“I was actually born in the same city as Les Paul, a place called Waukesha in Wisconsin. There’s a massive street there called Les Paul Parkway that was named in tribute to him, which has all these street signs with his signature on them. So even before I knew what it was all about, when I was like five years old or whatever, I remember thinking how cool that was. I probably wanted to steal one!
“Later on, when I started out on guitar, I was playing a lot of Strats because of Stevie Ray Vaughan and even Telecasters, because Jimmy Page often recorded with them. And then after a while I ended up trying out a Les Paul Standard with two humbuckers. The first thing I thought was, ‘Holy fuck, this feels like a Cadillac!’ I knew what I had in my hands was some seriously fancy shit. Then I hit an E chord and felt all this power. It sounded huge, like all the Black Sabbath records I was listening to at the time.
