Who Gets to Own Rock & Roll History?

The New Jersey home where electric-guitar pioneer Les Paul lived and worked was torn down. His family is devastated

When Gene Paul’s sister called him in August, he expected the usual yearly rendition of “Happy Birthday” — he’d just turned 82, after all. Instead, she asked, “Did you see the picture of the house? They demolished it.”

He knew exactly which house she meant: the one in Mahwah, New Jersey, where their legendary father, Les Paul, lived from 1952 until his death in 2009. That’s the place where he pioneered multitrack recording, honed his electric-guitar design, and, in essence, ushered in the genre that this publication was built on. “It was devastating,” Gene says of the Facebook photos he saw. “And then I looked at the comments: ‘How could you possibly have let this happen?’”

The battle over Les Paul’s house has been raging since news of the demolition first hit, with family and friends pointing the finger at the Les Paul Foundation, helmed by Michael Braunstein, the musician-inventor’s former manager, accusing him of selling the property out of greed. And although the lack of communication between the family and the foundation has sowed its fair share of discord, the situation is a bit thornier than that.

Gene Paul moved into his father’s house around age 15, and joined his band soon after that. “I thought it was normal for a father to have a studio, make his own guitar, develop the multitrack tape machine, go on the road and perform, and make records,” he says. He recalls helping his father wind pickups for his guitars, and wandering through the greenery surrounding the Jetsons-esque structure in high boots to evade the rattlesnakes that lurked outside. “The house was special,” he says.

The younger Paul’s relationship with Braunstein, however, was cold — ever since Les Paul died in 2009 of severe pneumonia complications amid what Gene characterizes as communication issues between Braunstein and the family. After Les’ death, his girlfriend stayed in the house, per his request. At one point, there was an offer to buy the property from a wealthy benefactor who wanted to preserve the space, like jazz icon Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in nearby Englewood Cliffs, or the previously derelict home of John and Alice Coltrane in New York, but it was reportedly declined. (Braunstein and the foundation did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story.)

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Les’ companion moved out in late 2024 when she became too infirm to live alone, and the former legend’s friend, Mahwah Mayor James Wysocki, entered the property for the first time in nearly two decades. Even as a former cop, he was shocked by the state of the place. “There’s holes in the roof; you can see the sky in the living room,” he says. “There were rattlesnakes in there — there [had been] a bear in there.” Wysocki claims that the house was in decline even when Les was still living there; he was slow to address problems, like when a tree fell through the roof. After the basement flooded circa 2002, Wysocki says, the house was doomed. “It broke my heart to see it come down,” he says, “but it had to. It probably had to come down when Les was alive.”

The house quietly went up for sale in July and sold after 19 days for $990,000.

“It could have had a beautiful historic plaque out in front of it,” says Paul family friend JJ Whitney. “This is where rock & roll was invented.” Gene took out his ire via a Facebook post: “This wasn’t just incompetence. It was a premeditated assassination of a landmark. It was cultural vandalism.”

After reviewing a copy of Les’ 1995 will acquired by Rolling Stone, local probate lawyers Kenneth Vercammen and Christine Matus say the foundation was well within its rights to do what it wanted with the property. “Certain assets were given to the foundation, and then the foundation trustees and directors had a right to do what they needed to do to further its mission,” Matus says. Still, she points out that “everything is emotional when it comes to legacy planning,” and “it doesn’t make a foundation look great” that the property was allowed to decay before the sale. “The more they can communicate with the family and those who are interested in it, the better it would be.”

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Braunstein declined an interview for this story, instead pointing to a statement posted on social media: “Claims that Les Paul’s legacy has been ‘erased,’ and that this represents an ‘unforgivable failure to safeguard’ it, or that the physical evidence of his work has been lost are completely inaccurate,” it reads, highlighting other efforts to preserve Paul’s legacy.

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Wysocki, for his part, has been working to make the new owners aware of the history of the house. The development company plans to preserve and renovate the acoustic echo chambers built into the basement, incorporate scavenged wood from the old structure into the construction, and create a memorabilia room (though, for now, any such features would only be accessible to the new owners).

Still, Gene Paul mourns the loss of his old home. “The family figured that at some point Michael would come to us and say, ‘Listen, it’s inevitable that the house is going to go, but let’s get together and have a send-off,’” he says. “We all hoped for that. It never happened. Instead, I’m getting a picture of bulldozers wiping the house out, wiping the legacy out.”