Les Paul Google doodle is a playable guitar

Good evening the Internet! Guitar legend Les Paul is the inspiration for today's Google doodle, which turns the Google logo into a guitar you can strum with your mouse or keyboard.

Today is the birthday of Les Paul -- born Lester William Polsfuss in 1915. Paul was a guitar-playing legend who not only made guitars sing, he also made them. Paul hung round the Epiphone factory after hours, building one of the first solid-body guitars, known as the 'The Log'.

That later became the legendary and instantly recognisable Gibson Les Paul, played by everyone from Carl Perkins, Eric Clapton, Marc Bolan, Keith Richards, George Harrison, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Peter Frampton to Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Mick Jones, Billy Gibbons, Slash, Ace Frehley and Billie Joe Armstrong... the list is endless.

Les Paul also pioneered multi-track recording, jury-rigging several tape players to record his wife and himself repeatedly singing along with each other on the 1948 cut Lover (When You're Near Me). He built the first multi-track recorder out of spare parts from a tape recorder given to him by Bing Crosby.

Still playing right up until the end, despite painful arthritis in his hands, Paul won two Grammies at the age of 90 and performed live every Monday night in New York. He died in 2009.

The Google doodle has celebrated a bunch of much-loved and influential personages lately, whether it's through the medium of modern dance, getting up a head of steam or blasting off into space. And of course there was the Mr Men doodle that brought back happy memories for all of us.

For more musical mucking about, check out these high-tech music videos that put you in charge. For more on Les Paul and the technology that's shaped modern music, rock out with our music and technology firsts. Thank you! You're beautiful!