"I hit an E chord and felt all this power"

For blues-rock star Jared James Nichols, it’s all about expression – and a Les Paul is “the best tool for the job”

- By Amit Sharma. Portrait by David McClister

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 f*ck, this feels like Cadillac!’ I knew what I had in my hands was some seriously fancy sh*t. 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.

I quickly realised the other instruments I had been playing didn’t sound like that. I knew I was holding something truly special. To me, it felt like the guitar was alive. It had this super punch that no other guitar had – and every time I would try out different brands or models, just to see what else was out there and hear how they made me play, I would keep coming back to the Les Paul. Honestly, it just kept calling back to me and I think it was a combination of the weight, the feel and the sound...