Les Paul

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

There’s millions and millions of people who think Les Paul is a guitar!

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

I gave up the guitar in 1965. Didn’t want to see a guitar. I’d go out and get drunk. When I came out of the heart surgery, the doc said, “Promise me you’ll work hard.” I said, “I thought working hard is what got me here.” He said, “No, working is what will keep you alive.”

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can’t go there. So I’m back to Count Basie lifting his hand. And I find you can stop that show with one note just like you can with a hundred.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

I just remember always trying to emulate Dinah Washington, hanging out in my bedroom closet.

You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man and its ON!

One of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

To imitate someone is to insult them.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It’s not that I don’t want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.

I wanna hear myself everywhere

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

People who are meant to be drawn to your music will find you.

What I look for in concert is a connection with the audience.

Something just grabs you about a song.