RIP Les Paul

I grew up listening to Les Paul, and of course to Chet Atkins as well.

I know "nil nisi bonum" but I just have an idea I feel a need to express and I thought, why not put it here?

There are lots of contrarian views expressed on this board all the time.

The briefest way I can put it is that Les Paul (and Chet) transformed guitar playing in a way that resembles the way Robert P*rker transformed wine buying/drinking/making.

It wasn't all good. Of course he was brilliant but a lot of his music sounded like Martian machines. And Paul and Atkins set a standard of "spoofulation" that sent everybody off to high tech land.

As a sometime guitarist (like everyone else) I just think that there was a malign side to his contributions.

On the other hand I will confess that I'm sorry I never got to take my son to hear him play. For years and years and years, you could go see/hear him play on any given Monday night.

I apologize in advance for this, but I am just curious if any of you guys agree with me.

If you don't then I'm wearing my asbestos shorts.

BTW I also grew up listening to Andres Segovia. Ah.
 
Frank, what aspects of Paul's music and playing do you think had the bad effects? Virtuostic playing? Emphasis on electronics? Multitracking and studio manipulations? I'm not sure Paul's musical style had a lasting influence on guitar players. I think Paul's influence was biggest in his technical innovations: the solid-body electric and showing the way on multitrack recording and overdubbing. A lot of the excesses in "high tech land" were pioneered by others using Paul's innovations in ways he hadn't thought of.
 
Frank,
I also grew up listening to Segovia, and even got to hear him once. Les Paul was a major spoofulator, I'd agree (I have a friend who made a Les Paul parody tape once), and I never heard him live. But I thought Segovia's old student Chet Atkins was in a different class--could you elaborate a bit, maybe post a spoofed youtube cut?
 
I'll admit this whole proposition is pretty shaky.

It's hard for me to imagine life without Jimi Hendrix, and it's hard for me to imagine Jimi Hendrix without Les Paul.

At any rate -- I think Chet Atkins extended the mechanical side of guitar music to a somewhat unhealthy extent. He had an "electric bass man" -- the bass as "drum machine" and there was a kind of robotic side to his music that seems to have had more of an effect on country music than on rock. I never knew that Atkins had studied with Segovia, that fact impresses me... But Atkins and Paul both produced records which literally could not be played live. You can't play multiple tracks by yourself, live, and you certainly can't shift gears into double speed the way Les Paul did with his tape recorder...
 
Not playable live...well, I'd sure be sad to not have, say, "Ten Years Gone" (not Les, but someone who idolized him). Not to mention an awful lot of other studio creations. I think they're different art forms, and "spoof" doesn't really enter into it.
 
originally posted by Thor:
Not playable live...well, I'd sure be sad to not have, say, "Ten Years Gone" (not Les, but someone who idolized him). Not to mention an awful lot of other studio creations. I think they're different art forms, and "spoof" doesn't really enter into it.
Click to expand...

what he said...."les" not even go there...

when i read that les paul idolized django, all of a sudden all those high speed licks made sense. my feeling overall is that les couldn't come close to what django was doing (and in some ways perhaps missed the point of what django was doing). les a virtuoso? hmmm. django was a virtuoso. les's playing was pretty derivative. not bad...in an al dimeola-for-my-parent's generation kind of way.

as for the topic of spoofy guitar work, (and i'm not sure this fits the definition of "spoof" but i'll toss it out) there are shades in between, of course, but to me, there is "technique used to impress" and "technique used to express". les was more the former type, i think. the latter is kind of a mystical point where the listener is first captivated by the expression...then (if necessary, and usually, later) wowed by the skill.

having said all that, i think some of les and mary ford's swing stuff can be fun to listen to...and i remember enjoying some cuts off the "lester and chester - guitar monster" album...lazy river, etc. ( limehouse blues doesn't even come close to the original, however).

lp's contributions were mostly as Steve says...less so his guitar work. thank him for the "log", endless sustain (and the rockers who came to use the gibson) and that's quite enough of a gift to the world (and i like a little reverb myself too.)
 
My first electric guitar was an orange-sunburst copy of a Les Paul Standard. Though later in life I developed a certain favoritism toward vintage Telecasters, that first guitar was key. No debate here about Les Paul's greatness in terms of exploring new possibilities for the instrument.
 
OK, as I was thinking about all this, a scene from a movie went through my head and I am having trouble placing it. And the Googling seems to be too difficult.

Old Woody Allen movie (Manhattan, Annie Hall, something else?). There is this guy at a party boring everyone by going on at length about what a terrible organist Dr. Albert Schweitzer is...

What's the movie? I seem to be remembering it as black and white FWIW. Not that that's reliable.
 
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