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.