IGM Death

Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, former semi-guitar player
Re: A death
August 13, 2009

It is with profound sadness that I am announcing the death of the true father of Rock and Roll, and electric music in general. Earlier today, Les Paul died. Les invented the solid body electric guitar and in so doing changed everything. Not only did he invent it, he perfected it. I have played a few electric guitars, although I’ve never own one. Most of them are adequate. And despite my awe and appreciation for the two Fender icons; the Stratocaster and the Telecaster, the Les Paul Custom, by Gibson, was is and will always be, the best production electric guitar in the world. Just watch concert footage from the last fifty years and you’ll see what I mean. I sort of accidently got to see Led Zeppelin in concert in 1967 or 8, I think. Jimmy Page was playing a Les Paul. He used a violin bow a lot that night. And he was so loaded on heroine he could barely stand. But he made that guitar sing. It was incredible. A once in a lifetime thing. Maxine probably remembers.

Here is a story that is tangentially connected to this memo:
Once, many years ago, a young man and his wife, both sporting straight, long, blonde hair and prescription John Lennon glasses, were working in the food service industry in NYC, having run away together from the Dakotas. They were hippies, I guess . . . or close enough that it didn’t matter. Dan and Mary decided—who knows why or even how—to start a rock and roll band, despite neither of them knowing anything about music. They were living in poverty—a cold-water flat with little or no furniture—but they were young and in love and recently married . . . and truth be told not overly bright. They saved every dime they made except for rent and food and in two years took their loot to a pawn shop in Harlem, and bought everything anyone might need to start a genuine rock and roll band. Bass, guitars, trap set, PA with a mixer, microphones and stands, cables, amps—everything, picked up an old, beat up step-van, loaded it with their booty and headed west.

It is one of those mysteries of the universe how they ended up in Hobbs, New Mexico. I think they might have been heading for LA and ran out of gas. I met them when I came home from school one afternoon to find the van in our driveway and one of my roommates showing the hapless couple around.
(For a full account of this episode in my life, read Westbury: Chronicles of a Suburban Commune, by yours truly.) They were already moved in and the living room full of gear. For me, it was like ten Christmases all at once.

Obviously, one of the guitars was a 1956 Les Paul Custom with a gold-flake finish. Since I was the only person in the “House” (Which we referred to simply as Westbury—the name of the street) who knew anything about music, or guitars or amps or anything else, I got to play it at will for the better part of two years. It was an experience I will never forget. It was so easy to play all you had to do was look at it and it would make chords. It never went out of tune, and even back then (69-70), the electronics could make it sound like anything. That guitar doubled the quality of my playing just by being in my hands. I can’t explain it.

Even then I knew about Les Paul. He was a famous guitar player, producer, record exec. He played with everybody. Every electric guitar ever made traces its ancestry straight back to that first one Les made in his garage. Look what he started. Think of the legacy this man has. Think about all the (contemporary) music you’ve loved and listened to all these years and what it would sound like without those awesome guitar riffs and relentless rhythms, those screaming, crying, mischievous leads and breaks and effects. Les crossed all boundaries, infected all genre.

We will be hearing from the Rock greats for a few days, as their sound bites invade the story-hungry media, the internet, blogs, “entertainment shows”, etc. Clapton, Page, Satriani, Malmsteen, Vai, Chesney, Paisley, Stills, Young, Gill, Methany, Skaggs, Frey, Walsh, Wilson, Lee, Messina, Rhodes, Vanhalen, Robertson, Townsend, those guys from Dragonforce . . . . I could name pickers for pages. But none of them will feel a debt, or gratitude or loss any more than I do. John, you know what I mean.
Not many people get to say they changed the whole world. But Les Paul did.