At 93, Les Paul, the inventor of the electric guitar and multiple track recording, is still “chasing sound”

AT AROUND FOUR o’clock on a frigid Monday afternoon in New York City, an elderly gentleman walks into the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway and gingerly makes his way to the stage. The waiters and the others milling around take little notice as the man, with considerable effort, climbs atop a stool. After adjusting his hearing aids, he starts tuning two gleaming electric guitars — one black, one white — of his own design. First he plays individual notes and then phrases of increasing sophistication, making adjustments, speaking in a barely audible voice to a soundman across the room, until the instruments, two brand new Les Paul guitars, sound just as he, Les Paul, wants them to sound.

Some people, he likes to joke, thinks he actually is a guitar; that the name was made up in the 1950s when Gibson released the first Les Paul model. But Paul is flesh and blood, and he has been one of the most influential musicians and innovators of the modern age.  

Lester William Polsfuss was born in 1915 in a small town in Wisconsin and started playing guitar soon after – a precocious child who dreamed of making the guitar louder and more forceful. In the intervening 85 or so years, he did indeed invent new guitars, dozens and dozens of them, along with new styles of play, new effects and new methods of preserving it all, including multiple track recording, which revolutionized the industry.  While he drew on legends of his era, like Django Reinhardt, and played with giants like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, modern day stars from Eric Clapton to Eddie Van Halen hail Paul as their greatest influence. Last November, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, held a concert to pay tribute to Paul and his legacy.

Though his own health has been his greatest adversary, Paul is still playing, at the age of 93, every Monday night at the Iridium, in a small room, to an intimate crowd, just as he likes it. He may not have the dexterity he once did, but he plays and he has fun doing it. Despite a lingering cold, he and the Les Paul Trio treat a full house to old standards like “Blue Skies” and “Sweet Georgia Brown,” while cooking up new takes on “Tennessee Waltz” and “Brazil.” Between songs, he jokes with an audience that includes several generations and several nationalities, and with his band mates, makes a particular point of flirting with a lovely young female bass player.  The band, he says, became the “Less Balls Trio” when she joined. Later, responding to some coy inferences on her part, he tells the crowd: “I feel like a condemned building with a new flagpole.”

Still “chasing sound” in his 10th decade on Earth, Paul sat down with power before the show.

I hear you’re quite the night owl.
Yeah. I’ve always been a night owl. I probably lack Vitamin D, from the sunshine.

What time do you figure you’ll go to bed tonight?
Well, tonight I’m going to try to get to bed early. Usually, it’s six o’clock.

In the morning?
Yeah. When most people are getting up, I go to sleep. But tomorrow I’ll be taking some tests. I have a rather rigid day of doing some tests.

Medical tests?
Yeah. So I want to get to bed as soon as I can. Try to get a little rest and go over there and do what I have to do.

When you’re doing the sound check, are you looking for something specific? Is it always the same thing?
No. I was trying two new guitars; completely different electronics. We’re going to compare them. The first thing you got to do is tune it. So that’s what I was doing, making sure they were in tune, that the settings are all where I want them, and that the amplifier behind me sounds decent. So you go fish for the best sound that you can get out of it.

And you have in your mind a sense of what it’s supposed to sound like?
Oh yeah. Each individual who plays a guitar, or an instrument, he has in his mind his own personal – I don’t know the word for it – his own personal wish to get a certain sound. Benny Goodman worked for many years to get that sound. And so did Nat Cole on the piano. No matter who it is – if it’s a vocalist, they want to hit a certain sound. And the guitarists, if you take Jeff Beck, he wants one sound. Someone else will want something entirely different.

I’d imagine a lot of players work with what they’re given, but you’ve constantly tried to reinvent the tools.
If you buy a guitar and you don’t plug it in the wall, you just play it acoustically, and you listen to it, it has some of the things that you appreciate, you enjoy and like, and you’re very happy with. And then there are things there that are not enough. So you pick the first string and you play in a certain range, and you find, “Oh, it’s weak there. It should be stronger there.”

You want a rounder sound, you want a more metallic sound. You want something acoustical, with the harmonics of it. Or, you want a horn sound, a big round sound. One is for playing loud and the other is for playing soft. It’s unending, all the variables.

Like if it’s a small room, or a big hall, if you’re playing with Bing Crosby or Eddie Van Halen.
Oh sure. And it depends on the type of music you’re playing, and the stage and everything else. I asked Buddy Rich, I said, “Buddy, how do you tune your drum?” He said, “Well, I tune it to the room.”

A few weeks ago, there was a tribute for you at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Yep. I forget what the name is, but it was honoring me for what I did.

Are there any awards and tributes that you haven’t gotten, or do you feel pretty much covered?
Well, at this stage of the game, I don’t wish for more. And I don’t let the trophies go to my head. I just want to be like the next guy. So I try to stay away from believing everything I hear.

Do you play at home when you’re by yourself?
No. I never touch the guitar when I’m at home. I get here, I play, and then when I’m done with it.

I understand you got started with the harmonica.
The harmonica. That’s correct.

And then you had a piano teacher who told you not to bother with music.
(Laughs) Well, my mother had in the living room everything you needed for a person to have a laboratory. I had one. I had a telephone. I had a phonograph. I had a player piano. I had a harmonica, a guitar, and these were all very important things, with the radio, to make amplified music and to invent and create. And it started with a sewer digger on his lunch hour with the harmonica. I got hooked on that.

There was a guy who worked as a sewer digger?
He was in front of the house putting in the sewer. This was in 1924.

You heard the sound and wanted to do that?
Oh boy, when I heard that sound I had to have a harmonica. And he said, “I think you want this more than I do.” (Laughs) So he gave it to me. And my mother grabbed it and said, “You’re not playing this until I boil it.” So she boiled the harmonica. And kiddingly, I say on the stage that I’ve been boiling my guitars ever since.

Did the people who influenced you come through your hometown, or come through the radio?
There’s many, many. In those days, there just weren’t the players like they have today. And the player today has everything. If he wants to be taught, he goes to the teacher. If he wants to buy the book, he can buy the book. And if he wants to watch it, he can watch it on TV. He’s exposed to everything, and he’s given all the breaks. The guy next to him, his friend, says, “Here’s how you play.” In my case, there wasn’t any such thing as that around you, so you’d make up this particular phrase or lick or song or whatever you wished to accomplish – that would be your goal. Today, there’s so much to choose from that I feel very happy for the kids.

Are there more people today saying what’s right or wrong, whereas you could define it for yourself?
The rules of right and wrong, they went out the window a long time ago. The guitar is an instrument you can do so many things with. You can’t throw a piano in the back seat of the car like you can a guitar. A guitar happens to be a very friendly instrument. It was a meek, mild, apologetic type of instrument that had no power, was the last guy you could hear in the band, or even consider hiring in the band. And that all changed when we went to the electric guitar and went to powerful amplifiers. Today, they’re playing music like it’s a bowel movement.

What?
They’re blowing your head off, which you couldn’t do. Today it’s the most powerful of all instruments.

Is there something you consider your greatest accomplishment?
Well, at any one particular time, I’d say we just had the hit with “How High the Moon,” and it’s terribly important, popular, and you’re enjoying the fact that you’re having a row of hit records, and that just takes you from nobody to the top. Or, if you invent the first electric guitar, or you invent the first recording device, the first multitrack sound on sound, which everybody has today in their basement, in their bedroom, in their garage, or in the studio, and it goes all the way to the guided missiles and going to the moon and everything else. You say, which one is most important? It just depends which one you’re talking about. How important could it be that I found echo? That I found reverb? How important was it? It was terribly important. And then I’m on the next day to something else entirely different. And that becomes important and the other one is old hat.

It sounds like part of your nature. You’re looking for something, you find it, then get on to something else. 
That’s the way it is. At my age, others have retired many, many, many years ago. I’m still playing because I enjoy being with people younger than me and the new music today as well as the music of yesterday – it’s great therapy. It’s better than laying home in bed. Why a guy quits working, it’s because he’s doing something that he’s not enjoying. If you’re doing something you enjoy, then it’s not work, it’s a pleasure. And that’s where my head is at.

Was it a greater act of imagination to be inventing some of these sounds later on, or to be a boy growing up in Waukesha thinking I can make a life playing music?
It’s difficult to answer that. I love to ice skate. I love to ski. I loved to play basketball or whatever. But music was number one in my head from the first time I heard that harmonica, and then listened to the radio and heard the hum of the transfer and heard a man play the guitar, heard his fingers slide. You could hear all these sounds, and I’ve been chasing sound all my life.

It seems like you always had a sense that there were more possibilities to the instrument?
Oh sure.

Is that something you think is common in artists?
If it isn’t, it sure should be. I changed my style so many times because of physical problems. If you have arthritis and you don’t have the use of two fingers, then you learn to play the guitar without those fingers.

On your right hand?
On both hands.

Arthritis in two fingers on each hand?
All fingers. So when I play, I only got one finger, and sometimes two. So it makes it a little difficult to play what you used to play. It’s like a person who loses his leg. He still feels he’s got that leg, okay? The same thing applies to the guitar.

You just feel like you can fly. You can go in there and just rip that rung off, and you can do those things – then you say, no, no, no. I can’t go there. I don’t have what I had.

Did that happen during your sound check? At one point, it looked like you played a lick and were having trouble with it. You grimaced and shook out both your heads before trying it again.
Probably, yeah. You just say, “Hey, why is this awkward to play?” Well, it’s awkward to play because when you have all your fingers, it’s easy to do. You play something that you played for a million years, and you have to think of a new way to do it, or some substitute that’s equally as good.

Some people stick to one style, but you played jazz, pop, blue grass, country, rock. What made you try all these different things? Were you just playing what was popular at a given time?
No, I was always looking. Always dreaming about something that wasn’t there that should be there.

A new sound?
It could be a new sound or a new device, or a new instrument, whatever it is.

Did you design the first actual Les Paul guitar?
Yeah. Well, I’d have to start by saying that I bought one from Sears and Roebuck, my very first guitar. But I was playing it at a barbecue stand at a drive-in, and a guy was in the rumble seat of his car, and he wrote a note to me and gave it to the carhop when she took his order for food. It said, “Hey Red.” At the time I was singing over the telephone, into the radio, my mother’s radio, with a battery charger and the whole thing.

At the barbecue stand, you were using the phone as a mike and the radio as an amplifier?
Yeah. And I had the harmonica rack on. And he wrote, “Everything sounds great, but you’re guitar is not loud enough.” I only wish I had that note and knew who he was, because if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have gone home and said, “I’m going to make a guitar that’s plenty loud. And I want to do it light.”

So I made two guitars identically alike, except one was made from a piece of railroad track, two-and-a-half-feet long. It was very dense, heavy, sustained material. And the other one was a piece of pinewood. And I strung them both up with an E string. And I took the part you listen to on the telephone, and took the coil and the wire out of that, and a magnet, and made the first pickup for the guitar, placed it under the string, and played both of them. And hands down, the steel railroad track was by far superior.

So I went running to my mother and said, “Mom, I’ve got it, the greatest sound you ever heard.”

How old were you?
I was seven or eight years old.

At that age you were making guitars?
Could have been nine. I don’t know just when it was. But I was very young and my mother, when I told her about the railroad tracks, she said, “The day you see a cowboy on a horse playing a piece of railroad track … ” So, I said, “Mom, you’re right.” It’s got to be made of wood and it’s got to be made in such a way that it looks beautiful, so your psychiatrist, your housewife, your friend, your bartender – the guitar’s something that’s personal. So we strived to make the most lovable instrument.

Down here at the club, one of the most amusing things is how many women come up to me and say, “You know, I come in second in our house. The guitar is first.” [Laughs]

The new ones you were trying out earlier, does the company make them?
No, no. We still build them. We do the work.

How many models have you built over the years?
Oh my goodness. It’s endless.

You’ve played for presidents and with some of the biggest acts of the last 70 years. Was there ever a show or concert or just one song you played and thought, “That’s it, that was perfect.”
Never perfect, but there’s been some gala events that were terribly important in my life. One of them was in 1939, the first show on TV. I felt that was quite a thing. President Roosevelt gave his speech at the World’s Fair and then following that, we did a broadcast with [singer] Fred Waring of Pennsylvania, featuring the Les Paul trio. We were on a test. The very first TV to come out. There was only one guy out there with TV.

Playing personally for President Roosevelt – when I’m standing there in a row to get his autograph, the president pointed his cigarette holder at me and says, “Hey, would you do me a favor and play privately for us after this event?” We went over to the Capitol and went into the library, and we sat down and played for the President, and Vice President, and the kids. We played their favorite songs.

And in 1939, so many things happened. Riding with [New York City Mayor Fiorello] LaGuardia, and we go to Coney Island, and he bought me a hotdog. He went over and got me a hotdog, a cob of corn and a beer. And that same year, I made my first hit record. So those are all very important things to me.

And tonight, what do you want to do out onstage? What are you hoping for?
Oh, to make the people happy. And that’s interesting because, you are well aware, people from India and Hong Kong, and many other countries come to Broadway. Some may know Les Paul, some may have never heard of him. And they come down here and pay to come in and be entertained. So it’s a challenge to me to make those people so happy that they fly back the second time, the third time, the fourth time. Many of them don’t speak any English. Some were there when we made these songs. Others never heard of them. So you have such a wide group of people. That audience is a big challenge. All of them come from all the different walks of life, and you got them all in one room and you try to make them all happy.

That’s like when someone asked Joe DiMaggio, near the end of his career, why he still played so hard. He said “because someone might be seeing me play for the first time.”
That’s right.

And with sound, are there still new frontiers?
It goes on and on and on. And the old music is just as good as the new music. So that’s why I have such a broad view of all music. Not just what I play, it’s what everyone plays.