It is named after Les Paul, an American jazz and country music guitarist, songwriter, and inventor of the 20th century.
The bypass was renamed the Les Paul Parkway in the 1990s, in honor of the Waukesha native who was a key innovator of the solid-body electric guitar.
The eastern and southern portion of the bypass highway around Waukesha (Wisconsin Highway 59/164) is dedicated as the Les Paul Parkway in honor of Les Paul.
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For the live performance of the song it is played with smoke and bright green and pink lights in the background as Rouvas sings standing in front of a microphone stand while playing his black Gibson Les Paul.
The best-known version of the song was recorded by Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1953, one of the top 100 songs of 1954.
Notable interpretations have been recorded by these performers: Carl Perkins, Doris Day, Bobby Darin, Taj Mahal & Corey Harris, Gordon Smith, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Les Paul and Mary Ford, and Jerry Lewis.
Les Paul and Mary Ford recorded layered vocal harmonies and guitar parts, modifying prior tracks with effects such as ambient reverb while recording the net result together on a new track.
He established contact with industry luminaries such as Leo Fender, Les Paul and Seth Lover (inventor of the humbucking pickup) and continued learning about and making pickups.
Examples of their jazz inclinations can be found in the Nashville All-Stars album with Chet Atkins titled After the Riot at Newport, the Hank Garland LP entitled Velvet Guitar, Tupper Saussy's Said I to Shostakovitch, the groundbreaking LP Gary Burton And Friends Near, Friends Far, and Chester and Lester by Les Paul and Chet Atkins.
Andy Latimer of Camel also uses a flame top Burny Super Grade as his main Les Paul style guitar.
In 1950, with the introduction of the radically innovative Fender Telecaster to the musical market, solid-body electric guitars became a public craze (hollow-body electric guitars have more acoustic resonance but are, therefore, more prone to amplifier feedback and have less natural note duration "sustain".) In reaction, Gibson Guitar president Ted McCarty brought guitarist Les Paul into the company as a consultant.
In the early 1970s, Punk rock guitarists such as Johnny Thunders of The New York Dolls began using Les Paul Juniors and Les Paul Specials equipped with P-90's because of the cutting overdriven sound and the inexpensive nature of the guitars.
This new pickup, occasionally named PAF, very quickly took over as the preferred choice for all Gibson models, relegating the P-90 to budget models such as the ES-330, the Les Paul Junior and Special, and the SG Junior and Special, such as those used by Pete Townshend and Carlos Santana.
Early live versions of "You Could Be Mine" featured Slash using a B.C. Rich Mockingbird (as in the video) instead of his usual Gibson Les Paul, due to his use of a tremolo during the solo.