FEATURE:
Music Technology Breakthroughs
IN THIS PHOTO: Les Paul and his namesake guitar
Part Twelve: The Solid-Body Electric Guitar
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THIS is one of the more complicated…
IN THIS PHOTO: Les Paul with ‘The Log’
parts of this feature, as I am featuring an instrument that transformed the sound of music. Rather than take a look at the history of the electric guitar, I am interested in a particular innovator and period. I was grabbed when I read a Vogue feature concerning innovations and breakthroughs in music. Similar to my feature, they have listed a range of technologies – from modern revelations to classic pioneering movements. They raised an interesting period of the electric guitar:
“When, in 1941, Les Paul added a neck, strings, tuners, and homemade pickups to a 4-by-4 pine slab that he dubbed the Log, audiences balked. They weren’t prepared to see a musician wrest melodies from a solid block of wood, so Paul added false sides to give it a more familiar shape. That and the instrument’s rich, sustaining tone won over showgoers. It would take Paul another decade to convince the Gibson Guitar Corporation to mass-produce a solid-body electric guitar, but Gibson debuted a model in 1952, named, of course, for Les Paul. As rock ’n’ roll exploded, the electric guitar—cheap, loud, and relatively easy to play—became one of the most popular means of musical expression”.
I don’t think people realise just how important and transformative Les Paul was. Whilst there are claims others were working on the idea of a solid-body electric guitar in 1981/1982, I think many feel that Les Paul was the real force behind that guitar breakthrough. One can look at the artists who have used a Les Paul guitar through the years.
I will go into more detail regarding that side. First, a little bit of background regarding the origins of Les Paul’s solid-body electric guitar:
“Les was in New York in 1941 and his guitar-playing career had taken off but he was haunted by the beautiful sound of his rail guitar. He had friends at the Epiphone factory who let him have access to their guitar-making equipment on Sundays when the factory was closed. Les worked tirelessly on creating an electrically amplified guitar that didn’t have feedback and provided volume, tone and sustain that he could control.
Les took a 4 x 4 piece of pine and strung it like a guitar, added his homemade pickups, a bridge, a Virola tailpiece, strings and the neck of an Epiphone Broadway guitar. He got the sound he wanted and called it “the Log”.
When he took the “Log” to a nightclub to play, the audience was unimpressed. Les was determined and so he then took an old Epiphone guitar, sawed it in half and gave his Log Epiphone “wings” so it would look more like a guitar. He then took the Log with wings to the same nightclub, played a few tunes and the audience couldn’t stop talking about the “new sound.” Les concluded, “People hear with their eyes.”
Les was so confident after that with his “Log” guitar that he took it to show some of the Epiphone executives, but they weren’t interested. He later took his invention to Gibson, where they laughed and called the Log “a broomstick with pickups.” It took another ten years for Gibson to accept the idea of a solid body electric guitar. In 1951, Gibson called Les and worked closely with him to design and build what has become the Gibson Les Paul solid body electric guitar. The first models were sold in 1952, and remain one of the top selling guitars in the world”.
Les Paul died in 2009 at the age of ninety-four. As a guitar maker and musician, he left a huge legacy. The New York Times wrote about the great Lester William Polsfuss when he passed:
“Les Paul, the virtuoso guitarist and inventor whose solid-body electric guitar and recording studio innovations changed the course of 20th-century popular music, died Thursday in White Plains, N.Y. . He was 94.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, the Gibson Guitar Corporation and his family announced.
Mr. Paul was a remarkable musician as well as a tireless tinkerer. He played guitar alongside leading prewar jazz and pop musicians from Louis Armstrong to Bing Crosby. In the 1930s he began experimenting with guitar amplification, and by 1941 he had built what was probably the first solid-body electric guitar, although there are other claimants. With his guitar and the vocals of his wife, Mary Ford, he used overdubbing, multitrack recording and new electronic effects to create a string of hits in the 1950s.
Mr. Paul’s style encompassed the twang of country music, the harmonic richness of jazz and, later, the bite of rock ’n’ roll. For all his technological impact, though, he remained a down-home performer whose main goal, he often said, was to make people happy.
The Gibson company hired Mr. Paul to design a Les Paul model guitar in the early 1950s, and variations of the first 1952 model have sold steadily ever since, accounting at one point for half of the privately held company’s total sales. Built with Mr. Paul’s patented pickups, his design is prized for its clarity and sustained tone. It has been used by musicians like Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Slash of Guns N’ Roses. The Les Paul Standard version is unchanged since 1958, the company says. In the mid-1950s, Mr. Paul and Ms. Ford moved to a house in Mahwah, N.J., where Mr. Paul eventually installed both film and recording studios and amassed a collection of hundreds of guitars.
“Honestly, I never strove to be an Edison,” he said in a 1991 interview in The New York Times. “The only reason I invented these things was because I didn’t have them and neither did anyone else. I had no choice, really”.
The Gibson Les Paul has evolved through the years, and there have been various signature models and variations. Some of my favourite musicians wield a Gibson Les Paul – including Slash and Pete Townshend. Although the Fender Esquire is now regarded as the first solid-body guitar, I think that Les Paul’s 1941 design is one of the most important moments in music history. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. It is fascinating to read how Les Paul came across the idea for a solid-body electric guitar and how people reacted to it. It must have been quite startling and strange in 1941. With nothing like it on the market, it must have appeared quite unwieldy and impractical! Of course, there was refinement through the years…but one has to look to 1941 and a moment that would, eventually, change music. I shall leave things here. I have covered various pieces of hardware and software in this feature without touching on a particular instrument. I think we all take the electric guitar for granted and many do not consider it to be that much of a breakthrough. The fact that a musician and innovator suggested a solid-body electric guitar eighty years ago, to me, was a massive moment. Whether you consider Les Paul to be the creator of the first solid-body electric guitar or someone else, the design itself was an important concept. Now, guitar like the Gibson Les Paul is synonymous and played by musicians around the world. Few would have guessed in 1941 (or 1952 when the solid-body guitar became more of a commercial reality) that we would be talking so passionately about this invention after eight decades! Although many will pass it by, I think Les Paul’s 1941 solid-body electric guitar proposition is…
IN THIS PHOTO: Les Paul at Carnegie Hall in 2005.PHOTO CREDIT: Colin Archer/Associated Press
AN anniversary worth celebrating.