomorrow (Wednesday October 22). The interview, below, also sees Paul discussing his solo career, his work with iconic guitarists and more.