ROCKS OFF - The Charlie Watts Message Board
A Bigger Bang World Tour 2005 - 2006
¡ Gracias Fernando !
Watts by Aceves
Angel Stadium of Anaheim - Anahaeim, CA - 4th November 2005
© 2005 Fernando Aceves
[ ROCKSOFF.ORG ] [ IORR NEWS ] [ SETLISTS 1962-2005 ] [ FORO EN ESPAÑOL ] [ BIT TORRENT TRACKER ] [ BIRTHDAY'S LIST ] [ MICK JAGGER ] [ KEITHFUCIUS ] [ CHARLIE WATTS ] [ RONNIE WOOD ] [ BRIAN JONES ] [ MICK TAYLOR ] [ BILL WYMAN ] [ IAN "STU" STEWART ] [ NICKY HOPKINS ] [ MERRY CLAYTON ] [ IAN 'MAC' McLAGAN ] [ LINKS ] [ PHOTOS ] [ JIMI HENDRIX ] [ TEMPLE ] [ GUESTBOOK ] [ ADMIN ]
CHAT ROOM aka The Fun HOUSE Rest rooms last days
ROCKS OFF - The Charlie Watts Message Board
Register | Update Profile | F.A.Q. | Admin Control Panel

Topic: Guitar icon Les Paul looks back on 90 years Return to archive
November 3rd, 2005 03:44 AM
Ten Thousand Motels Guitar icon Les Paul looks back on 90 years
Thu Nov 3, 2005 1:18 AM ET
By Chris Morris

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Les Paul -- nonpareil guitarist, inventor and studio innovator -- turned 90 on June 9. He celebrated the occasion with the August 30 release of an all-star Capitol/EMI album, "Les Paul and Friends: American Made World Played," a rock album featuring such guitar icons as Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Billy Gibbons. Paul recently looked back on his career with The Hollywood Reporter music editor Chris Morris.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYBODY IN THE
WORLD PLAYS ON "AMERICAN MADE WORLD PLAYED." DID YOU HAVE A SAY IN WHO THE GUESTS WERE?

Les Paul: Yes, I did.

THR: WHO DID YOU SPECIFICALLY ASK FOR?

Paul: There are several of them who give me a bad time -- they're great, they play so good. I'd say Jeff Beck just happens to be one of my very, very favorite guitar players. Of course, I love just about every one of 'em on there. I know 'em personally. It was great to get to play with them, even though I had to do it over the phone. They would play something and play it back for me, and I'd say, "That sounds great, that's perfect." I really made sure that they understood that, me not being a rock guy, I wouldn't know how to make good rock from bad rock, while they would. So I let them pick their own numbers. With Steve Miller, I said: "Steve, (do) whatever you want to do. Do it, and do it the way you want to do it."

THR: WHOSE INSPIRATION WAS IT TO DO THE TWO TRACKS
FEATURING SAM COOKE'S VOICE, WITH BECK AND CLAPTON ON GUITAR?

Paul: That was (producer Bob) Cutarella's idea. I love 'em.
EVERYBODY, AND A LOT OF YOUR BEST FRIENDS ARE ON THIS ALBUM. IS THERE ANYBODY YOU HAVEN'T RECORDED WITH YET THAT YOU'D WANT TO PLAY WITH?

Paul: Well, there's a lot of new ones, probably, that I haven't (recorded with). But I would say that the large majority of people who come down to that club (Iridium, New York home of Paul's Monday night jam session) that sit in range all the way from the very top to the beginner, and they all manage to get into that club. It's 25 years that I've been doing this. Lot of Monday nights, and we have maybe 10 artists that are anxious to get up and perform. Some of 'em are 11 years old, and the next guy is 30, 40, 50. None of 'em are 90. (He laughs.) I'm the only 90-year-old guy there. I enjoy doing it. And the people enjoy it very much, so that makes it a great thing to do. . . . And they all play different. It used to be that you'd have a way of playin' the guitar, and everybody would more or less follow that guy. They may have had a different style, between Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt and this guy and that guy, but it isn't as extreme as it is now. You get five guitar players up on that stage now, and they're so different -- they're ice cream and fat meat.

THR: YOU STARTED PLAYING WHEN YOU WERE A KID.WERE YOU
INFLUENCED BY PLAYERS LIKE EDDIE LANG AND REINHARDT?

Paul: Eddie Lang was definitely the one that started me. I listened to some of the cowboys and some of the (country) players, but my heart was to play like Eddie Lang and be around people in the jazz world like Earl Hines, like Coleman Hawkins. I was really bit with jazz and country, both, at the same time. I took on two names -- I took on the name "Red Hot Red," which I later changed to "Rhubarb Red." I kept that country name, and "Les Paul" was the jazz name. So I was two guys until I was about 20 years old.

THR: YOU SORT OF STEPPED OUT OF COUNTRY UNTIL YOU RECORDED
WITH CHET ATKINS IN 1977, RIGHT?

Paul: That's right, I went back. Chet called me on the phone and said, "Before we both check out, don't you think we ought to make a record together?" And thank God we did. It's one of my favorite records.

THR: WHO DID YOU LIKE IN THE COUNTRY VEIN?

Paul: Well, I go back to Jimmie Rodgers. I go back right to the beginning. Later, when Gene Autry came in, I got to take his place when he went to Hollywood. I took his place at (radio station WJJD) in Chicago. I went to Chicago almost immediately when I started to play, and Chicago was where I did all the breeding.

THR: FROM THE SOUND OF THINGS, YOU STARTED TINKERING ALMOST
AS A CHILD. WERE YOU ALWAYS INTERESTED IN THE WAY THINGS WORKED AND TAKING THEM APART AND PUTTING THEM BACK TOGETHER AGAIN?

Paul: Yep. But for a reason. I not only was curious. In my living room, I had a player piano, I had a radio, I had a Victrola, I had the telephone. I had all the instruments and all the devices -- I had a laboratory, and I didn't know it. I was curious because my mother would come in (while I was playing) and say: "Boy, that sounds great. What you're doin'." And I'd say: "But I can't tell when I'm playin' it. I'm too into it. I gotta hear that back. I gotta make a record." I was already punching holes in the piano (rolls), and then I noticed if you slowed the piano down, it didn't change pitch. OK. Now, if you made a record and you slowed it down, it would lower in pitch. Now I got two instruments that are doing basically the same thing, but the results are entirely different. So I went to my teacher in grade school and asked her, and she said, "We'll have to go to the science class to find out." We marched over to the library and looked it up, and it was analog and digital. That was the entrance, right at the beginning of my life, of analog and digital. Of course, then I found the advantages of having something analog and having something digital, OK? I had to build myself a recording lathe. So here I am, I'm not even 11, 12 years old, and I've got myself a beautiful turntable made out of a Cadillac flywheel from the junk pile in my dad's garage. A dental belt turned the turntable, because I had a drummer that was a dentist. Then I got the feed screw for it from my dad's garage again, and I put the pieces together, and the next thing I had to do was send to Chicago to get a record head. I got one of the first record heads that they put out on the market, called a Webster, and put the thing together, and lo and behold, there we made a record. That's pretty heavy stuff for bein' just a kid not in his teens yet.

THR: FOR YOU, DID THE TECHNOLOGY COME FIRST OR DID THE
PLAYING COME FIRST OR DID YOU ALWAYS SEE THEM AS INTERTWINED?

Paul: I think they came together. They sure married immediately because the things that I needed were the things that I created or built -- they were necessary so that I could hear what I was doin'. That immediately intrigued me because then I could take and use that as part of my life as a musician. You could record, you could see your mistakes or what was good.

THR: YOU ANTICIPATED A LOT OF DEVELOPMENTS BY MORE THAN A
DECADE IN MOST CASES: DIDN'T YOU HAVE THE FIRST 8-TRACK
RECORDING MACHINE 15 YEARS BEFORE IT WAS EMPLOYED ON A
COMMERCIAL RECORDING?

Paul: That's right. They were slow on pickin' up on it, but once they got it, then everybody went crazy with it.

THR: AND YOU TRIED TO SELL GIBSON ON THE IDEA OF A
SOLID-BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR YEARS BEFORE THEY DID IT, RIGHT?

Paul: It took 10 years. They thought it was so radical. The terrific advantage of it was, you could turn it up as loud as you wished and you could do all these different sounds with it. You've got a deadly weapon. You've got something you can play louder than anybody in the band. You could play it in the back seat of your car, you could take it to the beach, you could do anything you wish. You could not do that with a piano or a drum. It was a great advantage. So I took it to the Gibson people. They called me "the character with the broomstick with the pickups on it."

THR: WHEN DID YOU FIRST TAKE IT TO THEM?

Paul: I took it to 'em in '41, when I left New York and went to Chicago the second time. I would go over (to Gibson) and talk to 'em, explain the advantages of it, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. The right person wasn't there at the right time. . . . They've sure got the picture now!

THR: THE RECORDS YOU MADE WITH YOUR WIFE AND VOCAL PARTNER
MARY FORD IN THE LATE '40S AND EARLY '50S ARE STILL ENCHANTING. WHAT LED YOU TO CREATE WHAT YOU CALLED "THE NEW SOUND?"

Paul: I was working with the Andrews Sisters, and I had the Les Paul Quartet -- it was Les Paul and His Trio. We were playing in Chicago, and my mother came down to see me. She says, "Lester, I heard you on the air last night, and you were great." I said, "Mother, I wasn't on the air last night -- I was right here at the theater." She says, "Well then, you ought to do something about it -- everybody sounds like you." When your own mother can't tell you from someone else, you gotta do something! And I say: "Well, I can't sue the guy. If he wants to play, he can play." I thought about it, and I finally said, "You know, Mom's right," and I gave notice to the Andrews Sisters. I said, "I'm gonna go home, get in my garage (in Hollywood) on Curson there, and I'm not gonna do anything until I find a new way of playing so that my mother can tell me from anybody else." So I get into my garage. I wouldn't play with Bing (Crosby), I wouldn't play with anybody. I just turned down all jobs. It took me almost two years to develop a style that was different. You listen to the (1991 Capitol) box set, and you hear these sounds, and you say they're from another planet. It made my mother happy, and it made the people happy, and it introduced all of the toys that we could build today to recreate those sounds.

THR: WAS TAPE TECHNOLOGY IMPORTANT TO THAT DEVELOPMENT?

Paul: Oh, no, I did it all on disc! I had done four of my radio shows on disc when Bing Crosby came in the backyard and said, "I got something for ya in the car." So Bing and I went to the front yard, and he opened the trunk. I thought it was gonna be some cheese or a Philco radio, and it was neither. It was an Ampex (tape deck). We brought it to the back of the house and set it up on my stool in the control room, and I continued to do what I was doing, making the dubs and I kept looking at the tape machine, and I hadn't even opened it. And all of a sudden, I figured out how to make a multiple, how to do sound-on-sound on one machine. So I went to Mary, she was hangin' some clothes on the clothesline, pinning up some bedspreads or whatever, and I said: "Just leave the laundry here. I've got the answer to the problem. We can go to a tape, and we can do it all on one machine." I drew it all out on an envelope. Later we're in New Mexico, and Mary says to me, "What if it won't work?" I says, "It'll work." . . . So what happened is, it did work.

I would dread to go back and try to do what I did then. It's very difficult. It's terribly difficult to do that. Oh, my goodness. And I thought nothing of it.

THR: IF YOU MADE A MISTAKE, YOU HAD TO JUNK EVERYTHING,
RIGHT?

Paul: That was it. You'd start back at one. So you don't make a mistake. Then you'd have to record 'em backwards because you'd take the part that was least important and put that on first because you don't care if you hear any degeneration -- it's not important anyway. The fourth-part harmony isn't as important as the lead. And you have to have judgment about how loud it's going to be, 24 tracks down.

THR: YOU WERE BUILDING FROM THE BOTTOM UP AND BOUNCING
TRACKS, CORRECT?

Paul: That's exactly right.

THR: THAT'S ENOUGH TO DRIVE ALMOST ANYONE INSANE.

Paul: Well, it almost did. (Laughs)

THR: YOU ENJOYED A LOT OF SUCCESS INTO THE '60S WITH THE
RECORDS WITH MARY, AND THEN YOU MADE SOME RECORDS ON YOUR OWN AFTER THE PARTNERSHIP BROKE UP. YOU WENT OUT FOR A LITTLE WHILE, AND THEN YOU CAME BACK IN THE '70S WITH CHET ATKINS.

Paul: I retired in '65. I had to play off a couple of dates in the Orient, Germany, Switzerland, things like that. I finished those dates off, then Chet called and said, "Let's make one album." We did that, and then I went in a couple years later for heart surgery, and then I was out of it. All these years, I'm not playing the guitar, I'm not recording. Then it got to the point where, after the heart surgery, the doctor asked me to do two things: be his friend and work hard. He didn't say what to do, he just said, "Work hard." So I took a piece of paper and a pencil and I drew what I like to do, all the yeses and all the nos. And I said, "I like playin' in a little joint somewhere rather than playing these great big (places) for 50,000 people and doing these big routines where it's not intimate and you don't have fun, it's hard work, you're living on the bus, all that stuff." Those are nos. I put all the yeses down there, and it'd be a nice little joint where you could jam, and no one tells you to make the show shorter or longer. You could play the songs you wanna play, do what you wanna do, kid around, have fun, have friends, be with friends."

THR: THAT'S WHEN YOU STARTED PLAYING AT FAT TUESDAY'S IN
NEW YORK, RIGHT?

Paul: That's right, and it was perfect. (I started there) in '81.

THR: SO YOU STILL LIKE GETTING OUT THERE AND PLAYING EVERY
MONDAY NIGHT?

Paul: I love it, if it wasn't for the arthritis. The arthritis is one of the things that plagues me the most, and it's in the hands, so the fingers are gone, and now the shoulders are gone, the elbows are gone. The knees go, but that doesn't bother my playin'.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter


[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
Search for information in the wet page, the archives and this board:

PicoSearch
The Rolling Stones World Tour 2005 Rolling Stones Bigger Bang Tour 2005 2006 Rolling Stones Forum - Rolling Stones Message Board - Mick Jagger - Keith Richards - Brian Jones - Charlie Watts - Ian Stewart - Stu - Bill Wyman - Mick Taylor - Ronnie Wood - Ron Wood - Rolling Stones 2005 Tour - Farewell Tour - Rolling Stones: Onstage World Tour A Bigger Bang US Tour

NEW: SEARCH ZONE:
Search for goods, you'll find the impossible collector's item!!!
Enter artist an start searching using "Power Search" (RECOMMENDED)