TORONTO - Toronto singer/songwriter Hawksley Workman says he used to lie awake at night dreaming of owning a Les Paul guitar.
Paul, who invented the solid-body electric guitar, died today at age 94. He also pioneered multitrack recording, which enabled artists to record different instruments at different times.
Workman called Paul's contributions "unfathomable."
"I have my whole livelihood owed to (his) innovations," Workman told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview from his Toronto home. "(His legacy) is absolutely massive."
In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar, later wielded by such guitar giants as Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Pete Townshend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes and jazz great Al DiMeola.
Workman says he eagerly awaited the day he'd be able to purchase his own. It finally happened about a decade ago, when he was 24.
"If you were like me ... you laid awake at night dreaming of the day you'd be able to afford a Les Paul," Workman said.
"I'm very passionate about my two Les Pauls that have been with me for a very, very long time.
"To me, they're kind of a part of my character, my personality as a player."
Workman says the sound of a Les Paul is what makes it so particularly popular -- it has a fat, rich tone, he said.
If you switch from a Les Paul to a lesser guitar, "you go from a rock god to a rock serf, in my books," Workman said.
Paul's signature guitar carries physical weight, too -- Workman says it can feel three times heavier around his neck than other electric guitars.
"I have to get massages on the road because of that bloody guitar, but I can't live without it because its tone is so massive," Workman said.
"There's a whole mojo that comes with electric guitars, and the Les Paul has a gathered cultural velocity.
"It symbolizes the very best in rock 'n' roll."
Workman, who has produced albums for Great Big Sea, Sarah Slean, and Tegan and Sara, also said Paul's innovations in recording were revolutionary.
He said that with the advent of multitrack recording, musicians were no longer bound by what they could produce live off the floor, and records could then be built as "a piece of cinema instead of snapshots of a recorded moment."
"An art form was actually created when multitrack recording was invented," Workman said.
"Instead of capturing moments, you were manufacturing moments. It was no longer a situation where you were in Sun Studios and setting up a band and that was how the rest of the world heard it.
"You were creating a cinematic aural experience."
