Page 958 - Composer News Today

Dublin, a kid from london, and put them on a sound stage for two days and see what they would come up with. >> did you have to convince any of them to do it? >> jimmy page has never deny a movie like this before. >> he describes himself as kind of a hermit. >> for 40 years, hes been a mystery if youre a led zeppelin fan, theres nothing. to get him to come to l.a. and sit for two days was unbelievable. >> what did you tell him? how did you convince him? >> i said uits a different kin of documenta...

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>> what do you think? >> you know, i worked with al gore, barack obama. >> and we should tell people, you directed "an inconvenient truth." >> i did. and i was so much more nervous around these guys. when they pick up a guitar and play, and the speakers are blasting rock and roll, you just melt. like -- like the edge melts. and in that moment, it was a throwdown. jimmy page is like this is my stuff and edge had to get up and play u2. and jack -- >> what was the interaction like? were they compet...

It in the movie and edge and jack white were like -- cant believe it. >> hold on. i have a clip of that. ♪ >> i have this record at home and a lot of disdain and i said can you get that? and they went away and come back with this phenomenal thing. a distortion pedal which overloads the signal. and you try the sound and make it sound pretty rude. ♪

And i inducted him into the songwriters hall of fame. he asked me to do that for him. i think i had the most fun with him when i would go and play with him at fat tuesdays which is a jazz club in new york which he played every tuesday night. i wouldnt be surprised if he was just there last week. >> well, i did find out actually a contacted the folks. his very last show there was -- they said it was the week before his birthday on june 9th. so that would be june first. he played right up until th...

Monday night. you know? i mean he did one at 8:00 and one at 10:00. and he would have -- hed bring up some amateur guitarist or there would be some -- somebody really famous. you know, richy would be there. hed come up and play and i would play. then the next person would be a 1-year-o 12-year-old kid or something. i brought a kid from texas with me the last time i was there, last summer. and les called him up on the stage. and it was his moment of truth. he was 13 years old. >> entertaining peo...

>> compared to what they would do to us, they were cutting our guys heads off and dragging them through the streets of baghdad and hanging off bridges. this happens at colleges and dorm rooms and whatever. here in the u.s. all the time. >> back home, guitar legend les paul has died. he invented the electric guitar as we know it and pioneered the multitrack recording without which rock n roll being recorded. les paul was 94. we will get a chance to recover with a week long trip for two to mexico.

Company. they said no thanks. >> for ten years i was a laugh. i kept pounding at them and pounding at them, saying, hey, heres where its at. heres where tomorrow this is it. you can out -- you can drown out anybody with it. and you can make all these different sounds, which you cant do with a regular guitar. >> reporter: when the fender company produced their version of the electric guitar in the early 50s, gibson came running and soon the gibson/les paul was the guitar of choice. it is still on...

♪ >> reporter: les paul may have been a legendary guitar player, but his impact went beyond chords and riffs. he changed the way people listened to music. ♪ born in 1915, paul began his career as a teenaged country act before turning his talents to jazz and pop music. in the 1940s, he married singer mary ford, and while their marriage eventually ended in divorce -- ♪ the world >> reporter: -- the partnership produced a string of hits including "via con dios" and "how high the moon." les pa...

His guitar and gadgets earned him a place in the rock and roll hall of fame, the inventors hall of fame and even the song writers hall of fame. >> i do know what i did, but i dont go around reminding people about it or bragging about it or thinking about it. i just did it. mostly because i had to have something, and it wasnt there, so i couldnt go down the street and buy it, so i built it. ♪ >> reporter: but inventor or not, he was still a guitar players guitar player, and he performed into hi...