(LW)Five. And I never paid more than 170 bucks for each one.
(LW)5本だ。170ドル以上払ったやつは1本も無い。
(GP)When did you get your first one?
(GP)最初のはいつ手に入れました?
(LW)Felix gave it to me. Remember when [Cream’s] Disraeli Gears and all that was going on? Whatever year that was. Well, when it became #1, Felix went to Danny Armstrong’s guitar shop. Eric had a Les Paul, a cherry Les Paul with his name all down in the head[stock] – “Eric Clapton” instead of “Gibson.” Danny had it inlaid “Eric Clapton,” and the head broke. Felix was feeling really rich, so he gave Danny, I think, a thousand bucks for the guitar. And Danny never fixed it. So Felix went there to get credit, and he got a Junior and he got a bass. He showed me the Junior, and I said, “Wow! What a unique little thing.” Felix played a little guitar. He had a little amp, and he cranked it up and he showed me how the little Junior blasted out this little speaker in the amp. I started playing it – one control. “Wow, this is such a simple, nothing instrument.” I said, “How much can I get this instrument to do?” Because it looks like it’s just a piece of wood, strings, and pickup, and it was always shorting out. Shittiest pegs – you know, the white plastic. And that was it. I said, “Wow! I’m in heaven. I’ve got a Les Paul” – I knew that was the thing to get, but I was about to get everybody’s gold-top, one of those. And this is ’68. I said, “Wow, I got a Les Paul, but it’s not quite . . . .” Dig this – in 1965 I bought Wachtel’s Les Paul Junior, the mustard double-cutaway, because he bought a Rickenbacker 12. We saw the Beatles, me and him, and he said, “I gotta get me one of them.” He bought George Harrison Beatle boots at Florsheim on Broadway, and he bought the Rickenbacker and sold me his Les Paul. He got the Rickenbacker home, and he cracked the fuckin’ Rickenbacker and had to borrow back the Les Paul. He had this beautiful, beautiful Rickenbacker – it wasn’t the one George Harrison used, but it was the one [Roger] McGuinn had, the red one. That’s the way we bought instruments in those days – according to who was using ’em. I bought his Les Paul, but I didn’t know what a Les Paul meant in those days. I sprayed it with paint. And then when I started my group, the Vagrants, [sighs, says sadly] I traded a 1956 Strat for a brand-new Kent, three pickup, at a pawnshop on 8th Avenue. I didn’t know what a guitar meant. And in those days, I thought “shiny new” meant “good.” This Fender I had was beat to hell, but what a sad story. Isn’t that a sad story? I wish I could tell you that the Kent went on to make millions of dollars in records, but the Kent never did shit.
(LW)Uh, the year the Beatles played Shea Stadium [1965]. And that Strat was the one I bought with my bar mitzvah money, man. I bought it. I’m 33 now – and I was born in ’45 – so 13 and 45 is 58. So in 1958 I bought that Strat. Imagine if I had it now? An old Strat from ’58?
(GP)When did you start playing guitar? How old were you?
(GP)ギターを始めたのはいつですか? 何歳の時?
(LW)13.
(LW)13歳。
(GP)You started out with a Strat.
(GP)ストラトではじめたのですね。
(LW)That bar mitzvah, yeah.
(LW)bar mitzvahの祝いのな!
(GP)What made you want to play?
(GP)動機は?
(LW)I saw Elvis Presley on that Stage Show – you know, that Tommy Dorsey did. Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey replaced Jackie Gleason years ago, in the summer. They had Elvis on. I saw him, and I thought that was the greatest-looking thing in the world. So I got an acoustic tenor guitar and I played that. A tenor guitar is the last top four strings. I played that for years. Finally my mother said, “You better go to school.” I went, and I saw that they had two other strings. I didn’t know about 6-strings. And to move up, it was very difficult, because it was like moving from a ukulele. I didn’t know what to do with those other two strings. So my mother hid the tenor guitar on me. That forced me to play the 6-string. It’s a good thing she did, because it really made you want to be real lazy. I would tape up the strings on the guitar, so they didn’t count, even though I had a new guitar. You see? She bought me this new guitar, and what was frustrating is, there’s this new guitar – but wait a minute, I can’t play it. It’s got these two other strings. So it wasn’t really that great new guitar. Something was wrong with it. It wasn’t perfect yet. But at least I got it. I was playing accordion for about a week before I found the guitar. And the accordion was so heavy. I remember smashing it and putting it in the case, million pieces, locking it and throwing the key away. And the guy came to pick it up and he shook the case. He heard all the shaking, but he didn’t want to open it and see. Oh, was it smashed, man. I was so frustrated with that instrument. Oh, it was disgusting. The accordion frightened me into playing the guitar. That’s what happened.
(GP)Did you learn how to play “Heartbreak Hotel” right away?
(GP)Heartbreak Hotelの弾き方を直ぐに学びましたか?
(LW)Uh, yeah. That was my first song.
(LW)勿論。それが最初の曲だ。
(GP)You did it at a talent show?
(GP)それを腕自慢大会で演った?
(LW)Yeah, in junior high school.
(LW)ああ、中学校のな。
(GP)Was it a hip thing to play guitar back then?
(GP)そのころって、ギターを弾くことはヒップだったんですか?
(LW)No! Nobody did. But if you did, you were . . . Because I was a little fat kid, you know. You ever see those ads in those comic books, “You can be a hit at parties.” Well, that’s what I was. [Laughs.] And it was working! The only thing was, there was no girls then. Because all you wanted to do was just impress everybody. “Wow,” you know. “A girl? I don’t know about that.” You know, we saw the Beatles, and that was what made us all want to play – all the Vagrants. You know, that was, “Hey! Let’s play.” And they didn’t know how to play. My brother was in the group – Larry played bass.
(LW)I was much older than them. They were all three years younger than me. Well, the Vagrants broke up in 1967, I guess – ’68? I don’t know all the dates. [Leslie takes a phone call, returns.] You wanna hear one of the cuts that we did? The new stuff?
(LW)Sit there and I’ll play it. [Plays cassette of blues-rock song featuring Steve Marriot’s vocals and Leslie’s slide guitar.] I used the octave divider on the slide. He had the song written, and I put that lick on it. [Multi-tracked solo begins.] I’ve got three guitars all at once here. [Song ends.] That’s the second night we ever played together.
(LW)Really? Did you see how long I waited to come in with that solo? [Plays another song that’s darker and more metallic.] I love this. No pedals, just the guitar. [As the song ends, he hands me a joint.] People that get high, man. I’ve had a lot of drugs in my life – fuckin’ heroin, morphine, cocaine – and thai sticks and cocaine is the best. You can do anything you want. The funny thing is, man, the real thrill – more than anything else, I swear to God – is playing.