When it comes to jazz-rock, few Les Pauls are as storied as Al Di Meola’s 1971 Les Paul Custom – famously held on the cover of his groundbreaking 1977 album Elegant Gypsy.
By that point of his career, Al was already well-known for his breathtaking virtuosity. At the tender age of 19 he had been recruited by Chick Corea in fusion supergroup Return To Forever, with whom he’d go on to record three Top 40 Billboard albums in the mid-’70s.
As a solo artist, he fused elements of progressive rock and flamenco into some of the most stunning guitar recordings ever committed to tape, taking those Mediterranean influences to even greater heights alongside John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía on seminal early ’80s live album Friday Night In San Francisco.
Widely considered one of the world’s finest alternate pickers, Al tells Total Guitar of his love for Les Pauls – and his connection with the main man...
“I started using Les Pauls early on, probably because I’d seen Jeff Beck using one around the beginning of his career. There were some heavy metal acts, too. The Led Zeppelin II album was pretty much a Les Paul all the way and it just had this massive sound. I’d seen shots of John McLaughlin using one in the early version of Mahavishnu Orchestra, as well as that double-neck SG. Another big name was actually Les Paul himself. He became a friend of mine.
“I’d go round to his house and studio quite often, and he’d come to mine. He’d get on his knees to get a very up-close look at my hands and he’d keep saying, ‘Do that again, it’s mind-boggling, I don’t understand how you just played that!’ I’d be sitting there playing and thinking: ‘This guy is the legend of all legends and he seems blown away by what I’m doing!’ It was almost like a dream. I wish I had a picture of it...”
“One of my most famous guitars is my 1971 Les Paul Custom. I ordered it from Manny’s Music store in New York when I was in my last year of high school. That place was like a mecca for gear, it was the place to get your equipment. It’s where Hendrix got all his stuff, The Who... Everybody in the music business went there. Any day of the week you’d go in and see somebody famous.
“I originally ordered the guitar with a Bigsby tremolo arm and a Varitone switch. After years of playing it, I wanted the Bigsby taken off. There was a guy called Tom Doyle who was a very good friend of Les Paul’s that did a lot of guitar work in the New Jersey area, he repainted it after taking those items off. The whole guitar looked cracked and had all these crazy marks over it.
“Everyone thought it looked so cool. I ended up adding DiMarzio pickups and a coil tap. I used it on most of my early records. On my biggest-selling album, Elegant Gypsy, that’s the guitar you’re hearing and the one you can see on the cover. I also used it on Land Of The Midnight Sun, all the Return To Forever stuff and a few other things. The sound of that guitar going into my 50-watt Marshall is one of the punchiest tones I’ve ever heard.”
“Funnily enough, I hadn’t played the guitar since the end of the ’70s, but I picked it up a few years ago and was blown away, so it ended up on my Beatles tribute album, Across The Universe, which came out in 2020. As for other Les Pauls, I’m using a reissue 1959 Standard quite a lot right now. I have a real ’59 as well, but I don’t like taking it out. The reissue sounds great, though! It’s pretty light and the sound is sweet. The 1971 Custom, however, is obscenely heavy and growls like nothing else.
“I’ve always felt the most popular instrument in the world is the human voice. But second is the guitar, and then the third is way down from there! We have the ability to phrase in so many different ways and also play chords, while brass instruments can only do single lines. Another reason why I think guitars are so popular is because the people watching get to see the guitarist create with the flesh of their fingers.
“You don’t get that with piano. They hit something and there’s a long rod that goes underneath and there’s a pad that hits this wire. We’re actually touching the substance that makes the sound. There’s a physical element to it, perhaps even more so with Les Pauls...”
