By George Petersen



HAVING BEEN A FRIEND OF LES PAUL FOR 25 YEARS, I have many good memories about him and I’d like to share a few of these.
I called Les up once in April, 1994 (for some reason I still don’t remember) and as we made some small talk, I asked him if he heard the news about Richard Nixon, who had passed away the weekend before. As soon as I mentioned the name “Richard Nixon,” Les suddenly became very belligerent, and started screaming “Richard Nixon—that good for nothing &%#$&#$!!!” Once I got Les to calm down somewhat, I meekly asked “so I guess you didn’t like that guy?”


In some very strong words, but in a far calmer voice, Les finally replied that he hated Richard Nixon. I asked why and he said it went way back to the days when that &%#$&#$ Nixon was vice-president—and before, when he was known as Richard Nixon, “commie fighter.”


Les explained that back in 1953, he got a phone call from Richard Nixon. Once he heard the voice say “This is Richard Nixon,” Les muttered (expletive deleted) and hung up. A minute later the phone rang again, Les picked it up and the routine repeated. Finally the phone rang a third time, with Nixon saying “Les, this is really Richard Nixon,” thinking the reason for the earlier hang-up was because Les assumed it was a prank call.

Figuring he wasn’t going to shake the VP, Les asked why he called, and Nixon explained he was calling to ask whether Les and Mary Ford could play a command performance at the White House for (the new) President Dwight Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. Although Les didn’t think much of Nixon, he was definitely in the “I Like Ike” camp, and immediately agreed to do the gig.


The day of the show came and everything went fine—at least until halfway through the show, when Nixon jumps up on stage between songs and asks Les to play a request for the First Lady. At this point. Les starts worrying, because he and Mary are playing to backup tracks with Les using a footswitch to trigger the start/stop cues on a tape recorder/amplifier hidden in a box he sits on during the show. The tape has rhythm guitar and Mary’s harmony parts sequenced on the tape. There’s no way to change the order of the songs during the show and he doesn’t want to reveal that their amazing full stage sound comes from taped tracks—a common practice now, but certainly a rarity in 1953.



Finally, Mamie Eisenhower thinks about the request and says she’d like to hear “Vaya Con Dios,” which was on the charts at the time. Les says “I think we can do that,” clicks on the footswitch and begins playing. Coincidentally, “Vaya Con Dios” was the next song on the tape! So there’s you explanation of why Les always hated that &%#$&#$ Richard Nixon.

The NAMM Connection
Flash forward 49 years later. In 2002, during Summer NAMM in Nashville, Sony was hosting a special event for a limited number of members of the music/audio press—a private dinner with special guest Les Paul. I was among those few chosen to attend, and as I was friends with Les, Sony’s Paul Foschino asked me if I would do an interview-style conversation with Les after the dinner, which everyone would listen in on. I gladly accepted the offer and also encouraged them to videotape Les’ stories for posterity, which they did.

As the moderator/interviewer, I asked Les about his early days, developing the solid body guitar and his experiments with sound-on-sound recording and multitracking. Towards the end of the evening I threw in this zinger: “So Les, I understand you once had a chance to meet Richard Nixon.” I figured that would add some spice to the conversation, but was surprised when the wiley Les—knowing the cameras were rolling—wasn’t wrinkled at all. In a very matter-of-fact tone, he calmly explained that he was very excited about the propect of playing for President Eisenhower, and at one point Mamie asked for a request, which happened to be in the order of the sequence was playing.


No screaming. No expletives. But now you know the real story.

Hopefully, somebody at Sony still has the tapes from that evening. And hopefully those tapes don’t have any unexplained gaps.


But you never know…

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—Thanks to Rick Clark for the photo above of Les and I from that Sony dinner.


When not working on MIX stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Click here ARIEL PLAYS “ARE YOU READY TO ROCK” and check ‘em out, doing an in-store performance a week ago for The Gap’s 1969-2009 40th Anniversary “Born to Play” celebration.
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