Last month, the world lost one of the greatest guitar innovators of all time. I am referring to Les Paul who died on 13 August 2009. This is my tribute to the great man.

We all rave on about who has been the most influential guitarist of all time. We throw names around like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and even Robert Johnson but we forget about Les Paul.

Most people know and relate Les Paul to his solid body guitar development. It was the development of such guitars that has given rock music its direction and sound ever since. But Les Paul even did much more than this.

Born Lester William Polsfuss, June 9, 1915 just near Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the USA (that’s where the TV show Happy Days was set) of German immigrant parents. It was only later that he took the stage name of Les Paul.

Like many kids, Paul began playing harmonica at the age of eight and took up the guitar when he was older. In his early teens, he invented a neck worn harmonica holder so he could play his harp and guitar at the same time. This device is still manufactured today using his basic design.

It was when Les Paul moved to Chicago in 1934 that his music career really took off. He jammed with, played with and backed such artists as Django Reinhardt, Jim Atkins (Chet’s big brother), Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Nat King Cole and the list goes on.

In 1945, Les Paul met Mary Ford with whom he formed a band and later married. The couple had many hits of their own.

At the height of his playing career, in late 1948, Paul broke his right arm and elbow in a near fatal car wreck. The doctors could not rebuild his elbow and told him that his arm would remain in whatever position they set it in. This wasn’t a difficult choice for Paul who chose to have his arm set at just over 90 degrees so he could still play his axe. It took him almost two years to fully recover.

During his early playing career Paul was never happy with the unwanted feedback and lack of sustain on his acoustic electric guitar. This led Paul in 1940 to build his own guitar nicknamed ‘The Log” which was just a piece of 4×4 hardwood with a bridge, guitar neck and pickup attached.

Paul’s “The Log” was one of the first solid body electric guitars ever built, however, Gibson showed no interest in the guitar. It was not until Fender and Rickenbacker started producing solid body guitars that Gibson joined the party, and in 1952 built the first Gibson Les Paul Standard, a gold top guitar based on Les Paul’s design. Speaking of vintage guitars, can you imagine how much one of those babies would be worth today?

In 1948 Les Paul started experimenting with multi-track recording. He originally used acetate disks, which is a type of grammar phone disc that you could record directly on to.

Not long after Ampex released the first reel to reel tape machine, Paul began using this for his recordings by simply placing a second playback head before the record/play head in the machine. That way he could record while listening to his previous recording. Through, his experimentation with the reel to reel tape machine he developed tape echo which was used widely right up until we entered the digital world. I can remember using those tape echo machines years ago. They were great and you could get a delay that lasted a week if you wanted.

Amazingly, Les Paul did not receive many awards throughout his career, although in 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So here is to Les Paul, guitarist, inventor, genius.

And just to re-cap on his amazing musical inventions - Les Paul was responsible for:

• The harp holder.

• The first solid body guitar.

• The design of Gibson solid body guitars.

• Multi-track recording.

• Multi-track tape recording.

• Tape echo.

This legend will be missed by every guitarist out there.

-Axel

What happened to our rock stars? Do we actually have them anymore? Or are we surviving on those who still remain from days gone by?

In my day we only had one kind of music, rock ‘n roll. We didn’t have this techno pill popping crowd, dancing around like headless chickens and drinking copious amounts of bottled water paying homage to djs that just don’t cut it as stars. Our heroes were true rock stars who performed outrageous acts on and off the stage.

It seems like the real rock star is a character from yesteryear and the only ones we have left are all in their sixties; guys like Keith Richards (who still practices stage diving, albeit out of palm trees), Ronnie Woods, Steven Tyler (still too drunk not to fall off stage), the prince of darkness himself, Ozzie Ozbourne, who, as the story goes bit the head off a live bat during a gig and Alice Cooper, who used to cut his own head off during his show.

And then there are the true legend rockers like Keith Moon from The Who, who drove his Rolls Royce into his next door neighbor’s swimming pool just to annoy him. Moon was also renowned for his practical jokes whilst on the road; apart from trashing every hotel room he ever stayed in, it was reported once that he broke into Pete Townsend’s suite and glued all his furniture to the ceiling.

And speaking of trashing hotel rooms no article on rock legends would be complete without a mention of Joe Walsh who was addicted to (among other things) throwing TV sets out of high rise hotel room windows. Yes Joe trashed many hotel rooms and even wrote about it in his song “Life’s Been Good.” ‘… stay at hotels tear out the walls, I’ve got accountants to pay for it all….’

The stories continue about guys like Jim Morrison from the Doors who was prone to disappearing just before a gig only to be found a few days later drunk, at a local brothel; the band having appeared on stage without him. And the amazing guitarist Roy Buchanan who would wander off just minutes before curtain call and be found later chatting to locals in the street. One time old Roy got himself into a fight and ended up in jail; the gig was canceled.

And I am sure you are aware of the incredible on stage showmanship of Jimi Hendrix but you may not know some of the things he got up to offstage, apart from the endless amount of drug taking and womanizing. Hendrix would often, for some unknown reason, hock his guitar just before a gig. This was not a trivial problem with an easy solution like grabbing another guitar from somewhere else as Hendrix was left handed and his guitar had to be set up just right. Fender wasn’t big on left handed guitars in the sixties. So his manager, Chas Chandler, would firstly have to locate Hendrix, retrieve the pawn ticket from him and then go and buy the guitar back so they could do the gig.

There are so many great stories that have almost become urban legends, even myths about our rock stars from the sixties and seventies. These days all we hear about is whose been arrested for solicitation, drink driving and drug offenses. The stories have lost their edge, the current breed of stars have lost the flair for creating the legendary headlines of old that will remain part of rock history forever.

-Axel

Ok, well apparently the techo guys at Axebay got some negative feedback about my ten worst guitarists list (some people just can’t take a joke, hey) so I decided to write something more serious about guitarists. I know you know in my own mind I am a legend and the greatest guitarist who ever was, just a bit unlucky that’s all. But there have been some that have gone before me that have been just as good and dare I say it, maybe even better than me. I want to discuss two of these guitarists now.

Over the years Stevie Ray Vaughan copped a lot of criticism for sounding similar to Jimi Hendrix which in turn led to an untold number of comparisons between the two. Just who was the best of the two and why? Let’s first take a look to see why they were compared.

Both Jimi and Stevie played blues rock both used Fender Strats through Marshall amps. They had a similar guitar sound and obviously Stevie was heavily influenced by Jimi. They both wore flamboyant costumes. They both died at an early age. They were both addicts at one time or another during their short lives, with Stevie more prone to alcohol abuse. But that’s where the similarities end.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was technically masterful. He was hugely influential in restoring the popularity of blues rock in the late 70s and throughout the 80s when everyone was disco dancing to KC and the Sunshine band. Stevie played fast and clean. He would use heavy distortion and tremolo from time to time but his magic came from his fingers. When he covered “Little Wing”, he played with such precision; you can tell right away that it’s not Jimi Hendrix. When Stevie performed at the MTV Unplugged, he electrified the audience by playing his hit song, “Pride and Joy” on an acoustic guitar and showed viewers just what he was capable of with a guitar.

Hendrix on the other hand was an innovator. He was influenced by blues guitarists like, Robert Johnson but what he did with this blues music was to turn it into something much more. He has influenced generations of bands and guitarists. Technically speaking, he was rough and choppy but he more than made up for that with his revolutionary stage presence and the incredible sounds he produced that most people have never heard of at the time. Jimi played from the gut; I mean he was all feel, nothing else. The fact that his songs have been covered by Stevie Ray Vaughan makes it easy to clearly hear the difference between the two guitarists.

There’s no doubt that Jimi Hendrix is one of the most influential guitarists of all time. He may not have been as technically good as Stevie was, but Hendrix defied the music genre and produced songs that people to this day will try to cover. When Hendrix was on stage, he played as if he was making love to his guitar and often did. Some of his best performances would climax when he would simulate sex with his guitar and amp (I really feel for the poor stage roadie, cleaning up the mess afterwards). Stage presence and performance was something that Stevie Ray Vaughan could never duplicate or even imitate.

This comparison between Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix may be subjective but we can all agree that Jimi is one of the most influential guitarists of all time and Stevie was technically the better player. However, without Jimi Hendrix there would be no Stevie Ray Vaughan.

-Axel