The Wizard Of Waukesha
While in New York City last March I fulfilled a long-held ambition by going to see Les Paul at the Iridium club on Broadway. Arthritis now encumbers the fretting fingers of his left hand, but just to clap eyes on the guitar virtuoso dubbed "the Wizard Of Waukesha" was a thrill. "Seventy-one and still playing!" Les quipped of his rhythm guitarist Lou Pallo, the gag being that Les--93 on June 9--has over 20 years on Lou. Rock lore finds romance in the "live fast, die young" aesthetic, but Les Paul's career proves that you can achieve lots in a lifetime if you don't burn out too fast.
Without two of the man born Lester William Polsfuss's inventions--multi-track recording and the Gibson Les Paul guitar he co-designed--much of rock's canon would sound very different. And as slow, steady Les continues to clock up the miles, it seems increasingly ironic that some of the best-known devotees of the guitar that bears his name (Free's Paul Kossoff; Def Leppard's Steve Clark) abused themselves to an early grave. "I hope I die before I get old," sang the Who, but without the venerable Les--also the inventor of echo effects--"My Generation" wouldn't have reverberated quite so magically.
Les might never have been strung out on heroin, or holed up at the Chateau Marmont binging on cocaine, but his far from ordinary life has seen him dice with death. In 1941 he was almost electrocuted during a jam session in his Queens basement, and in 1948 he almost lost an arm in a car crash on Route 66 near Chandler, Oklahoma. Messy 1964 divorce from chanteuse, second wife and co-hitmaker Mary Ford notwithstanding, it was pretty much plain sailing after that until he went in for quintuple heart bypass surgery in 1980--but that was almost 30 years ago.
Musically it's been a blast, too. Les was performing semi-pro by the age of 13 and cut his first records for the Montgomery Ward label in 1936. In 1945, he and buddy Bing Crosby scored a US Number 1 with "It's Been A Long, Long Time," but his magical, joie de vivre-crammed 1950 hit "Nola"--featuring multi-tracked guitars recorded at half-speed, then played back at normal speed to create mellifluous, bird song-like motifs--is more representative of his instrumental prowess.
Meanwhile, he played for Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower and won two Grammys at the age of 90 for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played, but as he recalled at the Iridium, nothing quite compared to meeting gypsy jazz legend Django Reinhardt when he visited Les in his Paramount Theatre dressing room prior to a show in 1946: "I said, ‘Find Jesus Christ and a crate of beer and send them up, too--it's Django!"
As Les's 93rd birthday draws near, let's engage with that spirit and raise a glass to nonagenarian axe-wielding. Waukesha, Wisconsin has announced plans for a permanent exhibit honouring their most famous son, and The Les Paul Experience is scheduled to open there in 2010. Les would be 95 by then--let's hope he makes it along.
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