Last week, Les Paul, the man who launched a million guitar players passed away.
I am not a Les Paul user. I prefer the Taylor T5 myself. But whether you use a Les Paul or not, every guitar player and every guitar company owes a debt to Les Paul for his technical innovations. None of us would be where we are without him.
This got me thinking back to my days as a young lad and a novice guitarist.
When we are young we sometimes do stupid things. It's one of the sins of youth. Some of those things we look back on and laugh, and say "Oh well, I was young".
But some things, we look back on in shame. We try to push them back into the recess of our memory because it is to hard to reconcile for what we have done.
But the shame and guilt has built up for too long and I HAVE to come clean. You see when I was a young guitarist just starting out, I once very briefly, owned a Les Paul Gold top Guitar. And very tragicly (not to mention stupidly) I destroyed it.
One of my first electric guitars was made for me by little known (and now defunct) guitar shop located off of Arrow Hwy (now Route 66) in Azusa California. it was hardly a custom shop. It was run by a former employee of Charvel Guitars and he simply bought pre made parts (from another company named Might Might) and slapped them together. His specialty was laying down the paint job and finish which he did well. for around $300.00 he made me an electric guitar with a Gibson Explorer style body and a Fender Style neck. I no longer have this guitar (you will find out why very soon) and I don't have any pictures of it. It had a floating tremolo bar (A kind of guitar gear shifter that creates weird note bends) in case you are unfamiliar with guitar terminology) and a black sunburst finish. I thought it was very cool looking, and I would soon find out that I was not the only one.
You see, not long after I got it, I went out with some other novice musician friends of mine to go jam with some of their friends. We where all just High School kids at this point. Just barely getting started. For some of us being a musician would be a life long calling. For some of us it would be something that we used to do when we where younger.
One of these young musicians that I would meet that day fell in love with my new Explorer style guitar. So in love with it, that he wanted to trade his guitar for it. His guitar was a Gibson Les Paul Gold Top Guitar! It was in excellent condition and came with the original Gibson case.
Now if you are reading this, and don't know anything about guitars, let me make this comparison to help you better understand. Let's say you are driving an economy car by any well known auto manufacturer and someone offers to trade their Mercedes (in excellent condition) straight over for it.
At this age I didn't understand the value of what was being offered to me, because I was actually hesitant before accepting. I of course now understand that I was offered the deal of a lifetime and when I left with the friends who had taken me to this kids house they all regarded me as if I had won the Vegas jackpot.
I never did see the kid who traded guitars with me again. I didn't think much about it back then. But as an adult, I have often wondered what happened when his parents got home and found out about the trade he made.
So there I was, still in High School, and the owner of a top of the line Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar......And what did I do? Well, basically I destroyed it.
Once again I was young and stupid about what I had. I was into heavy metal at the time and locking tremolo bars where all the rage. So I went into a local guitar shop to find out about having it modified for a locking tremolo bar. Now the Gibson Les Paul guitar never comes with a tremolo bar for one simple reason. It isn't designed for it. To modify it for something it isn't designed for is to devalue it, and to essentially ruin it.
Needless to say I look back on this with a great deal regret and never fail to get angry at myself for being stupid enough to do this.
But I get even more angry at the guitar technician, who was an adult, and educated about guitars, and never bothered to pull me aside to say to me; "Son, Do you really want to do this?....because you will be ruining and devaluing this beautiful musical instrument".
He just took my request like I was ordering a cheeseburger with onions and installed a locking tremolo bar onto the guitar without ever saying a word.
The guitar never worked properly after that. The damn locking tremolo was horribly frustrating to work with, and it never stayed in tune. I ended up selling the guitar to get something else (I didn't get much for it)....I don't even remember what I replaced it with.
I certainly couldn't afford to buy a Les Paul new or used on my own. For years I went through various guitars trying to figure out what was right for me. These days I am very satisfied with the Taylor T5 guitar and I feel blessed that I have a good relationship with the company. but I will never forget my first and only Les Paul. I will never let myself forget the lesson that you don't modify something to be something that it's makers never designed it to be. I will always remember to warn those who are younger and less experienced when I see them about to make the same mistake. But most of all I live knowing that somewhere that guitar is out there. perhaps one of these days I will see it again (it won't be hard to spot) and if I do I will look down in shame and say...."I'm sorry".
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