On the phone from his home in Mahwah, N.J., the 92-year-old legendary inventor/musician Les Paul is brilliantly focused, full of ideas, healthy despite years of crippling arthritis, brimming with energy and not about to quit his inventing ways. What's his next project? Read on - you might need it someday.

Rocky: It's amazing how much memorabilia you've saved - your first eight-track recorder, the prototype for the first Les Paul guitar. Why?

Paul: Most of the stuff I lost. And what I have left is what I deliberately saved, knowing one day I'd want to put it together, put it in its proper place. When I was younger my mother called me and said, 'We're selling the house. They're going to plow it under and make condominiums there. If you want your stuff you better come and get it.' I thought 'Oh, to hell with it.' I should have done it.

Rocky: In the DVD you say every time you do something as simple as turn on a light switch you wonder how it works. Where did that curiosity come from?

Paul: I guess I was just born that way, to be devilish. That curiosity was there no matter what it was. Whether it was the light switch or whether it was something else. What made a string vibrate? When you plucked it and it did vibrate what was that string doing? I was always curious about what made a plank of wood have a resonance and tone to it. I was always curious, always interested in improving something if it didn't do everything I thought it should do.

Rocky: You always wanted to change the way the music industry worked, didn't you?

Paul: There was always a problem. If they used a shellac record they'd save 2 cents. 'Every Bing Crosby record I sell I make 2 cents more than the next guy does. Until the people complain about shellac, I'll use shellac.' When I went over to Capitol I said maybe the disc jockeys should have a vinyl record that would be far superior to a shellac record. (Then) I said we should do that for all the people, all the people should get vinyl records. This is how progress is made - a little bit at a time. It was much less noise. It was very soft vinyl material that was going to give you the least noise.

Rocky: Were you always a stickler for sound quality?

Paul: Oh yes, yes. That was almost the extreme. It had to be right, it had to be just as perfect as you can get it. When I moved to California I didn't go to the recording studios. I went over to the movie lots. I would go over there and see how the movie guys were doing it. The movie guys were far ahead of studios. I'd go over there and hang around with the guys who knew what was going on - with the speakers, with the sound, with the theaters. Then I'd improve on that.

Rocky: When you had your car accident in 1947, you quit music for a while and instead invented multitrack recording. Why?

Paul: As far as I was concerned I wanted to play it all - I wanted to do the whole thing, I wanted the quality to be good, I wanted it to be right. The toughest time in my life was to pioneer the very beginning. There's no one to turn to, or very few people who had reason to be that particular about something that seemed unimportant to them. It was important to me.

Rocky: Why didn't you get a patent on multitracking and get a cut of every record made in the past 60 years?

Paul: You could patent that thing. That's when (musician) Fred Waring came to me. He was my neighbor, he was my boss prior to that. Fred said to me, 'My God, what you've got here - let's go to Washington, let's patent this thing, let's get it on the road. Creating sounds is one thing, but creating multitrack, that's another.' I didn't do it. I must admit I'm not the best businessman in the world, though I've made some pretty good moves.

Rocky: You tried to get Gibson to make the electric guitar for a decade before they finally came to you in 1951 with their hats in hand. Was that sweet vindication?

Paul: (Chuckles heartily). Yeah, it was a downer. I knew I had something good, something that good that proved itself. It just didn't prove itself to others. Others weren't about to make such a drastic change as that, as a solid body guitar versus an acoustical guitar. So it took a lot of convincing, took about 10 years, for them to come rapping at the door and say, 'Hey, bring that gadget in. Let's look at it.'

Rocky: What have been your failures?

Paul: I have several things I do not know the answer to, but I'm pondering the problem. It's constantly there and I'm constantly thinking about it. Whenever there's a blank space in my thinking I'll stay on it till it comes. The bell rings and all of a sudden I'll go, 'Oh, I think I figured this out,' only to find out I didn't. If you keep persisting, if you believe in something and you're certain that it would be a great asset and it can work, then you have to diligently go in there and make it work. Don't give up.

Rocky: How great is it to have Keith Richards, Paul McCartney and others getting onstage to say how brilliant you are?

Paul: I'm very proud of it. At the same time I want to remain just another person. Let's say a guy has come a long way. He wants his guitar autographed or he just wants to shake my hand. I know he came off from some far-off place - Moscow or Nova Scotia or somewhere. They saved their money for two years to get a plane ticket to come down, meet me, shake hands, whatever. I think of that all the time and think about how I'd feel if I was way back there and held high hopes only to be disappointed. Consequently I do appreciate everything that has turned out good for me. I'm proud of it. I only wish I could have done more.

Rocky: What's next for you?

Paul: What I've got going for me is a dozen things at one time. One of them is hearing aids. I see all the faults of a hearing aid. A guy puts a Stradivarius under his chin and it doesn't sound like a Stradivarius. It sounds like a piece of tin made in China, for sure. The same thing applies to many other things with hearing aids. You get in with a crowd of people and you can't separate them. The ear is a very intricate part of the anatomy. I feel something should be done about it. So that's where I am now.

Rocky: Good, because I'll need one soon.

Paul: (Laughs). I hope not.

Rocky: I want a Les Paul Signature hearing aid.

Paul: All right. I'd love to do it.

Les Paul

• Les Paul: Chasing Sound

Koch Vision

• Grade: A

You start watching the Les Paul bio, Chasing Sound, and you think, "Oh, that's right, Les Paul invented that." Then, "Oh yeah, and that." Then another. And again and again. You start to lose track. Finally you realize it - forget Elvis, the Beatles or the Stones. Rock 'n' roll, modern music and so many other things don't exist without Les Paul.

Electric guitars, multitrack recording, vinyl LPs, guitar effects, recording techniques - the list is endless and brilliantly captured by the new PBS show, which has been airing regularly for a month and comes out Aug. 14 in an expanded DVD format.

Paul's pack-rat tendencies result in a rich documentary about how he got and executed his ideas. His inventions are only part of the story (and only part of the reason that adoring fans such as Keith Richards and Paul McCartney appear in the film). Paul was a huge music star with Mary Ford back in the day and continues to play a weekly gig in a New York City club. His signature guitar, the Gibson Les Paul, is still the cornerstone of rock music. Chasing Sound breezily puts it all together, melding music and history in a way that's informative and highly entertaining.

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

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