Best Guitarists in The World

By: Rick Landers

In this Part II of our three-part interview with Rusty Paul, son of the legendary Les Paul, Rusty gives us a glimpse into Les Paul’s relationships with some of the most beloved guitarists and musicians in the music world, including Jeff Beck, Tommy Emmanuel, Slash and Steve Miller, among others. Let’s get right to it!

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Rick: Les, I’ll say, when he was in his prime, well he was probably in his prime until he died, but in the late ’40s, early ’50s, he was kind of like a rock star, wasn’t he? Even though rock hadn’t…

Rusty Paul: He was into everything and nothing in the world stopped him from…put it this way. People would ask him, “What kind of music do you like?” and he says, “I like any music that’s good.” He wouldn’t mind if it’s rock, country, flamenco, it wouldn’t matter what it is. If it was really good, it would really nail him. He’d say, “Boy, I like that.”

I turned him on one time, coming home from the Service, back in the ’70s, and I said to him, “Have you heard of such and such?” I told him about James Brown and a couple of others and he said, “No, I haven’t.” I says, “Let’s go get some of the albums,” and he said, “Let’s go.” So, we went out and we got about 10 albums of different people like James Brown, stuff like that, come back and started putting them on the turntable and listening to them, and he says, “Jesus. This is phenomenal.” There were things here that turned him on, rhythmically and kind of feel-wise that he necessarily might not have gone to if he hadn’t heard it. So, he would listen to the stuff and he would say, “Boy, you turned me on to some great stuff here. This is giving me some great ideas.”

But, this is where he was all the time. He always looked for new things that were happening. He admired Jimi Hendrix. He admired Jeff Beck. I was just with Jeff for three days, a PBS special. He was very close with Dad. I was in the bus with him talking and I said, “Could you do me a favor, Jeff, and just sign this picture of you and Dad.” He saw the picture. He just put his head in his lap and he says, “My God, this kills me because I admired this guy so much.”

Every time we would go see Jeff, he would play every single lick that Dad could think of and play. Jeff would play. And Jeff would go out on the stage, and when he plays his stuff out there, it would be totally different. When I saw Jeff on the Grammys and he did “How High the Moon”, and the other one, Imelda [May] and him together, I says, “You guys did the most fantastic Les Paul and Mary Ford that I’ve ever heard.”

There’ve been a lot of people who tried to do that music. He really had to sit down and he was somebody that idolized Dad to the nth. He would do it in his own way. He was considered probably one of the best guitar players out there, all around, not a jazz player, but just a good player. Jeff would come up on the stage with me when I got up at the Iridium, and he put his head on my shoulder and says, “Rusty, I don’t know if I can handle this.”

Rusty: He started crying on my shoulder. I says, “Jeff, you can handle this. If anybody can handle it, you can handle it.” He got up there, and after he got done doing the special there, he went over to the Wal-Mart over in Montclair and he played there and I saw him over in the truck, on the bus outside. So, towards the end of the show, like the last four songs, Imelda and Jeff came out on the stage and they said, “We’d like to dedicated these two songs to Rusty Paul, who’s Les Paul’s son in the audience, for his Dad.”

Check out GI’s interview with Jeff Beck.

Rick: Nice.

Rusty: They played “How High the Moon” and “Over the Rainbow” and they played it better than I’ve ever heard them play, even better than what they did at the Iridium for the PBS special.

Rick: I saw Jeff recently at Wolf Trap here in Virginia and he played both those songs and I was like, “Oh, man, ‘How High the Moon’.” I couldn’t believe he was playing it. It was great.

Rusty: This guy, without a doubt, nailed that whole show, and I told him, I says, “If you ever get this group messed up or get rid of what you’ve got, I’ll take you all over the world.” He looked up at me and laughed, he says, “I don’t plan to. I’m gonna hang out with this for awhile. I’ve got something special.” I said, “You better know it. You play better on ‘How High the Moon’ and ‘Over the Rainbow’ at the Wal-Mart than you did at the Iridium.” He says, “I know that. I know too. I felt it, heard it.” I said, “That was impeccable.”

He nailed that whole show. If nobody recorded that show, somebody made a big mistake because that was the best show. I said, “I’ve seen you play many, many shows and without a doubt that was the best show I’ve ever seen you do.”

Rick: That’s pretty incredible. He’s amazing. I’ve liked Jeff Beck since he was with The Yardbirds back in the ’60s.

Rusty: The guy is phenomenal. He’s got a head on his shoulders; that’s rare. And when he goes out and nails it, he nails it.

Rick: Oh, yeah. It’s just sweet. He hits those notes. And there’s some notes that he hit that I’ve never heard before.

Rusty: What’s that?

Rick: At Wolf Trap. Jeff Beck, he was hitting some notes and used some technique that I’d never seen before..

Rusty: He’s got control of that instrument, I’ll tell you. He’s without a doubt one of the finest guitar players. He’s like the rare bird like Al Di Meola. I’ll be with him shortly too. He just got back from Europe. We’re going out to dinner together. He’s another one. He’s probably the best technician of a guitar player in the world. I don’t think there’s anybody that can touch him. These are people that Dad had, like George Benson, Jeff Beck, Al Di Meola, people like that who have been very, very close to Dad. He admired so much Django Reinhardt, stuff like that. These are very special, special people.

Read our interview with George Benson.

Rick: Yeah. What do you think of Tommy Emmanuel?

Rusty: Phenomenal. I mean, the guy is absolutely…he is such a wonderful guy. I don’t know how the world can just kind of pass him up as just being somebody that’s a good entertainer, because he’s got everything rolled in one.

Rick: Yeah, he’s phenomenal.

Rusty: He plays good; he sings good. He’s a very good guitar player, very theatrical guy; very talented.

Rick: And he’s a nice guy, you know?

Rusty: And a hell of a nice guy besides. He hit it off with Dad, and Dad just like flipped out with him. [Rick laughing]

Check out GI’s interview with Tommy Emmanuel.

Rick: I could see those two. I know your dad had a little bit of a ribald sense of humor.

Rusty: Oh yeah. He’s got that too, but he used to love to sneak over after he got done at the Blue Note and sit in and play a couple of songs. Yep. He is a wonderful guy and he had a lot of respect for Dad. Dad had a lot of respect for him.

Rick: Hey, when I was at the Iridium, I noticed that during the sound check, as good natured as your dad was, I got the impression that he took no prisoners when it came to getting the sound right. He wasn’t settling for anything less than what his ear considered to be spot on.

Rusty: You’ve got that right. We spent every week coming in. During the week, Dad and I would spend time with a guitar to get it where he wanted it. Then every Monday night before we’d come in and do the show, we’d get up on that stage while everybody was setting up. Tommy, myself and Dad would go after the guitar and we’d get that guitar where he…Dad would get up on there while we were setting up the stuff on the console for recording it and he would get the sound to where he thought it was close to being a real good sound. Then Tommy and I and Dad would get together and get the house up. When the house came up, then we started going after that guitar again and we’d just tweak it, tweak it, tweak it.

Read GI’s interview with the legend himself, Les Paul.

Rick: Are you talking Tommy Emmanuel or who?

Rusty: Tommy Doyle. He was our engineer. I would be working with him and Chris Lentz on the camera and everything else. He’d get the lights all ready before and all that. And then we’d work, Dad and I and Tommy would be working on getting that guitar to sound right. We would just mother that thing down to where we thought that was the best we were gonna get out of it that night.

Rick: Yeah, because you did it specifically for that night because humidity changes and everything else, right?

Rusty: Oh, yeah. Everything changes. It all depends on the mood you’re in, what kind of feeling you got that night when you’re playing, or what you’re hearing.

Rick: You find that yourself when you’re playing bass?

Rusty: I do that too, once in a while. I’ll find out where I start playing that, depending on the room or something like that, where I would want a little more highs, a little less bass, a little more mids. It has a lot to do with what you feel that day. You’re one way one day, and the next day you’ll say, “Gee, it was the same settings, but it doesn’t sound exactly right.” So, you tweak it a little bit. But it’s hard.

I have the bass he designed, there’s a prototype. I have one of the prototypes for it. Everywhere we play at, people come up to me and say, “How in the world are you getting that big sound out of that electric bass?”

I had a friend of mine who had a couple of five-string basses who plays around professionally, real good bass player, and he played my bass at the tribute to Dad last Thursday. He came out and I said, “Do you want to use my bass?” “Sure, I’d love to try it.” And he played it and says, “Holy smoke! I love this! It’s a great sound. How do you get it? Where can I get one? I want to buy one right now!” But, I said, “You can’t get ‘em. The closest thing you could get to it would be the Recording bass and it’s hard to find those.” People come all the time, they say, “That’s the fattest, biggest sounding bass I’ve ever heard.”

Rick: What kind of amp are you running it out of?

Rusty: Right now I’ve got an Eminence 15 and the bottom cabinet I’m running a Gallien Krueger 700 RB on the top.

Rick: I noticed that your dad used a Trademark 60 when he was playing the Iridium.

Rusty: Well, he was using a Fender Twin Reverb for a long time.

Rick: I don’t know where he got that, but I might have pictures of it.

Rusty: I don’t remember a Trademark amp. I remember a Fender Twin Reverb. He had a Century 21 amp for awhile, but the one he liked best probably out of all of them was that Fender Twin Reverb, because we modified that one. I put two Electro-Voice 300 watt speakers in those things. You couldn’t lift that son of a bitch without a crane. I had wheels on it because you couldn’t lift it. It was so damn heavy; the magnets were so heavy.

Rick: Yeah, they’re heavy enough as it is, just stock.

Rusty: Now the new ones that are out, they have new magnets in them, the Rare Earth. The weight has dropped in half so you almost have nothing in there now. The bottom cabinet, you could lift up with two fingers.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve got an old ’69 Twin and it weighs a ton.

Rusty: Yeah, it’s amazing. Between that and the transformers for the tubes, it’s just a monstrous weight. That’s what I’m getting ready to do now with Epiphone. I’m getting ready to do three amplifiers. A bass amp I’m gonna build and two guitar amps. That’s gonna be my next project and I’m doing two basses also. Lightweight basses, three-quarter neck.

Rick: Are you gonna design them then, the whole thing?

Rusty: Yeah.

Rick: That’s a big project.

Rusty: I’m getting two of them made now for show purposes; they’re gonna light up and the whole thing.

Rick: Oh really? That’ll be cool.

Rusty: I’m gonna be putting them out eventually. They’re gonna be coming out on the market also.

Rick: And those are by Gibson?

Rusty: Yeah. I’m working closely with Epiphone and Gibson. And I’m working with the Les Paul Foundation, and everything else. We’re trying to get his legacy and keep it going forever.

Rick: When those come out, let’s talk again and we’ll cover how you pulled that all together. Is that okay?

Rusty: Sure.

Rick: Now you’re playing Monday nights at the Iridium with your own band, the Rusty Paul group?

Rusty: I don’t play with my band at the Iridium. That’s still a trio. That’s John Colianni [piano], Nicki Parrott [bass] and Lou Pallo [guitar]. They’re staying there and playing every Monday night and we’re bringing in different artists to play there every Monday night, like Steve Miller and all the guys like that.

Rick: You’ve known Steve for a long time, right?

Rusty: Steve is a great guy and we’ve known him for many moons. He’s really close and when Dad passed away, I had three guys that were very close to me that came in right away. I called up Al Di Meola. He was in Budapest, and he canceled his tour and flew back in the next day to be with me. Richie Sambora, he was in Hawaii and flew back right away and got with me.

Rick: That’s touching.

Rusty: Steve Miller came in and was with me. At the funeral, Tony Bennett was there. Slash was there. Slash came up to me and says, “Do me a favor. Don’t mention your dad’s name.” I said, “Why?” He says, “Because I lost a good friend, a buddy, a pal and it just hurts so much.”

This is the part that I’m taking and going with,is to go on the road and all the guys are gonna jump in and sit in with me, like Neal Schon, Billy Gibbons, all the guys. And I want to ask them before they get off the stage what Les meant to them, what my dad meant to them. I’m gonna have three hi-def cameras running, and I’ve got Dave Hewitt that’s going on a record truck with me. I’ve got everything lined up where I have Eddie Kramer, Al Schmidt. They all say, “If you need me for anything, you call. We’ll be there.”

Rick: Oh, that’s incredible.

Rusty: We’ve got a chance to make a whole tour that’s nothing but a lot of love, happiness and let people know how close he was with the individual artists, Willie Nelson, whoever it would be. Let them know how close they were to these people. Because most of them, all they know him for is going to work at the Iridium and that he made the electric guitar, the Gibson. Besides that, how close was he with all these artists? Well, they’re gonna know now because I’m gonna have them on tape and I’m gonna have it where people are gonna know.

I know most of them personally, the stories, but the public doesn’t know. So now the audience is gonna get educated like they never knew how close he was with all these people. All these rock stars and everything that are out there, and they figure he doesn’t know them. This is another part of his life that the public didn’t know.

Rick: Yeah, the last time I talked to him, I think he was just pulling the record together with Jeff Beck on it and a bunch of other guitarists.

Rusty: The rock album?

Rick: Yeah, superb album, just a great piece of work.

Rusty: He always liked to experiment with stuff. I don’t care what it is or what kind of music it is as long as it sounded good. He enjoyed it. He enjoyed playing with Chet [Atkins] on Guitar Monsters. It was phenomenal. The public doesn’t have any idea, except when it comes out and they love it. I would like to get BMG to release that again, especially release Chester and Lester and Guitar Monsters. That was a hell of an album. It was so simple. They did it all in one day.

Rick: Did they? Wow.

Rusty: It was simple. They put a couple of mics up, and Chet says, “What are you putting these mics up for?” He says, “I want to catch your action with guys in the band and everything else. He says, “Why do you want that?” and the thing turned out to be a big success. Everybody had a wonderful time with it.

Rick: That’s great.

Rusty: It’s something that the public doesn’t have any idea. He asked George Benson one time “How are you doing?” He says, “I’m doing fine.” He says, “What are you doing?” He says, “I’m making an album.” “How long have you been working on it?” [Benson] says, “A year.” “Holy Christ!” [Rick laughing]

He says, “George, I used to make an album in three days and it would be in the mail. Off to Capitol to get pressed.” These guys work on albums for a year, two years, three years. It’s crazy. I don’t know how the hell they do it. It gets so mechanical after you get done that the spontaneous reaction and the real nice feeling is all gone because it’s all manufactured.

Rick: Yeah, it’s all sort of cut-and-pasted together.

Rusty: This is the thing Dad wanted, the instant response and wanted that first take feel, the newness of it. That meant more to him than being manufactured and played fifty times and to be so perfect that there were no mistakes. I’ll never forget the story that Dad told me about Bing. He’s in the studio and Bing makes him stay. The producer comes over to Les, “Can you get Bing to do one more take of this song because he made a mistake there and we’d like to correct it.” So, Dad starts out to Bing and says, “They’re a little concerned in there. You made a little flub there. They’d like to do another take.” Bing thought about it a second and he says, “No. Leave it the way it is,” and Les says, “Well, why?” He says, “I want to let everybody know I’m human.”

Rick: Good for him.

Rusty: He wanted to let everybody know “I’m human too. I make mistakes. It’s not a big problem. It’s not gonna make or break the album with this song anyhow, so leave it alone.” So Bing walked out and went to the golf course. And so that’s it. That’s the way they went out and they had lunch. These are things that the public doesn’t have any idea of what is going on in the studio. I was an audio engineer for 30 or 35 years in New York.

I got my fingers in that, so it’s nice to be rounded. You get a little bit of everything. But, I saw things happen in the studio that sometimes were like magic. You’d get a song and they’d go in and hit it. They would do it in one take, and that song had so much feeling in that one take. The more you did it, the more it got to be a manufactured and the less feeling it had. And it sounded better, but it didn’t have the feeling.

Rick: Do you have any songs in mind that come to mind?

Rusty: No, there were so many of them. It’s very, very hard. The more you do it, the more manufactured it gets. It’s better; your playing, but the feeling is not there. You may do one song and play it and the first take had so much feeling and it may not be absolutely perfect, but the feeling there is so strong that the more you did it, you would ruin it. You wouldn’t make it better.

Rick: And actually look back at that type of thing years ago, later, you look back at the experience of enjoying making that song rather than patching it together, having some engineer patch it together for you later.

Rusty: Oh, yeah. And I’ve done plenty of that. I’ve cut-and-paste, cut-and-paste all the time. It’s interesting. Another thing, too, is being used to doing cutting tape and doing it that way against doing it digital or cutting something up and making something work instead of playing the whole song. There’s a lot of that that was done in the old days. It’s something that you have to be there and see it to realize what it is. The public doesn’t have any idea except what you give them when you give them a disc or you give them a CD. That’s the only thing they know, or what they hear on the radio.

Rick: Sure, the end product.

Rusty: The end product. But, they have no idea what it went through to get that end product. What it went through to be in the studio and hear that from the beginning, from the infancy of being put together and what the finished product is and what you have to do. There’s a lot of stuff that’s done. They have no idea how that got there.

Check out Part III, the final part of our interview with Rusty Paul.