Editors' Blogs

I was saddened to learn of the passing of Les Paul at age 94 from complications due to pneumonia. Most people know him as the creator of the guitar that bears his name, one of the first commercially successful electric guitars. Readers of our magazine may also know him as the inventor of several of the recording technology concepts we take for granted today, like multitrack tape recording, tape echo, and synchronized playback monitoring. I knew him as a sharp, opinionated, very funny guy, who wasn't afraid to say what he thought and often got people thinking hard about what they took for granted. By way of a farewell to this bright-eyed old genius, here are some quotes from interviews and guest editorials he did for us in years past:

“When Mary [Ford] and I worked together, Mary just sat there and I just sat there and the console right in front of us and we never had to take a step. One of the most difficult things I ever had to do was to get Mary to go on the other side of that glass. She liked it when she could curl up on a davenport and do her thing on a couch, rather than going into another room and having glass between us...it’s much better for everybody if you don’t have to.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the way I record with my stuff, I don’t punch in and punch out and go through all that garbage. I sit down, play from the beginning, finish at the end, and it’s done. The guys today, many of them are in a different world. Today’s if there’s an empty track, it bothers them. They’ve got to fill it up. Well, I learned a long time ago, don’t let the machine run you, you run the machine.”

“If I was a technician working for a major company, I’d be frightened because I’d know that what I was working on this year was going to the junk yard. The next step is already here—the equipment even has punch-out holes. What are those things for? They’re for next year’s model....I find that if I go back to some of the old equipment, it is equal or superior to much of the new gear. People often just walk by a good thing with their eyes closed. All things do not phase out, dry up, and go away.”

“I would assume that shortly, and this is wishful thinking, but maybe they’ll get their act together and...come up with something better than tape to record on...We shouldn’t have had tape to begin with. We shouldn’t have been gouging out records, either. The first lecture I gave at the Audio Engineering Society, I said, ‘With all those bald heads I’m looking at out there, you’d think that you guys would get your act together and stop plowing into a disk, to gouge a record out like a farmer with an ox. It’s stupid to have a needle tracking in that machine. You haven’t come any farther than what Edison handed you, and it just doesn’t make sense. Tape is no better. Tape scraping over those heads and all those problems that you have with tape, tape is stupid, it’s wrong. It’s the best thing that we have today, but why don’t we get to the new world, and that is to go to light.’  That’s on a tape from around 1950 to the AES. I’d like to get a copy of that lecture, because I wasn’t scolding anybody, I was just saying, like a prophet, that tomorrow that’s where we should be going.”

I'd like to close with my favorite of the few personal reminiscences I have of Les. It was at an AES show in New York some years ago, at a party being hosted at a recording studio in a high-rise somewhere in Manhattan. As is typical of studio parties surrounding trade shows, this one was what they used to call in the Regency era a "sad crush"; people were everywhere, and there wasn't room to sit down or turn around without bumping into someone. I made the mistake of trying to get down the stairs to another floor of the studio, and found myself stuck in the stairwell among a slowly-shuffling mass of humanity, half moving up the stairs, half moving down, beautiful young people balancing drinks and plates of sushi and cell phones, oblivious to me and the elderly gentleman waiting patiently on the stair beside me for a chance to get to a place to sit down.

Les was in his late 80s at the time and a bit frail; as usual, his son was by his side watching out for him, but because of the way they'd entered the stairwell, he was above his dad on the steps and couldn't help him if he fell. Not that he could have fallen very far, pressed in among so many bodies. As we slowly made our way downstairs, I smiled at Les in commiseration, and he gave me that trademark grin with a sparkle in his eye and quietly said, "Cover me, kid... I'm slidin' down the bannister."

Happy travels, Les.