Les Paul Quotes

• A guitar is something you can hold and love and it's never going to bug you. But here's the secret about the guitar - it's defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

  Les Paul

  Guitar, Secret, Littles

  70 Copy quote

• Every setback might be the very thing that makes you carry on and fight all the harder and become much better.

  Les Paul

  Inspirational, Moving On, Success

  "The Man Before The Guitar: Remembering Les Paul At 100". "All Things Considered" with Joel Rose, kvcrnews.org. June 9, 2015.

  75 Copy quote

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

  Les Paul

  Guitar, Too Much, Picks

  34 Copy quote

• To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any.

  Les Paul

  Inspirational, Individual Differences, Being Different

  FaceBook post by Les Paul from Nov 30, 2015

  41 Copy quote

• You can't go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

  Les Paul

  Ears, Stores, Rhythm

  FaceBook post by Les Paul from Jun 22, 2015

  56 Copy quote

• .. the guitar is just a wonderful instrument. It's everything: a bartender, a psychiatrist, a housewife. It's everything, but it's elusive

  Les Paul

  Music, Guitar, Wonderful

  40 Copy quote

• This guitar is such a pal. It's a psychiatrist. It's a doggone bartender. It's a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I've got a problem, I'll go pick my guitar up and play. It's the greatest pal in the whole world.

  Les Paul

  Music, Guitar, Play

  29 Copy quote

• I don't know of a guitar player that has only one guitar. They're never happy with one. I'm never happy with just one of them. I woke up and ended up with six, even if you can only play one at a time!

  Les Paul

  Player, Guitar, Six

  26 Copy quote

• ..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else

  Les Paul

  Music, Mother, Different

  51 Copy quote

• I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.

  Les Paul

  Guitar, Different, Way

  "Les Paul releases first rock album at age 90", www.today.com. October 12, 2005.

  19 Copy quote

• Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you've got white, pick it where you've got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you'll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

  Les Paul

  Music, Guitar, Color

  24 Copy quote

• My chops were not as fast... [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it's the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes

  Les Paul

  Long, Guy, Mind

  38 Copy quote

• I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say 'Here I am,' and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you're confident, they're confident. As long as you adjust to them you're not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn't pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

  Les Paul

  Eye, Thinking, Here I Am

  20 Copy quote

• The audience, they're not professionals. They just love music. It isn't necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

  Les Paul

  Play, Music Love, Audience

  13 Copy quote

• I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

  Les Paul

  Mother, Talking, Two

  "Les Paul Interview: In His Own Words". Interview with Rick Landers, guitarinternational.com.

  24 Copy quote

• If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there's something wrong with my act.

  Les Paul

  Ifs

  11 Copy quote

• I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

  Les Paul

  Sweet, Long, Sound

  82 Copy quote

• Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist - whatever.

  Les Paul

  Beautiful, Thinking, Wife

  33 Copy quote

• If you're in the U.S. and talk to someone on the phone who's in Iraq, you'll experience sound delay. It isn't long, but the sound has to go to a satellite and back, it's used for everything. I'm proud to have that be something I invented.

  Les Paul

  Iraq, Phones, Long

  11 Copy quote

• One minute we're over here, the next minute we're doing something completely different. But it's interesting because you are producing so many things you couldn't do with analog.

  Les Paul

  Interesting, Different, Next

  74 Copy quote

• No, working is what will keep you alive.

  Les Paul

  Alive

  9 Copy quote

• When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

  Les Paul

  Guitar, Firsts, Bigs

  11 Copy quote

• It's not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

  Les Paul

  America, Jazz, Knows

  9 Copy quote

• Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive

  Les Paul

  Music, Thinking, Guitar

  7 Copy quote

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