‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) are both ex-Londoners, singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and actor Paul Odiase and song lyricist Paul Robert Thomas.
Their main website is https://www.paullyrics.com/les-pauls-the-pauls-official-homepage and their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LesPaulsThePauls
‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) have just released their 20th album called Now & Then at https://www.paullyrics.com/album/les-pauls-the-pauls-r-o-c-k-now-then released by London’s Swiss Cottage Recordz with Publishing by Studio City’s Unlimited Sounds Publishing LLC and Budde Music.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself Paul?
I was born and grew up in North London and went to school in the 60’s not far from The Beatles Abbey Road Studio and obviously at that time there was music everywhere! The first records given to me by my late uncle were Buddy Holly’s Raining In My Heart, Peggy Sue, It Doesn’t Matter Anymore and Rave On as well as album cassettes of Strangers In The Night by Frank Sinatra and cassettes of Count Basie and Louise Armstrong, and then I found The Beatles and eventually Bob Dylan who I follow to this day. I used to sell hot dogs outside The Roundhouse in North London near my home where I met and chatted with Andy Warhol and many other celebrities (although Andy didn’t want a hot dog of mine). Just as important to me as the music were the lyrics, maybe even more so and it was in the late 70’s that I started writing poetry and I would give folders of my poems to girlfriends I had on the kibbutz in Northern Israel where I went to volunteer picking grapefruits and working in the cotton fields, which was where I met my lovely Israeli wife-to-be Dina (no, we didn’t meet in the cotton fields). We then returned together to London where I joined the Metropolitan Police but because I had converted to Judaism in order to marry, Dina’s father was a survivor of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, I faced open anti-semitism from my fellow police officers and eventually when I could take no more I took the Police to court for their anti-semitic treatment of me and I beat them. After the court case in 1996 I tried writing song lyrics and found that I could and I haven’t looked back since!
We last interviewed you a few months ago when you released your album ‘Rise Up’, what have you been doing since?
As soon as our 19th album Rise Up was released I started writing new lyrics for our next album. Rise Up was inclined towards Reggae as it followed on from our tribute album to Bob Marley called Reincarnation 420 (for Tuff Gong), even though the last track on Rise Up was purposefully a Rock song called Patty Batty as Paul Odiase, our music man, wanted us to work on songs more inclined to Rock and Alternative Pop, and so I eventually wrote more than 20+ new sets of lyrics and sent them over to him.
How does your songwriting process work?
I usually write a batch of new lyrics that can stretch over weeks or months to write (which is perhaps why we only release 2 albums a year, for if I could write quicker it would be more songs as Paul Odiase is a musical genius who I call ‘The Maestro’)! I then send the lyrics by e-mail to Paul Odiase who lives near Bern in Switzerland, although we’re both originally ex-Londoners UK. Paul will then go through the lyrics and will firstly see which lyrics jump out at him and he will then start composing the music, gradually building the song up musically in his home studio where he also masters the finished songs.
Can you tell us about your latest release?
To celebrate our 10 years of creating songs together (our first album was called Holy Land Revisited that was released in March, 2014), we have just released a triple album called, Now & Then that is an album of 30 original ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) songs, 20 original new songs and 10 original classic songs on a triple album, two sides containing original new songs and the third side, original classic songs from ‘Les Paul’s’ (The Paul’s) (we don’t do covers, only original songs)!
The album’s songs deal with subject matter such as Immigration, Gun Control, Opioid Addiction, Domestic Violence, Rebellion, Global Warming, Stalkers, Old Age, Environmental Pollution, Relationships and much more!
How can people listen to the album or download the songs?
Well, because the album contains 30 songs, the download stores have been a bit slow in releasing the album and it’s ‘in the queue’, but it has been released on Amazon and on Bandcamp and will hopefully soon be released in other download stores. The album can be listened to, that’s nearly 3 hours of songs on the Now & Then webpage and you can also listen to the songs on Soundcloud.
And are you already working on lyrics for your next album?
Not quite yet, although Paul Odiase is itching to get his hands on new lyrics, but I’m busy promoting our album at the moment which takes a lot of time and energy, but you never know when I’ll be inspired to write and it could happen when you least expect it to happen and luckily I don’t have to worry about having pen and paper as I write on my mobile phone that is always with me!
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