Episode 1 - Les Paul: The Studio as an Instrument (Series Opener)

A guitar made out of a four-by-four fence post, laughed out of Gibson as "a broomstick with pickups" —
and the same man in his garage stacking his own guitar eight times over. The tinkerer who gave rock its
guitar and its studio.

• Series setup: rock was built by a network of builders, not one inventor — six episodes, six architects (the previous series was the instruments; this one is who made them possible)
• The question: how did the guitar become a rock instrument?
• The player first: Waukesha, Wisconsin; the harmonica holder; a phonograph needle wired to a guitar; country as "Rhubarb Red" by day, jazz as Les Paul by night
• The railroad rail experiment — why a solid body means sustain and no feedback
• The Log (built after hours at the Epiphone factory) and the sawed-in-half archtop "wings"; Gibson's rejection
• An honest look at the contested "firsts": the Frying Pan, Bigsby and Merle Travis — Les Paul as one of the pioneers
• The Hollywood garage: acetate-disc overdubbing, half-speed guitars, and "Lover"; W. C. Fields and the "octopus"
• The 1948 crash and the arm set in the shape of playing; Mary Ford
• Bing Crosby's Ampex, the extra playback head, and sound on sound
• The eight-track "Octopus" — Les Paul's idea, Ross Snyder and Ampex's machine
• The Gibson Les Paul: 1952 goldtop, the humbucker, the sunburst that flopped, the 1961 redesign
• Listening Spine: "Lover," "How High the Moon," "Vaya con Dios," plus the Beano album, "East-West," and "Layla"
• Blues Progression: Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin → Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman — the blues rescues the guitar; and the studio-as-instrument idea that leads to Tom Dowd