Rock and Roll owes everything to Les Paul.
Les Paul is my absolute hero. If you go to my myspace, you’ll see his photo in my “Who i’d like to meet:” section. (Right next to Cyndi Lauper, Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick and Prince). That is a very exclusive club i’d say. He is still alive today and at 92 I hear tell that he still plays a regular Monday night show in New York City somewhere. My goal for the year is to visit New York because believe it or not, I’ve never been! How is that possible? I probably know just as much about New York as I do Los Angeles and I’ve lived here a full year already! So when I go, if he’s playing, I have to meet Les Paul!
What is he responsible for? You might be saying to yourself. (Don’t lie, I know you are) Well firstly, without Mr. Polsfuss we wouldn’t have multitrack recording. Is that important, you say? Oh, naive one. He started out using muiltiple records to multiply the sound and moved on to invent the first muiltitrack Reel-to-Reel tape recorder. (Which was pretty much the industry standard until recently when computers caught up) See, this is pretty important when you consider how every album has been recorded since the 1940s is because of him. There would be no overdubs, no artists harmonizing with themselves, no multiple takes to get the record “perfect”. And like how many guitarists lately have you seen use loop pedals to layer their sound and play multiple parts live? Think about how empty those Beatle records would be if there wasn’t all of that crazy shit going on through “Tomorrow Never Knows”?! He also invented Reverb. (which means no Surf or Rockabilly Sound.)
Yeah duh, I almost forgot to mention that he also invented the solid body electric guitar. The sexiest thing in the world, right? The man is a fucking wizard. He’s like Gandalf of the Guitar. His name is on his guitar and yours (if you’re cool); and it is pretty much the most best guitar ever. (Sorry Strat players, its not even close. Tele players, you’re not too far off.) All of that and he was a high school dropout.
NOW BEHOLD HIS WIZARDRY, AND WORSHIP BEFORE THE DARK LORDS MULTI-TRACK ALCHEMY:
Thanks to Eric Logan for this clip.
Tags: God, Guitar, Inventor, Les Paul, Multitrack Recording, Rock and Roll
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 am
Now wait just a damn second here. I think this could happens to have a unicorn vomit colored lining. Sure the guy sounds like he did a helluva lot for rock and roll, and no doubt he certainly did.
But if I am to understand this correctly, up until he came along and decided to multi track recordings bands and singers had to do spot on for recordings. They had to have some wicked talent. To take advantage of his new methods your skills had to evolve.
But tell me… had he never started this trend of “fancy recording” would I still have had to suffer through Brittany Spears and the pre-chewed pop tart crap? Or even worse the so so many tracks of rap and the horrid de-evolution into 30 second hooks that can be made into ring tones…
hrm, maybe we should just force them back to the tech he developed. tell them all “NO MORE!” then see how bands do without all the fancy smancy stuff.