Tanned and sporting a meticulous coiffure, Frey still comes on like a Californian surfer dude. The drummer and other lead vocalist, Don Henley, is more surly and portly, while the guitarist, Joe Walsh (think W C Fields in orange combat trousers), relishes the role of band joker. “Welcome to our Farewell 1 Tour – suspicious-sounding, isn’t it?” So quips the Eagles’ Glen Frey, acknowledging the numerical disclaimer built into his band’s supposed last hurrah. They have just opened with “Take It Easy”, a classic country-rock tune that underlines why the Eagles once sported T-shirts bearing the legend “song power”. “I took it to a nightclub and there was no audience response at all,” he said. Realising that the appearance of “the Log” was the problem, he added wings to make it look like a regular guitar. “I returned to the same nightclub, sat down and played and tore the place apart.

I said, ‘My goodness! People hear with their eyes!’ “When he first approached Gibson, in 1941, they laughed at “the character with the broomstick with the pickups on it”. It took the success of Leo Fender’s plank-like Telecaster to galvanise Gibson into action “They said: ‘Come to Chicago. Bring the broomstick.’” The Gibson Les Paul was launched in 1952.Though he has worked with such iconic figures as Judy Garland, Count Basie and Django Reinhardt, Paul cites his work with Bing Crosby as the highlight of his career “I learnt so much working with Bing He was frightening! He had so much power.”. Eventually, I took a phonograph pick-up and jabbed the needle into the top of the guitar, right at the bridge to see if I could amplify the guitar.

It worked but fed back, so I stuffed napkins, socks, everything I could think of into the hole to prevent feedback. I ended up filling it with plaster of Paris!”Later, Paul was a professional musician, working five times a week on NBC radio. Convinced that the solution to the problem lay in amplifying the pure sound of the string, he built a guitar that consisted of little more than a length of four-by-four pine to which he attached pick-ups and a guitar neck. “I attached a broomstick to a cinderblock in order to make a mic-stand, used my mother’s telephone attached to a radio to sing into, and got a job playing at a barbecue stand However, my guitar was just not loud enough. I’ve seen presidents come and go and it’s great to see what has happened to the Gibson Company, which was so tiny then and is so enormous now.”As a youngster, Paul had the stage name Rhubarb Red. “I tuned into a local radio station,” he explains, “and there was a fellow singing whose name was Pie Plant Pete, which is another name for Rhubarb This was perfect for me! He was my mentor. I copied Pie Plant Pete so close that you couldn’t tell us apart.” The seven-year-old Paul would eventually share a stage with his hero – much to the amusement of the audience.Even at that young age, Paul was turning his attention to his guitar’s amplification.