Thought this whole interview was very telling:
EDDIE VAN HALEN When Leo Fender was doing his thing and you were doing yours, was there ever any competition?
LES PAUL No, not at all.
VAN HALEN Did you ever collaborate or talk about your ideas?
PAUL Absolutely. Leo Fender would come over, and so would his engineers. They saw the Log and some of the other guitars I had built. They saw it all happening. There was never any friction. It was just the opposite.
Heres the story of how Leo really helped me: When I developed my first solid-body guitar in 1941, I took it to Gibson and they dismissed it. They called it that broomstick with the pickups on it. From 1941 to 1951, I couldnt convince Gibson to do a damn thing about putting out a Les Paul guitar. Finally, Leo decided to come out with the Fender solid-body line, and immediately Gibson said, Find the character with the broomstick with the pickups on it!
And so they asked me to design a guitar. I thank Leo for coming out with his Broadcaster, because it woke Gibson up. Gibson was asleep and Fender was not asleep. Thats the way it goes. Fender was the first to market, but I was way, way out front.
VAN HALEN Its kind of like the car businessToyota woke up GM.
PAUL Sure. Sometimes you gotta wake somebody up, and sometimes I need some help from my friends. And I consider Leo Fender a very dear friend. To me, I am a Gibson man, but that doesnt make any difference, because I also know exactly what Fender is all about.
VAN HALEN With my guitars, I guess Im trying to bring together what you and Leo have done. There are things Ive always liked about Gibsons and things Ive always liked about Fenders, but neither one did everything that I wanted, so Ive created a combination of the two. My guitar is essentially a Strat body with Gibson humbucking pickups.
PAUL I cant always get what I want out of a standard Gibson guitar either. There are so many times that Ill go into Gibson battling to win a point and come out with a compromise. The world is a compromise and so this is what you have to do. It can cost millions of dollars to retool and move something a quarter of an inch. I understand that some of my ideas would cost a fortune.
Another thing that comes into the picture is the preoccupation with how something looks. Ive had executives veto an improvement because their wives didnt like the way it looked. Theyre not thinking about the sound.
VAN HALEN Ive had that problem with companies Ive worked with. Ive had difficulty getting something the way I wanted it, because they claimed that other people want it a different way.
PAUL Which may be right and may not be right.
VAN HALEN Yeah, yeah, but if they want my opinion, then Im giving it to them. Ive had to say, I dont want my name on it if it aint the way I want it.
PAUL I had a case where they put out a guitar without my blessings and I tried to make em stop! The funny thing is they didnt stop it, and it turned out to be their number-one seller. [laughs] So you can be wrong. Gibson put out an SG, and it wasnt with my blessings at all. They put the pickup in the wrong place, they made the body too thin, and there were a lot of other things I didnt like.
So I said, Clean it up a little bit, will ya, before you put my name on it. So they took my name off of it and continued to make it, and its their best-sellling solid-body guitar to date. Sure, its a cheap guitar and it doesnt sound as good as the others, but its a different thing. And it turned out I shouldnt have said what I said.
VAN HALEN When you design guitars, do you design them for sound or cosmetics?
PAUL Sound. But dont get me wrong, design is important.
VAN HALEN Its got to look cool, but it better sound good.
PAUL Exactly. Its nice to have both elements. I wanted the Les Paul to look good. Thats why we put that finish on it and made it with a [sculpted] top, so you could have that clean, violin look to the guitar. It makes it look like a Stradivarius, and you associate it that way, too.
VAN HALEN When you pick up a guitar, which guitar do you pick up?
PAUL I like the feel of my 1975 Deluxe the best. Its actually a reject.
VAN HALEN Those are the ones I love. Got any extras around? Im serious.
PAUL Yeah, sure.
VAN HALEN Im serious. If its a reject and you like it, I know Ill like it.
PAUL Well, not necessarily, because everybody has their own feel.
VAN HALEN I can guarantee you
PAUL Everybody has a certain thing in their head of what they want to do and how to do it and their own technique. Everything about them calls for certain requirements.
VAN HALEN Im getting the feeling from you that you go for the same goddamned ****ing thing that I go for. Its not the appearance of the goddamned thing. I dont care if its a flametop or whatever. Its the feeling of it and the way it sounds.