Interview With Laurence Juber: Masters in Business (Audio)

and Wings fan. He was lead guitarist for Wings in the late seventies and eighties, but he is really a musicologist and and best known amongst a musical audience for the work he's done on guitar. He he is a fingerboard guitarist. Uh really a a master prodigy. I don't know what else you can say about him, A alliant technical player. Lots and lots of other guitarists have a universe of respect for him, and when you hear some of the things he plays, you'll understand why he has

I don't even want to say dabbled. He has opened up a new world of alternative tunings and that allows him to do some really fascinating things with the guitar, including uh playing the melody, the lead and the vocals at the same time. And you'll hear him at the end of the show play two or three songs as well. Most of the interview he had the guitar on his lap and he would demonstrate different things as he was speaking.

If you are at all interested in classical music, rock and pop, or the Beatles, or if you're interested in the financial aspects of being a musician in the modern era, I think you're gonna find this to be quite a tree. It was really delightful having him. He's a charming, dry witted brit And and that very much comes across. So, without any further ado, my conversation with Lawrence Duber. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.

We're gonna try something a little different today. My special guest is not from the world to finance, but from the world of music. His name is Lawrence Duber, and let me just give you a few moments on who he is. Born and raised in London. He began studying the guitar at age thirteen or earlier, agan earning money playing the guitar at that age. Upon graduation from university, he immediately began work as a session guitarist. His first

project was with the producer George Martin. He was tapped to join Paul McCartney and has then been Wings in nineteen seventy eight as their lead guitarist for their world tour. He has been a studio musician on thousands of sessions, recorded countless television theme shows, film soundtracks. You may have heard his lead in the James Bond movie theme The Spy Who Loved Me. It's the James Bond theme in the movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Voted Guitarists of

the Year by Fingerstar Guitar Magazine. Named one of the top acoustic players of all time by Acoustic Guitar mag He has recorded twenty three solo albums since two with a new album coming out in the not too distant future. Many of those albums were released a critical acclaim and he has won two Grammys. No less than a guitarist than Pete Towns. It has called our guest a master of guitar. Lawrence Juber welcome to Bloomberg. Well, thank you very much. Who is this guy anyway? Who is this guy.

So I was describing you to somebody, and the interesting thing is, I said, here's a I who has played pretty much with everybody in the world of rock and roll, and he could walk down the street and nobody's gonna recognize him. He's really incognito. Well, you know musicians, A lot of musicians are Incognitie. Yes, unless you pursue the star track, you inevitably kind of full slightly out of

the limelight. And that suits me just fine because my ambition from the time I started playing when I was eleven, Did you grow up in a musical household? No, so you're the first musician. Until recently, I thought I was the only musician in my family, not counting your daughter, who I know. That's that's different. So we will get to that. But I discovered through some family tree research a year or so ago that I actually have a third cousin, once removed, who's a sax player in England.

So not exactly um immediate family, you know, but I think that what it is is there were a lot of tailors in my family, and as the generations went on, some of them got into couture. But my dad really was an apprentice tailor. And I think that for me, understanding music and appreciating music and the guitar came out of pattern recognition, the patterns of music, the shapes of musical phrases, the shapes of chords on the fingerboard, and

the shape of of all of that. I think was was something that kind of underpinned my my musician ship. So my next question was going to be who you're early musical influences, But you're gonna tell me it was Weavers and Tailors, not what I'm expecting. Now, well, that's a good album. I mean, I'm just talking in terms

of the neurological side of it. The the inspiration was, I mean, you know, I got into listening to music probably know slightly preteens and nineteen sixties three in particular in England was this incredible year because there was this kind of swell of Beatlemania that that started at the beginning of the year with Please Please Me, and then went through Please Please Me from me to you, she loves you and I Want to hold your hand as the you know, every three months we would have a

new Beatles single and it would blow up. By November. It was full scale beatle Mania and my eleventh birthday was in November and the Beatles had been on the Royal Command performance a week before, and my parents realized that I was never going to play saxophone like my dad wanted me to, and it was guitar had kind of become legit at that point because the Beatles were becoming so successful, and once I picked it up, I just never put it down. And when did you realize

you can earn a living with the guitar. I was thirteen. Local bandleader started bringing me in and playing weddings and bar mitzvahs and stuff actually paid gigs, and I was making more money than babysitting or working in the supermarket supermarket, and it's certainly better work than stocking shelves. Yeah, I mean, I did you know I watched my next door neighbors car because he had season tickets for Tottenham Hotspur and

I was a soccer fan back then. I was going to say for an American audience, please, that was one of the London soccer teams and at that time was the like the best soccer team in England. So the question that I think everybody who listens to you has to at one point or another. Thing is you raised on the Beatles and a lot of classic rock and roll, how do you morph towards fingerboard style and acoustic guitar. Well,

I started off on acoustic guitar. And you remember nineteen sixty three wasn't just Beatlemania, it was also the folk boom so Bob Dylan, Jim Baya's Judy Collins, you know, and we had our English versions of those two. And I was really intrigued by the solo guitar players because the idea of a single performer standing in front of an audience with just an acoustic guitar and often no p a, you know, but just that self sufficiency really

was appealing to me. It was one particular piece of music called Angie that was written by another Stone song No, the different Angie the Paul Simon recorded on one of the early Simon and Garf Uncle records, Oh sure, written by Davey Graham who was a British guitar player, and that involved playing a bassline and also playing the melody at the same time. And because I had kind of dabbled with piano when I was very young, but then the piano went away It was at my grandmother's house

and they sold it. For some reason that the the idea of being able to play complete musical statements, meaning the bass and the bass and the melody and the rhythm and everything else led me to really being intrigued by that, and by the acoustic guitar, and and so I got into finger style guitar, blank rag time, and you know, stuff like that just really just really grabbed me. I'm Barry Ridholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on

Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Lawrence Juber, master of the guitar, probably best known to an American audience for his work as lead guitarist for Paul McCartney and Wings. He has also recorded numerous soundtracks for television and movies, as well as produced twenty three original albums. You know you said you picked up the guitar? Really? The Week I Want to Hold Your Hands was released by the Beatles. How influential were they amongst everyone else? To you as

a musician. The big influence was really that they kind of led the charge of this kind of musical youth culture that that overtook England, because you know, the fift is were kind of a gray period in England. You know, the economy really took a hit after the war and it was not that great economically, and then the sixties come along and things really start to kind of pick up and you have this kind of this first wave of the working class baby boomers or you know that

picking up instruments. And it wasn't just the Beatles. It was the Stones and the Animals and the Dave Clark five, and you know a little later, the Kinks and so many English bands that it was remarkable to be growing up at that point in time when there was just this incredible explosion of music. And the Beatles obviously were kind of like the top of the heap because they were the most successful, but they really weren't the only ones. So and my my interests went much broader than them

very quickly. And it wasn't like I would sit down and meticulously work out George Harrison's guitar solos. My consciousness was, oh, that's cool, what's the concept behind it, and how do I do that for myself. You're really a bit of a musical historian and musicologist. I was gonna say philosopher. Musicologists actually I'm a guitar ologist. Guitar ologist, so let's talk a little bit about the covers you do. We have, We have a lot of time to talk about other stuff.

Here's my beef with covers in general, covers being a copy of a copy of somebody else's songs reinterpret So either what what I primarily hear is either a note for note recreation, which makes me sort of drug and say why bother, or something that's so far afield it's

barely recognizable as the original. And what I love about your covers, especially of the Beatles, is that it's immediately recognizable as the song that it is, but it's a very fresh version of it, and you hear nuances and subtleties in the melodies that you might have overlooked in the full four piece or more band version of it. Well, when you strip it down to the musical elements like that, sometimes it exposes really interesting kind of inner workings of it.

But but but here's the thing I mean, there are times when my my interpretations are actually pretty much no accurate. But doing it on the guitar, on a solo guitar, and doing it perhaps for example, with you know, in an alter tuning gives it a different texture, not only a different sonic texture, but sometimes a different emotional texture.

It has a different resonance to it. And I think what's really important with with especially with Beetle tunes, is because I play it to an audience who know the words, they know the tune, and there's that unsung part of it where the audience is kind of internalizing that their own experience with it. So there's a kind of a depth to it that goes beyond simply the guitaristic or

simply the musical. But I try to be true. I try to be true to the melody the spirit of the original to try and encapsulate it, and sometimes it means changing things because I might find that a particular song has a certain angle to it that perhaps wasn't communicated in the way that it was originally recorded. I mean, you know, not every Beatle recording is perfect. It's their iconic.

I hate to use that word because it's become so overused, but it's appropriate their iconic, but not necessarily entirely perfect for the fabric of the song. You take something like in My Life, you know, and the Beatles great song and that their version of it on Rubber's Soul is very consistent with the style of the album. But that's a song that could be taken so many different ways

and has an example. Of course, I'm in the wrong tuning for that, I'm actually in I'm in dad gad tuning d A d g A d um takes something like thing for example. Now, Frank Sinatra covered that tune and I was just kind of tossing that out there. But if I'm going to do an arrangement of it, I'm probably as well as referencing George Harrison's The Beatles version, I'm going to reference Sinatra's version, for example, because that gives me a different place to be. Here's another example, Blackbird,

one of my all time favorite. Now, the thing about Blackbird is that, you know, all the guitar players learned that, but that's the accompaniment you can't get the melody in. So I had to reconceive it, you know, just doing it differently. Now I see what you mean by vertical as opposed to. One of my references for that is Kenny Rankin, because I used to do gigs with Kenny and that was one of the tunes that we would

play together. And so I'm not just thinking about Paul McCartney singing the song, you know, and Kenny Rankin had this incredible you know, it sounded like I had a French horn in his throat this incredible tone. So you know, I'm looking for a way to articulate the melody that has perhaps a little more horn like quality to it rather than the kind of the liver pudlion tinged McCartney is. M when you've released your first Beatles album, LJ meets the Beatles, and I want to say plays the Beatles.

I was in two thousands. What was the response to that? Very good? I mean I got lots of great reviews, who got voted to one of the top ten all time Acoustic Guitar records in Acoustic Guitar magazine, and sold quite well. I mean, for you know, the the acoustic guitar market is not like a huge market. I mean, it's comparable with the classical market. You know, typically, like a hit classical music album may sell ten thousand copies,

but just says a little crossover to part music. It has crossover and and it it, you know, and it still sells. I mean, I personally recommended it to countless people who are Beatles fan and they all come back and and I get repeat business on that because people wear out the CD. I'm Barry Ridults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today

is Lawrence Juber. He is a guitarist extraordinaire. Toured the world with Paul McCartney and Wings, has recorded numerous tell vision and movie soundtracks, including the James Bond theme for The Spy Who Loved Me and lots and countless other studio work. Two time Grammy winner. Let's jump into some of the more arcane, technical and altered tunings that you

seem to like. Tell us about Dad God Dad God D A D G A D was supposedly developed by Davey Graham, a British guitar player sixties fifty and the Yeah in the late fifties early sixties. It really has a drone tuning for him to jam with Moroccan musicians that got picked up by Jimmy Page, you know, for example cash. You know, it's it lends itself to that

kind of thing. But what I discovered when I started fooling around with it was that it also has great possibilities in terms of arranging pop music, and not just current pop music, you know, like rock music, but kind of the Great Anglo American songbook in general. So you know, it works. It just works great for all kinds of stuff.

So you can do Cole Porter, Jerome down the whole list. Yeah, Gershwin Um and I did an album of Um Harold aland tunes for example, I've got the World on six strings and a number of those students I did in in that tuning because it just kind of lends itself to some really interesting concepts. I mean, you take something like Crimeer River and how the tone and the texture scenarity of it, and it gets these voicings that are very almost pianistic in the way that the notes spread together.

Because you have two adjacent scale tones, you have a G N N A, which means that you can get these kind of these kind of pianistic kind of sonarities or or moral orchestral It's it's a way of all orchestrating on the guitar. And then there's also three D strings and two A strings, so octaves again kind of a pianistic kind of approach. Um, and then it lets me do you know where I can use both hands on the fingerboard and get these kind of rhythmic effects.

I should be running film in here. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not. Oh, you know, there plenty of stuff on YouTube, so you don't bother trying to take that stuff down. The copyright issue isn't in it? Or is it just promoting? Well, I mean there's um some of the interestingly enough, I can't if if it's a cover tune and somebody posts it on YouTube, which they do, you don't have I don't have the right to take it down. The copyright

owner of the tune has to take it down. You don't have rights in the performance, no, not, not like you do in the in the copyright. Fascinating. I know, if you can monetize the performance, and how do you because you go out and play it again? Well, or because they you know, if if there's advertising attached to it,

then there's some monetization involved. But you know, the fact is that YouTube is gargantuan as it is, and as useful as it is as a promotion is really is a kind of a a nasty beast on the back of intellectual property rights that there have been all sorts of articles recently about people who who have released songs they've gotten two hundred million plays and they get a check for eighty seven dollars. Well, yeah, but it gets a little twisted because the structure now, and we're kind

of drifting away from guitar tuns. But the structure of of royalty payments is that you have the mechanical and the synchronization rights which belong to the writers and the publishers. But since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you also have

a performance royalty. Now, for example, a songwriter may have something played on Spotify or Pandora, which will generate a minute royalty for the writing side, but the royalty for the performer, which doesn't exist in terrestrial radio, but in the digital medium, the royalty for the performer is substantially higher. So I'm very happy when March rolls around and I see my royalty statements from Sound Exchange for airplay that I get on my Christmas music on Pandora, for example.

I'm very ridults you're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guests at is Lawrence Duber. He is the two time Grammy Award winning guitarists who toured with Paul McCartney and Wins. He's released twenty three albums, many of which were too critical acclaim. Let's talk a little bit about the future of music. Recording isn't the money maker it used to be, So how do musicians

make a living today? It's funny being on a Masters of Business show because I was never a Master of Business. I just knew I play guitar and I can get paid this much for this gig. So I never really learned until I worked with McCartney. I never really learned about the music publishing side of things and how the revenue really comes in, not so much from the artists side, but from the writer publisher side, because that's always been governed by statutory royalty rates. So it's not like somebody,

well they do. Record companies will still, you know, try and cut you down on the statutory right. But at least you know that there's a copyright try funeral that says there's nine point one since coming to you for every copy of this particular composition that you write and publish. So I learned a lot from working with Paul because he had become even by the late seventies, had really

become the largest independent music publisher in the world. You describe yourself as having a masters in music at McCartney Universe. So what did he teach you about about that business side? And it's really in terms of making how you can make money on that side of things too, own your own,

your own soul and your own your your material. And you know, I never consider myself to be a composer until that point where it was like, oh, you mean you don't have to just sit there and wait for a bolt of lightning to come from the heavens that you you know, it's it's a job. It's Paul's very has this great work ethic as far as he still a studio, well not just the touring, but I'm going to write I'm going to write a tune today, or I'm going to write a tune this morning and another

one this afternoon. I mean, it's you know, it's like what John and Paul did when they sat down and they said, well, once they started making money, it's like, what what should we write today? Well, let's let's write a swimming pool. I had a new roof I mean, you know you because if you have a hit song, I mean that there is you know, that side of

the equation is a valuable one. More recently, the performance riot royalties have have kicked in for for players, for performers in a way that never existed in the past, because you as a studio musician, for example, you wouldn't get any kind of back end on radio airplay. But even the artists never got any radio airplay. So as a studio musician you get paid hourly and then you're out. Well, but then there's a musicians union, you know, I'm I mean,

I've been in you know, the English Musicians Union. I've been a member of the air for them since the mid seventies. I have a pension coming from, you know, all the work, especially in the TV and movie end of things, that seems to be better structured and more lawyered up to a large extent. Yes, but but it's also it's a evolved now. I mean, there's there are

different funds. There's a secondary payments fund where if you play on a movie score, for example, some tiny portion of the of the growth the distributors growth of secondary markets, like if it goes to DVD or you know, that generates payments to musicians, and that's the kind of thing that in the dry Spells, that's one of the things that musicians can survive on in l A. It's a really odd situation because you go and work for a studio as a as a musician and play on a

movie score. You're an employee, but you're walking in there with perhaps with a two hundred thousand dollar violin. You know, your you have your you bring your own equipment to the table. You you kind of are defined really as an independent contractor by anything except the fact that the studio says, no, you're an employee because you're doing this work for higher and you know, a lot of us, a lot of us end up with you know, with

corporations so that you can work that better. What's happened is as as the revenue from records else has dropped off, what has kicked in as well as the digital royalty

streams for performers is also all the licensing stuff. So that my daughter Elsie is a songwriter and she co wrote a song called Fireball for Pitball, which was a hit a couple of years ago, and that got licensed by a Spanish telecom company for a for a commercial for example, and so everybody that participated that, the writers and the publishers, all get you some piece of it.

Plus the performance. The TV performances generate performance royalties on the writer side, so that gets processed through B M I R s CAP or whatever their their membership is.

So you have to kind of learn how to be cognizant of the revenue streams and then which used to be CD sales and now it sounds it's like composition and performance, except that, you know, if you were an artist and not the writer, your record royalties were never really that great because record companies would always find ways to cross collateralize or to to you know, to take promotional budgets out of your royalty stream or use controlled

composition claus as where yeah, there may be fourteen tracks on your album, but we're only going to pay you for ten kinds of things. You know, where that there are you know, there's always the lawyer loyally side of that. Not a very nice business, was it never was a nice business. The opportunities are there, and there are some people that have been making actually decent money from YouTube videos. For example, if you if you understand how to monetize

that stuff. So the the opportunities are there, But the problem is that you go study music in a conservatory that will teach you about how to make a living doing it. You know, one of my pet peeves is that you go study classical guitar. You can come out after three or four years of conservatory and not know how to string a chord sequence together or know how to put repertoire together to play at a wedding, for example,

which may be outside of teaching. The only real avenue for for making a living is doing those kind of live performances. Because if you're a classical guitar player, there are maybe fifteen classical guitar players in the world who can make living as concert performance. So, you know, teaching and and playing local gigs becomes a viable way of making a living. That's really, really quite interesting. So we've heard over the years horrible stories about problems with managers

stealing from their clients. Why is it that it always seems that big names to people like Billy Joel and I think Sting had an issue and it's a whole one of Philly Joel in particular, because I mean his manager AARTI RiPP had the perfect name. You know, that should have been a warning early on, don't have a business nap manager names Rip. So so why is this

always seem to be millions of dollars? Later we discover our our artists not watching their dollars that closely, that millions could go out the door before anyone notices that. How how can you if you're also full time writing, recording, touring, doing all of the stuff that goes along with it, interviews, um, photo sessions, everything that. You know what Joni Mitchell described as the the star making machinery behind the popular song

It's a full time job. It was remarkable in Wings that Linda McCartney could be a full time band member and a mother of four kids. You know, it was it was hard for her and that was really the the final demise of the band was that it just became too much and the band was always Paul and Linda's band. So it's just it's difficult to take care of the creative business and take care of the business business.

I've managed to be able to kind of balance the two, you know, the right brain and the left brain side of things. But It took me a long time to understand how to do it, and I'm still not that good at it, but I'm getting better now. I've just started my own record label, which means for my next release, which is a Christmas album, I had to license a certain number of tunes. So I got to Harry Fox's

website and I buy licenses. And then I discovered that sleigh Ride, written by le Roy Anderson, isn't handled by the Harry Fox agencies, so I had to then contact his family, who then put me in touch with BMG and I got mechanical license there, and just those kinds of things that you know somebody in an office has to do well, I just know. But but the technology now has allowed me to be able to stand and I have a standing desk. I don't sit in my

studio when I'm playing guitar UM. I can sit there, stand there, and I can you know, in one screen, I can be taking care of that business. On another screen, I can be doing a guitar arrangement or writing UM an article for a guitar magazine or something like that. That the ability to multitask, I think has made it

a lot easier. But when it comes to the kind of the higher level of things in terms of dealing with finances and the fact that wealth can come very quickly and having good wealth management is not anything that a music student is necessarily taught how to do, or in a spiring pop star, especially the younger pop stars. I mean that you know they're lucky when they've got

a parent that's kind of keeping oversight. So for people who want to find more of your writings and music, I usually send people to Lawrence Jubber dot com, l AU any other place or any other things that they would want to look for or at. Well, that's a good place to start. And you can always just do a search on YouTube and find all kinds of stuff. I mean, I'm constantly finding stuff on youtual. I found

I found on my Wikipedia page. I discovered the Charles as Nevore album that I played on in Paris in nineteen seventy seven was number one in France for almost an entire year, and I had no idea I actually read that I found it on my Wikipedia page because I don't, you know, I never put that up. Somebody put it up. I mean, I've I've gone in there

and I've kind of tweaked a few things. And that's the problem is not only now do you have to deal with the creative side, you also have to deal with the social network side and the web, the eber presence aspect of things too. And I've always pretty much tried to manage myself with all of this because I had a business manager in England and it, you know, it did not end well. And it's like, Okay, I'm not going down that route again. And I like being

hands on and that's something I learned. Another thing I learned from Paul is how much he really kind of his hands on with what he does. We've been speaking with Lawrence Duber, guitarist for Paul McCartney. Thank you, l J for being so generous with your time. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure and check out our podcast Actors, where we keep the digital tape rolling and continue chatting

about all things financial and music. Be sure and check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com or follow me on Twitter at Riolts. I'm Barry Ridholts. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Are you looking to take your business to the next level. The accounting, tax, and advisory professionals from cone Resnick can guide you. Cone Resnick delivers industry expertise and forward thinking perspective that can

help turn business possibilities into business opportunities. Look ahead, gain insight, imagine more. Is your business ready to break through? Learn more at cone Resnick dot com slash Breakthrough, cone Resnick Accounting, Tax, Advisory Lawrence. Thank you so much for doing this. This has really been an absolute pleasure, and there's so much stuff to go over. Um, let's jump right into the crazy copyright stuff that's going on. So last year we had or two years ago, we had the Marvin Gay

bloodlines issue. Uh, not too long ago, there was a huge Bloomberg story about the Stairway to Heaven copyright issue. And then just recently there was another big copyright Yeah, the at and photograph one. It's the same lawyer that did the blurredlines. Not to be confused with the Tom Petty um issue. Well, yeah, that was I won't back down the Sam Smith one, which which was clearly and Tom Petty agreed, or rather Sam Smith agreed that there would. But see the thing about it is that there are

there are there's musical substance. That is, it works in such a way that sometimes you can accomplish you can get to the same place from completely different roots. UM. And you see that UM for example, I mean with the Stairway to Heaven case that is going to Trial, which seemed to be based on very similar classical exactly the um the Spirit song Tourists, which uses this UM, uses this kind of figuration which actually, if you if

you break it down musically, actually is the same as um. UM. While my guitar gently weeps, oh really, but it doesn't have the melod doesn't have the same melody. Car but but neither of them came first. I mean you can go back. But but Stairway to Heaven see Stairway to Heaven goes down chromatically. You can do the same thing with my funny out Valentine. You know you can do that same thing. Um. You can do that kind of progression.

And when you do a progression like that here you have an A with an octave A above it, you go down to the G sharp the harmony note is that now now you're going to find that in a music textbook. You know, that's part of the substance that's the public domain aspect of music. You could there's a there's a composition, you can find it on YouTube. There's a sonata for guitar and violin from six nine by an Italian composer named Grenada, which has that phrase shows

up thirty seconds into it. You know, it's it's not a unique phrase by any means. And it's not the same phrase in the in the Spirit song because it's using the same kind of a pegiation. But that's a guitaristic thing. So you're a little skeptical on well, I'm skeptical on I'm skeptical on it because, Okay, so there's a there's a finger picture acoustic guitar, and there are recorders on the on the Spirit tune, and there's recorders on the stairway to have it, and there's a moment

where they there's a very similar sonority. Yeah, there's an overlap, and Jimmy Page had access because Zeppelin open for Spirit while they were performing that song. But it doesn't write to me. It it doesn't right to the level of copyright infringement when it comes to the actual composition. Could it come to that level in regards to the the feel the sound and feel of the recording, perhaps, but

does does that really apply? But a musicologist could draw the conclusion and swear a jury, And the reality is that a jury of one's peers in this particular instance should really be all rock and roll famous in order to be able to to have a true, a true evaluation of it. It just goes to the fact that intellectual property is probably best not tried in front of a jury like that, because the nuances of it are

beyond easy explanation. I was a little perplexed. Look, I'm a Marvin Gay fan, but I also who didn't love the line song that was everywhere? But I didn't really see that, not really, let's let's not even let's not even hedge it. I did not see one as having ripped off the other. There's a flavor, Yeah, there's a groove. There's a groove flavor to it. But putting a cow bell on a track does not does not represent a breach of copyright. And I read the musicologist report. You know,

I studied musicology. I read the musicologist report. You could take Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star and show how there's an alignment of notes that corresponds in such a way that you could perhaps persuade an audience that song A was derived from that, you know, but it was the cow bell that gave it that field, But that cow bell. But but the judge wouldn't let the jury listen to the record. The judgment was not on the basis of the record. The judgment was on the basis of the composition,

which was not the same thing. So I I personally thought that that was that opened a can of worms, as I haven't yet looked into the edge shereh and one that that just came up on my radar earlier this morning. And I'm, you know, just busy running around, but I want to look into that because I have a suspicion that what's happening is that there's this movement

to try and open up that area. But you know, for example, you take you take the Bau Diddley, You feel, well, how many records, how many songs have used like that? What are you going with that? You're going to give Bo Diddley royalties because they took the groove, you know, but all music is based on what has come before, So then you could look at you know, Ernest Confeld,

the great film composer. You listen to some of his music and you put that next to John Williams Star Wars, and you can hear where John Williams got it from. Is it Is it an actual breach of copy? Right? Well, if you're an aggressive lawyer with a with an aggressive musicologist, you could possibly make that case. But there has to be a recognition somewhere that there's a line that there are only a certain number of notes, there are only a certain number of grooves, and there's only a certain

kind of sonarity. Does the sonority of a fingerpick guitar and a recorder really right to the level of a copyright infringement? You could say there's a blurred line, but I won't go yeah, that's a terrible pot so um, well, but be in blurredlines case, of course, they opened the writers opened the can of worms by um by preemptively seeking relief against being sued because they knew that they would.

They anticipated that that was gonna I think that and again not to go on Marvin Gaye, but they did hear through the grapevine that lawsuit was a lawsuit was coming. I mean, that was really supposed to be out there, so once once we're I think the family reached out to them and that's why they that's why they did a preemptent um. The writer hit get a writ is

the among songwriters because it happens so often now. But but a lot of these lawsuits, I just I think they I don't know whether they rise to the level of abusive process. But you know, when it's somebody should come close, Yeah, when it's somebody's like you know, said, well, you know this this little riff clearly was taken from

my my song. You know, there was the one with Madonna Madonna record where the judge said, you know this horn stab was so diminimous that they're not going to that doesn't constitute something that needed to be licensed, is to the even the the original recording copyright owners didn't notice for twenty years, you know that. George Harrison, my my sweet lord. You know this is a little bit there. But the songs are so different. But Alan sobias. But Alan Klein was on both sides of the laws suit.

How is that the publishing on he's so fine, the Chiffons, he's so fine. And he was also managing, So who brought who brought that suit. I think he did. I don't remember the exact dat. He was on both side of it. All right, So I only have you for a limited amount of time, and I have lots of questions, all right, but I have to I have to play a little bit of Let you play a little music, and this time I'm actually gonna remember to record it. I'm retuning. So which way are you going? I'm going

back to dad Gad. I wasn't standard tuning. Just how often are you in standard tuning half the time? Oh? Really? Yeah, I'd still live there, right, It's just that, um My my second home is dad Gad. I thought that was in California. By the way, how do you like being in to paraphrase the sting song, how do you like being an Englishman in California? Oh? I love being in California, whether the geography, everything about it. It's just I mean,

my roots have become so entrenched there. I mean, you know, I've got two daughters and two grandchildren. It's like I couldn't imagine going back to England, not just in terms of the weather, but also just being in America always seems like you can get more things done. There's always there's always a certain inertia in English, although there's a difference between I was gonna say, is that true in Europe in general? To some extent? I was just in Italy and I was shocked to find that half of

Italy does the siesta like Spain does that. That was always a alright, so I'm going to record this man that I put her on video instead of a photo. Okay, I saw her standing there. I have to put this down to applaud fantastic. So that was great. So now, but here's an example that baseline Paul got it from a Chuck Berry record. Okay, no copyright on a baseline like that. So how long does it take for you to take that original song and then rearrange it in

a to this guitar, this tuning. It could be it could be ten minutes, It could be three months. It just depends on Yeah, so I know again, another really surprising song is I Am the Walrisk. Yeah, that took a while. I was gonna say, you could hear. You could hear a lot of of of effort and love went into putting that together. Again, it starts with the orchestration, not what you expect to hear, let's let's get a little bit of that before we try a few originals.

Wol fantastic. What are they going to start making a Martin acoustic with a wammy bar? Because I get that. So you're you're just doing it that way without the actual parts. It's called I call it the virtual wammy it is a virtual So so let's talk about some of the other stuff that you've recorded, and again I know I have we have to, So I mentioned I want to talk about some of the originals, but I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about the Wings album. You did, you said? Paul actually

had suggested this. Well, gave him LJ plays the Beatles, and he said, well what about Wings? You know, because it's a publisher. He kind of like, you cant help like people who recording. So I was a huge Beatles fan growing up, heartbroken ten when the Beatles break up,

but harder nine years, all but heartbroken. And then when some of the Beatles songs, some of the Wings songs came out, and you know, everybody loves Admiral Halsey, Uncle Hal and there's a handful of songs from the from Jet and Live and Let Die, And there's whole bunch of stuff that's great, But there was some early songs of his that when we first heard them, it's like, you know, it really needs the acid wash of John two offsets Paul's sweetness. But your covers completely changed my

perspective on it. So silly love songs, maybe I'm malaised my love. Listen to what the man said. I always thought of these as very light pop confesstion, not serious music. Your covers of those reveal we talked earlier about, you referenced revealing certain emotional resonances and nuances that may have gotten lost in in the orchestration. And you've made me relook these songs that I kinda that's fluff, because they're

really not. They're beautiful melodies. You know, you look at any of the Great American Songbook songs, you know, just putting aside the Anglo American aspects of it. You look at Gershwin or Jerome Kern or Harold Allen. None of these writers were singers. You know, there were a few, I mean, um uh you you know, um Jogi Carmichael, for example, but but typically you know, they wrote songs for other people to sing. The idea of the songwriter as the artist making the records was was really a

sixties phenomenon. I mean, the Beatles were really the first, one of the first bands, certainly the first band to achieve that level of success. Um who wrote their own material. And and that was a battle they had to fight at the beginning with George Martin, because you know, they said, George Martin said, here's the song you're going to record, and they said no, and they did it begrudgingly, and they ended up, you know, how do you do it? Jerry and the Pacemakers had a big hit with the

Mickey Most song. They said, we want to do our own songs, and we're writing songs that are good enough to do, you know, and you when you go back in history and you realize that, you know, these composers

were writing for other people. We've become so um enamored of the Beatles versions of the songs that to be able to take them and and strip it down to the same kind of musical fabric as you would get with a Gershwin song, or or an Island song or at your own current song, um then becomes an illuminating experience because the nature of the music of it, which

is which is lovely. Yeah, it's lovely, and it's you know the what it's it's and it's it's so it's so nuanced, and it's so musically clever without being obviously clever. But you have to kind of strip away the familiar and paulse voice is so familiar, and you've heard it so many times it's easy to lose track of what what the underneath of that is that the only comparison I could think of. I was a huge Pretender's fan.

I love the band, Love Chrissie Hines and they She ultimately released an album I think was called Isle of You that's horror and a string quartet in front of an audience, a string quartet, And similarly, you discover, wow, these aren't just you know, headbanging rock and roll. So they're a beautiful right and and in in a number of ways, you've forced me to relook at a number of songs that I always kind of, you know, shrugged off, especially the wing songs. That little that little stands you

just played. That's a lovely little melody, and it's too easy to dismiss it as that's just a pop song until you hear it in that context. But you know, um, I Got Rhythm is just a pop song until you hear it sung by you know, Tony Bennett or somebody. I mean, it's these are vehicles for interpretation and that, you know. And it's not like there aren't a million cover songs of Beatles records. You know, a lot of them have just kind of got lost over the years.

You know, you have to rediscover it's not just um, Joe Cocker doing with a little help from my friends, for example, which is you know, one of those iconom I mean, there's a lot of them, you know, you know, but it runs into that problem if it's too exacting, why bother? And if it's so far afield. I mean, Joe Cocker made that his own, but there are so many covers you here, and it's like, well, you know

that it's a business. I mean, the fact is that you have an artist, you have a record company, you have an artist in repertoire, and our person who says, okay, we have to put together a repertoire for this album, and and it's just how do you bring something fresh to it? Um? And it depends on the artist. It depends on the artist tree involved. So speaking of artistry,

let's talk about some of your original songs. And in the last five or ten minutes we have I just have five, and then I would there's a number of questions I haven't even remotely gotten to. So let me ask you two quick questions before we get to your uh some some of my favorite stuff of yours. So you're in the business of being a professional musician. What do you do when a recent college grad comes to you and says, I'm thinking of a career in music.

What what sort of advice would you give to that person? I would say, don't think about it, do it really despite all the changes and the challenges, and just be be educated, be aware of where the revenue streams are, be aware of how difficult it is to make a living as a musician, and be properly prepared for it. See, I think that what happens is you get a lot of people who base their musical education on emulate ing somebody else without having the foundation two to build a

career on. You know, there was a time when you could, perhaps you know, back in the sixties or the fifties, you could hear somebody and say, oh, I can do that, and you know, be do your own version of Johnny Cash or Elvis or whatever. But now you know the music businesses so that the real kind of money end of the business is so focused on a certain segment of audience in terms of you know, basically kind of

preteens and teens. And you know, if you're a female artist and you're over the age of twenty, then your your chances of getting signed to a record deal diminish quite rapidly. Um. One of the reasons my daughter Elsie really focused on the songwriting side of it, because it's if you make inroads as a songwriter, then you have more freedom as an artist. You know, it depends whether you want to be a pop star when you whether you want to be an artist. And I think the

advice I would give is what are your goals? Do you simply want to be up on stage with lights and and um and group is and you know, is it just the glamor of it that that attracts you or is it a serious desire to make music and to make that your focus and and you know, so I think it's important to set realistic goals. Um, and it is possible to make money as a musician, but you know, if you join a band and you go out on the road, don't expect to at least not

straight away. So that leads me to a question I asked all my guests, which which is simply, what do you know today that you wish you knew when you started let's pull it years ago? I think I wish that I had been better informed about the writing and the publishing side of it so that I could have started that earlier. But I did it when I did it,

and that's that's fine. So speaking of which, let's let's get one more tune from you before you have to go out, which is what what is your favorite original? In terms of that's like asking which one is my favorite kids? Okay, I won't ask you that, but I will say what's your favorite not your favorite song? What's your favorite original song? To play? What do you have the most fun playing? Which is a different question. It

is a different question. And um, and I do notice when I when I saw you at the Cunning Room, you look like you're having a ball playing. Oh yeah, let me let me do this one because it's a It's a tune called catch and it's just it's I usually open the show with it because it just kicks everything into games. M kokoo fantastic. I have the greatest job in finance, Larry, Thank you so much for being Larry. Where did that come from? LJ? Thank you so much

for being so generous with your time. Um, if you've enjoyed terrific. If you've enjoyed this conversation, be sure and look up an inch or down an inch for any of the other nineties seven or so conversations we've had. Be sure and check out all of l j's music and books and everything else at Lawrence Juber dot com. You've been listening to Masters and Guitar on Bloomberg Radio. Look Ahead Imagine more. Gain insight for your industry with

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