What to Do When Paul McCartney Comes Calling

is really quite fascinating. I found him because I'm such a huge Beatles fan, and his cover versions of Paul McCartney's Wings and three albums of Beatles songs, it's just astonishing and delightful and there's really nothing else, nothing else like it. My my recording engineer Medina, was just blown away by the version he did of Uh, she Loves You. But any of the songs he he does are just so unique to him and yet so obviously a Beatles song.

They're just just amazing. And what's really fascinating is the depth of his musical knowledge and his understanding of the history of both the guitar as an instrument and the history of music and how it's developed. It's it's really fascinating. I love his work. I find him fascinating. I was thrilled to be able to sit here and and listen to him. Um. I recorded two of his songs and I put them up on YouTube. One of the Beatles. The other is Little Wing, which is just insane version

of that song. So, with no further ado, here is my conversation with Lawrence Duber, my extra special guest today, is one of my very every musicians in the world. His name is Lawrence Juber. He was born and raised in London, uh Immediately upon graduation from university, began working as a session guitarist with a little known producer named George Martin. He was a studio musician on thousands of sessions before he was invited by Sir Paul McCartney's band

Wings for their ninety eight tour. That's really what brought him to wider spread public notice. He has recorded twenty five solo albums, many of which have received critical acclaim. He has won two Grammys. He was named top acoustic guitar player of all time by Acoustic Guitar Magazine and has been called a master of the acoustic guitar by no less than the Who's Peter Townsend, Lawrence Juber. Welcome

back to Bloomberg. Happy to be here. So we could do the whole conversation with you, just answering music without so before we get into the specifics, I have to give you kudos. The last time you were here and people I did not mention that you're also a musicologist.

We had a long conversation about what was the copyright suit against led Zeppelin to Heaven, and you very specifically said, I don't see how both of them, meaning Zeppelin and the plaintiff didn't steal the music from this, this classical piece of work from the fifteen hundreds or sixteen hundred. And it turned out the court more or less agreed with you. It was basically it was a public domain and you can't steal. But you've got to look at the context in terms of led Zeppelin, that they were

in the habit of purloining existing material. Oh really, that was I mean, one can one can look at that, but it's not uncommon when you say proloining. There's a difference between inspired by and stolen front and like having to add other composers to the credits down the line when they got caught out. We just saw that happened recently with with blurred Lines, and we saw that not too long ago with another big song, Birdlines. Bloodlines is

a weird one. Yeah, I was surprised by that. It was almost like the drum line was well, yeah, the thing that the weird thing about it was the judge didn't allow the record to be played, and yet it was the groove on the record that was actually what

had been taken. And you know, if that was the case, if groove was the issue, you know, Bo Diddley would have been a multimillionaire on the basis of everybody from him, whereas like Chuck Berry actually did get you know, did get compensated for Beach Boys, you know, surfing USA taking, you know, and John and and got sued, you know because here comes on the flat top, you know, and um, it's from you Can't Catch Me. It's did he lose? Yeah,

he loves that. And obviously George Harrison, well, but George Harrison was really weird because Alan Klein owned the publishing catalog for both that for both songs, so he was basically himself yeah, that can that happens my my my brother in law, Ross Handles, has handled the Beach Boys record company for a while and there was one particular lawsuit, you know, there's all this intrigue within the Beach Boys, you know where Al al Jardine was on both sides

of a lawsuit. He was basically suing himself and the judge pointed that out. So the problem with that is that your legal costs or twice as much, but you're guaranteed to win. That's right. So you lose, so you can lose, but you can also win. So so is this an ongoing problem with copyright issues and music? You would think that everything is always based loosely on what came before. Well, there is that, I mean, there are there are elements that the substance of music is in

the public domain. I mean very simply. You know, you take a string is a guitar straight and you touch it halfway. You have an octave, You touch it in thirds, you have a fifth, fourth, five, and then you you keep going up there and you get what's called the harmonic series. And out of that harmonic series you build chords, you build melodies. The building blocks are pretty fundamental and how you arrange those building blocks and do it in a way to avoid stepping on somebody else's copyright is

the challenge. And in in the songwriting world, the the the the adage is right a hit, get it rid because the well you saw the Tom Petty song sounded so much so, and I bet you that he didn't

actually copy here. It was just simply that that's kind of a progression that you and I mean that there were some Australian guys that put together a YouTube video where they took dozens of songs, all of which were number one records, and all had exactly the same court sequence because there's no copyright on the court sequence copyright strictly speaking copyrights on melody and lyrics, so in the case of blurred lines, they were going outside of the

bounds of that. And what you end up with is is just aggressive proactive musicologists finding lawyers and lawyers that they team up with that that can really muddy the waters with all of it. What was the talking pacabell Cannons and geek that everybody said that that a lot of songs have loosely been based on It's a similar sequence. I mean that's the pacabell But for example, you know, these kind of sequences is not uncommon, so you get that that sequence. So many songs, you know, like Journey,

you know, Don't Stop Believing is based on that. But it's not a copyright herble thing. That substance of it is just is truly in the public domain. It's how you articulate it. It's what lyrics you put to it, what you do melodically, and how much of a melody is the same as something else. My special guest today is Lawrence Duber. He played with Sir Paul McCartney and Wings on tour in the late seventies and recorded too, And what did you record with them? I'm back to

the Egg album. What's the big song from that? The single that was contemporaneous with that was coming up, It was good Night Tonight and then it was getting closer and arrow through me that that period the late like the Indian Summer of Wings as they call it. But then after that coming because the last Wings number one was coming up, which was live and that you're playing with George Martin, You're doing a lot of session work. What's it like when the call comes from McCartney, Hey,

I need a guitarist for the next tour. It didn't quite come that way. I had been playing on a TV show with David Essex, was big English pop star at the time, and each week they would have a different musical guest. So one week was Twiggy, which was kind of fun. They did send in the clowns together

Um Ronnie Specter the next week. Then the next week was Denny Lane, and Denny was one of the founding member of Wings with Paul and Linda and Um had originally been the lead singer with the Moody Blues and We did Go Now, which was a big Moody Blues hit. UM and Denny liked my playing and we kind of bonded.

And then a couple of months after I ran into him at a London studio where Paul and Linda were working with him, and then he introduced me, but there was still I mean, this was kind of September October of seventy seven. I got the call in April of seventy eight, so it wasn't like an overnight thing, and I was very entrenched as a studio musician. I had

that would been my ambition from the time I was thirteen. Now, of course, if I knew then what I know now, I would have oriented myself to be being a songwriters a lot more money at that. But nonetheless, my my goal was to play guitar and make a living doing I wanted to be a professional guitar player, whatever that took, being in top forty bands, playing in jazz bands. I

played in the National Uth Jazz Orchestra. I'd established myself and I was working at abbey Road in the Iconic studio to the Beatles Studio on a session and I got a phone call. Now getting a phone call on a session at abbey Road was usual. This is for for the younger listeners. Back then. We didn't all have cell phones. It was literally white courtesy phone. Lawrence Juber coming in for you, and the phone was up in the next of the control room. And there's a big

long staircase. And you never went up there as as a musician, you know, you stayed down stayed downstairs on the studio floor. But I had to go up. And I've never seen the control room before. So go up in the control room, go take the phone call, and it's McCartney's office as MPL and the guy says, Jenny wants to know if you can come and jam on Monday, and oh, by the way, Paul and Linda will be there.

And as it happens, I was free, thank goodness. And if you weren't, if I wasn't, I would have made myself. And I kind of went into a slight panic because I didn't really know any of the Wings stuff. You know, at that time, I was into being a hot shot studio player, and it wasn't. I was listening to pop records, but you know, there weren't a lot of guitar solos on the Wing records, and now that was the thing,

you know. I was much more into more of the progressive FUSIONI Staff and Weather Report and UM returned to Forever, and I was listening to like Chick Career and then like Los Angeles guitar players like Larry Carton, Lee Written On, you know, those kind of like jazz guy, fusion guy studio players and UM. But so I brought some LPs

from my brother and listened over the weekend. But I realized there was no way I was going to be able to anticipate what we were going to do, and as it turned out, we jammed on some chuck Berry grooves and some reggae kind of field things, and they said, what are you doing for the next few years, at which point I had to think about it deeply for a nano second, because you know, I'd established myself so when I worked really hard and I was making a

decent living doing it, but I couldn't turn down the opportunity to work with Paul McCartney. So you know, I said, well, I guess I'm playing with you. I think the rule of thumb is when Paul McCartney says, what are you doing for the next few years, you tell me exactly. So it was it was a big change now, but personally it happened at a really crucial point in my life because my father passed away a month earlier, so

it was a very kind of emotionally wrenching period. And you know, to then step into the situation where not only was I working for Paul, but he was kind of an artistic mentor as well, and it really was. It became an extension of my education because I had studied London University got about your music degree in musicology and music theory. I never really studied guitar formally, except in high school. I had classical guitar lessons, but it

wasn't my ambition to be a classical guitar player. It was simply a way to have the necessary grade level in performance to be able to continue to study music theory, because what intrigued me was the way that music was put together, and watching you play various songs, it's clear that you don't just pick up a guitar and strum. All of the compositions I've seen you perform have been constructed painstakingly with great a forethought, if that's even a word.

But it's clear that these aren't just oh, let me run off a few riffs. You really spend time charting these things out in great theme, figuring out how all the parts work together. I mean, that's that's the challenge, that's the technique. So McCartney's and Linda say to you, hey, let's go on tour. What's actually not not straight away? No, first thing that happens when we went up to Scotland to his farm and spent a few weeks just working

through potential material for an album. So before we're even rehearsing for the tour came away date way later because he owed he had just signed with Columbia Records, had been on Capitol for years. Signed with Columbia as a signing bonus, he got a great deal on the Frank Music CBS Songs Frank Music catalog, which included Greece, chorus Line and Annie, all of which got made into movies within a year of him acquiring those copyrights. Yeah, hit, Paul was well on the way to becoming the largest

independent music publisher in the world. Because if Linda's father, Lee represented a lot of the composers. Lee Eastman was big time, big time music lawyer, and in fact, after we had spent some time in Scotland and we shot a video from an existing track, we then came to New York, went out to Long Island, out to the Hampton's and spent a few days getting to know chat about the business end of it with with Lee Eastman,

which was pretty impressive, I have to say. And then we went back to England and then went up to Scotland again and started recording an album, which we continued to do in Scotland, and then we went down to a castle on the South coast of England, Limb Castle, which like a thirteenth century with battlements and ghosts and

spiral stay cases. It was great. And then we went into Abbey Road and did some recording there and ended up actually in the basement of Paul's studio, Paul's office in Soho Square, London, one Soho Square, which is like a great addressed and we built a replica of the control room of Abbey Road studio too so that we could mix the album because we couldn't get into Abbey Row because Kate Bush I think Cliff Richard and Kate Busch were using it and we couldn't get the studio

that we wanted, so we just Paul created his own. Let's talk a little bit about the business of music. You mentioned you were happy earning a living as a studio musician. Do those careers still exists to the same degree they used to? They do to some extent, I mean, you know, the union a for them used to have a lot of cloud and in some areas it still does. I mean in television movies as long as their studio movies.

This you know, and and it certainly can be rewarding, but it's not as reliable a source of income as it was even twenty years ago. I mean it really the amount of that kind of work has diminished because the technology has had an enormous impact. Whereas it used to be that you'd have to put together an orchestra to do a score, and now you can do it, you know, in your bedroom basically, um with a laptop. So it doesn't necessarily have the same dimension to it.

But then you know, that depends on the budget. But but being a studio musician is was always really going back to the twenties, was a viable way of making a living, just not nearly as much as it was not nearly as much today as it once was. Correct, I mean, now really we had the money. Is is in the songwriting and my daughter Elsie, for example, is has becoming a successful songwriter, and I see how it works for her in terms of and it's not just records.

It's not just records and television streaming is streaming is not a great source of revenue for songwriters. For performers, it's better the ratio for they find something of mine gets played on serious example, Pandora. Hopefully Pandora will still be around for a while if it gets played there. I make seventeen times as much as a performer as I would as the as the writer publishing. Does that

make any sense? That seems it makes sense if you're the performer, but if you're the performer writer, I guess there's a certain comma involved because performers never got and still don't get money from terrestrial radio at all. It was always looked at as promotional and not exactly exactly. It's free promotion for your concerts, but that which is why it used to be free promotion for your albums. Well before that was free promotion for your live performances.

So we went from live performances as a big source of income to albums album and now we're back to live performances to a largic live performances and T shirts, merchandise um and and CDs have you know, dropped off a lot, but you know, show merchandise in terms. I mean, you've seen me at my shows, you know, with with a stack of CDs and a line of people running

signatures and stuff. So that's that's a away And it's great because I would get to meet the fans, but I also get to hand over the work you know the artistic work. But but the real money in songwriting is in first of all, is in radio, airplay and television and synchronization licenses. So a song, I mean, for example, else co wrote Fireball for Pitball and that got used

big song got used on Dancing with the Stars. They pay a synchronization license for the right to use it, and then b m I collect performance royalties for it. So there are revenue streams that develop out of that. UM. Cell phone company might license it or CBS, you know se Um. She also co wrote a song for Major Laser called Powerful and CBS Television we're using it as background for promos for upcoming shows, so they pay a license fee for that that generates b m I UM.

So there are there are solid revenue streams that come from that kind of activity. UM. And that's really where the music publishes, you know, that's that's their lifeblood, is that kind of activity, and it's worth their while to have a roster of successful songwriters that who's publishing they administer, and that you know, publishing is typically kind of a a lot of pennies that add up to a substantial stream.

So so the thought of a couple of people getting together in a garage, recording an album, going on tour still a viable business model, and there are people that are doing that, especially if they get good social media support, who can actually make some decent money. And I hear rumor of people that actually make money out of YouTube videos. But but the reality of it is that YouTube doesn't really monetize as well as some other outlets. But it's

a it's a new frontier because digital just changed everything basically. Really, that's that's fascinating. So so given the shift to digital from analog recordings and the way you as a musician have changed, um where you focus your time. What does this mean for people who want to go into the field of music. Is their emphasis completely different than it once was to some extent, yes, I mean I think

it's it's actually broadened the field. I mean, thirty years ago, there were no video game that's a source of revenue from I've written for video I've written for Blizzard Entertainment, Activision, Blizzard. I did music for Diablo three, which is a big game that was a giant game, and that's something that

didn't exist in a previous generation. As a man named Tom Tommy Tallarico, who is the most successful of all the video game composers, going back to like Super Mario Brothers kind of like you know, those very like Nintendo games. That's a new end of the business. Let's talk a little bit about some of the guitarists you mentioned. You mentioned a few names earlier. Remind me of who you referred to out in l A. Well, I mean the number one on the list I think for everybody is

Jango Reinhart. Oh well, yeah, but the guys in l A would be like Larry Carlton and Lee Writtener, you know who. And that started off the studio players. There was a pass of being a studio player in l A. That was followed by like Bonnie Castle, um, and and players like that who were studio guys but also were jazz players so they could do and roll. They could, but they preferred the jazz. I mean Bonnie Castle, for example, was actually a mentor to Phil Specter really and played

on a number of the records. And you know, like, um, but when you go back and you listen to some of those, especially like the fifties movie score, some of the Man Seni stuff, and you're here, like some really kind of like jazz guy. Well, I'm not tuned for the man seen you right now, but um, but some but some of the jazz guy you know, like especially at Barney Kessele, who was a big hero of mine.

And you mentioned the jangle. Yeah, the Belgian Gypsy who I think everybody kind of looks to us being probably the greatest guitarist of all time. Really certainly the father of that style of on the European side, yes, but but the father of American jazz guitar was Eddie Lang. Um. And then how does he differ from Reinhardt. Well, Eddie lang was of Italian descent, and you know he worked with Bing Crosby. I mean he was being Crossby's right

hand man, so different stylistic area. I mean, Django was very much in the Gypsy chairs kind of It's kind of like there's that rhythm is what they called the pump pump, and it kind of just sits in the particular kind of groove. Um, Eddie Lange was was a

very versatile guitar player. I did a lot of records with Joe Anuti around thirty but even prior to that, I mean the first Bona fide recorded blues guitar solo was Lonnie Johnson recorded a piece called hight Glide in seven and that has all the you know, all those kind of with him and a piano player, but all

those bent notes and vibrato and improvised blues solos. That's that was really the beginning of it, because the guitar didn't really kind of have make a big mark in the recording industry until the mid mid to late twenties. Let's talk about some of your contemporaries, or let's let's I'll work my way, um historically, let's talk about Less Paul a little bit. Oh yeah, what what is my

great regret in life? As a grad students, I lived on seventeenth and third, around the corner from Fat Tuesdays, where he played every week, and I kept saying to myself, Oh, I have to go see less Ball. And five years later, well then he was led over to Iridium. M I missed the window closed before. Yeah. I actually went to play with him at Iridium on a Monday, a very rainy Monday night after a huge northeaster, and he couldn't get there, He couldn't get out of his house because

the bridge had been washed washed over. But I played with his band. I played with the Less Paul band. What I never got to actually play with Less. What do you think of him as a guitarist? Fabulous, one of the great jazz guitar play before it became kind of a pop star with with Mary Ford and and of course not not just a great jazz player, but also really the father of the modern recording technology. I mean,

you know, the modern studio, modern recording studio. Pretty much Les Paul is to the recording studio what Thomas Edison was to the lightbulb, and not only to the recording studio, but also to the electric guitar. Song electric guitar to some degree. But he didn't invent the electric guitar, but he did invent a lot of things like multitrack recording.

So you you recorded a version of Peter Towns It's you did a few Who songs, which I believe you once said Towns had said was impossible to do on guitar. He didn't say that to me. He was amazed that I could do it on guitar. I mean, you know, I do it in dad gad tuning, which is one of the alter tunings that I use the intro, which is a synthesizer like a sequence synthesizer thing, which is why he thought it could be done on a guitar.

So you know, it's like that, and it's you. You have to be you have to figure it out, and you can't do it in standard tuning. And then it kind of breaks into I don't do Roger Daughters scream. What do you think of towns It as a writer and a guitar. Oh, it's fabulous. I mean one of the great great rock is what makes him so good to pull a line from? That's right, it's just that the combination of talent and clearly there's a genetic component

because his dad was a musician. There's a combination of talent, persistence, experience. You know, you can't do what he does without having that that intensity of dedication. It's not easy to maintain a career, to to start a career in the music business, and then to maintain it for thirty or forty years. Yeah, I mean, but look at and look at McCartney. I mean, it's still going out and doing tree. Yeah, it's amazing.

That's um. What about Mark Knopfler, who I find to be fast, great player, really interesting because he you know, he plays fingerstyle, yes, and he's a lefty, but he plays right handed. There's a few a few guitar players who are lefties, who are leftist who play right does that well? We know Hendrix used to play in a handful of other guys used to play actually lefty. What does it do if you're a lefty playing right? He does it give you an advantage with your left hand?

You know it? That's you do? You have to ask a neurologist. Um, I mean, it's remarkable to me what what I can do with my left hand, and yet if I pick up a pen, it's it's like hopeless, you know. But but but the fact is that both hands have to be especially with fingerstyle, they really have to be equally quiet, and the left hand is actually doing more, but the left hand corresponds to the right brain. So it's kind of there's a creative flow that happens.

Makes sense, your most cock cockingen, Oh, you're amost great. I saw him at a tiny pub in college and he was just mesmerized. You know, he's great. Um, I taught he has a camp in Pomeroy, Ohio called fur Piece Ranch, and I taught there and got to hang with him, and you know, and like we're in breakfast one morning, yourman pulls out his guitar and starts singing songs for us, and it's so cool. Just out a

left field. Yeah, just really a very talented individual. I was never a giant hot tune a fan, but I always thought he was a fascinating musician. I liked what he did. An interesting point of background is that he studied from the DC area originally and studied with Sophocles Papas, who was one of Segovia's proteges. Interesting, I have a handful of guitarists they have to run. I have to

ask you about Eric Clapton. Yeah, well, you know, what can you say The Blues Breaker's album with Joe male Um hide Away, You know, I mean that that was an epiphany for me hearing that for the first time. And then Frank Zappa talk about Zappa that much brilliant guitarists and an even more brilliant composer, one of the greats. But you know, just so eccentric, you kind of you don't even realized just how how dense and what kind of what kind of granular detail is on it? Going

on his music. I used to see him a lot in London when he I saw him at the Albert Hall with Don Preston playing the huge organ there. That was really cool. What's fascinating is his son Dweezel, who's also a good guitarist, pulls out each year these kids out of Berkeley College and Music and they're nineteen and twenty years old and they tour playing Zappa's music and

they're amazing. But there's a lesson in estate planning because you know that there's a conflict within the Zappa family and Dweezel can't promoted a Zappa plays Zappa but you know this litigation ongoing, and yeah, yeah, you gotta, you gotta get stuff like that straight. To say the least, we have been speaking with Lawrence Jubber. I'll be sure and check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com.

You can follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Barry Ridholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Lawrence. Thank you so much for doing this and bringing your acts and playing a little bit um. We were just saying, you develop an intuitive sense of

of timing. You can you can tell when you've done a ninety minutes show, you have a pretty good sense of how long the show just ninety minutes, sixty minutes, forty five, kind of you just you know how many tunes. Well, it's partially a number of tunes, but also just you kind of just feel it, you know, I mean, And that's for me, that's always been part of the professionalism of it is to you know, the contract says you play for ninety minutes. I play for ninety minutes and

then maybe do an encore after that. But but it's always important to me to deliver. And my philosophy was always make myself indispensable, you know, which means be professional, be on time, be in tune with the right instruments. And and then that translated once I got onto the stage where I was being the artist to be able to deliver and be entertaining and engage an audience and all of those things. So let's let's talk about engaging

an audience. I have seen you sometimes deliver lots of stage pattern, lots of backstory, not quite full on John Pizreeli anecdotes. But I can do anecdotes at times. But then there are other times I've seen you were your all business and I'm playing music and nothing's getting in my way, especially when I'm I'm kind of I mean, I've been on the road now for over a week, and the more gigs I do, the more my chops get kind of you know, like get so you have

to limber up. You you can have you can come off the off the road and be a little rusty when you're starting. Um, yeah, a little um. I mean it's it. And but it changes from one gig to the next. I mean certain shows, depending on the environment, I might be more improvisational or lean more towards the set pieces. Um, sometimes it'll just feel really loose and

I'll stretch things out. It's like when I'm playing Little Wing, for example, that I and you destroy that song, but I leave a space for myself where it's completely improvised. You know, I'm playing over the changes. But but but I never play it the same way twice. In fact, I never try not to play anything exactly at the

same time. That was the question I was going to ask you, because there are certain songs, especially when you're doing covers um that they sound pretty similar from song to song, and then there are other versions where it's like, I didn't never heard that before, Where did that come from? Just it's it's the moment, it's being in the musical moment, you know, and it's it's kind of I have to be very conscious of what I'm doing and where I am,

but but also allow myself to get to seek transcendence. Okay, you know, how does one seek transcendence by not interfering? Because where you go what you do is more complex than most Because if somebody is just playing a single lead and they're there, I don't care how fast or slow they're playing, though it's it could be Edi van Hallen or whoever. They're thinking about the sequence of those

notes and what they're playing. You're playing nine things at once because it's vertical rather than that's exactly what I'm saying. It's one moment to the next. So when when you're playing, you're not thinking in terms of no, no, no, you're thinking in terms of these six chord, these six strings at once and one of my playing and there's a lot of things going on when I'm working stuff out, yes, but in performance I'm really trying to tell a story.

The muscle memory just takes off. So the muscle memory is in there the and that's really the stuff that gets warmed up during the course of the tour is that I just become more finely tuned in the narrative aspect of it, which then allows me to be the freedom to to do um. You know, in music, there's a term called rubato, which which means that, you know, you can kind of play around with the tempo a little bit, but the Italian means to rob and like

strict rubato, you don't actually slow anything down. It's just if you slow down in part of the bar, you you speed up, and the rest of the always stay you always stay in the pocket. And that stuff that I find myself elf being more casual about as a tour progressive, which makes it interesting because then it changes the texture a little bit. Who is recognizing that when you're doing it? I am now a few I mean the musicians were. There was a concert pianist in the

audience last night show. Who who recognize such that that kind of you have a conversation afterwards, I noticed you, Yeah we did, And that's just But but you know, the the average Aorgiance member just is there to be entertained. They're not necessarily going to pass things like that. They're going to just enjoy the concert. So what sort of stuff do you enjoy playing? What is entertaining for you

when you're out on tour? Oh? I particularly like it when I can actually create that space to be able to be improvisational. So it doesn't matter what the song is. The song is just the backdrop for you. That's the canvas for you to paint the bon Yeah, and sometimes it's it's you know, paint by not paint by numbers in the sense of just being by rote. But but you know, I there are areas to fill in the color, but other places where it will just kind of take

off into its own, its own kind of thing. Do you when you're being transcendent it works itself out? Do you ever paint yourself into a corner totally and think how am I going to get out of that? But that's that's the fum pie is getting out of it. In live in real time. There's no no when you're in front of an audience, is no, hey, let's re record this. I messed up in Medina. Rewind that I screwed up. It's I have to figure out all my fingers will figure out a way. But you know, but

but I have the the musical knowledge. I have the understanding that I know where I'm going, and it's not where you've been. You know, if you stop and think about what you just did, you don't get to the destination. And it's all about destination from one move to the next. It's where does it go next? What's the resolution of this harmony? What's the evolution of this fingering? And you know, I mean there could be a certain amount of stress

involved if it's like, oh, okay, you know. But sometimes I mean, you know, I'll like, you know, the stage lights will kind of blind me for a second and I'll land on the wrong frat. But you know, you slide up one or you slide back one, and nobody really picks it up, no, because it ends up just becoming part of the texture. And then it was like, oh, I'll do that again because it sounded cool. You have a lot of guitarists and a lot of musicians as fans.

Does that affect the way you play? Are you thinking about that? Hey, if I do this, this subgroup of fans are going to appreciate it, or you're you're more in the moment and more in the moment people, Although it might change if it's a jazz audience. You know, if I'm playing with my trio, for example, then I'll be less of the solo self sufficiency thing a much more into having a bass player there that's going to lay down something that I can then really fly over

the top. And then you know, there's a little bit of kind of strutting one stuff for the jazz jury as we refer to it. How often are you out with the trio versus not that often? I mean if a festival thing comes up. Or last December we did a Christmas tour for my Christmas album because we recorded it that way the previous Christmas bas bas and upright bass and drums like you know, just light drums. But then you know, second set, I had strapped on an electric guitar and we turned into a a um you'll

tide jam band. Shall we say? Who are some of the other musicians that you have been foundational to your development. Well, one one musician that was very helpful to me was was I Isaacs, who was an English studio guitar player for a period, played with with Stephan Grappelli, who's Jenga Ryan's violinist, and I was just I think he was the one who kind of said, look, you've've got all

the technique, you just need to learn how to use it. Um. And then there was a man named Tony Romano who was we talked about Eddie lang and Tony was was a singer and a guitar player that traveled with Bob Hope and Francis Langford in the USO UM and you typically it would just be the three of us and three of them and then with Jerry Cologna, the comedian, and maybe some dances that would go and do all the U s O tours during World War Two. And Tony was I mean, the best lesson I ever got

was with him saying, play big notes. What does that mean? What? What? Play big notes and notes that mean something? You know, because you can play a whole flurry of notes, but they don't necessarily have any kind of substance to them, no importance to them. But you know, you want to play one note and you put some expression into it and it it then has all this dimension to it. So I dimensional note, not just a one dimensional note, but something you know. I'm going to get very um

local and retro on you. As a kid, there was a local band called the Good Rats. I don't know if you know them, I have heard of them, and they had a song called Tasty. And you what you've just mentioned with big notes is a line from one of their songs. Speed ain't nothing without class. You have to play tasty. And it's very much along that those lines of the notes have to matter. It doesn't matter, you know. I mean you can play fast and then you know there's value. And you've seen me in concert.

I mean there's value in playing you know, those those that kind of flourishes, you know, those that that kind of thing. But but it needs it needs to be balanced with expression. So me anyway, One of the questions I get from listeners all the time is ask your guests about books. What sort of stuff do you read? You're you're traveling a lot, a lot of airplane stuff. I mean, I just load up my kindle with you know, kind of adventure are some extent. Recently, I've been reading

reading some musicology. David Burns had an interesting book out not too long ago, Um of the talking heads to be called musicology or something like. I'm into guitar ology, where guitar meets musicology. I've been doing a lot of study of nineteenth century guitar music, and partially because of my association with Martin guitars. Um and I have a talk that I give guitar Mania to Beatlemania, which is a slide show history of the guitar. And I can

play some examples of period pieces. And I have an eighteen ninety three Martin Parlor guitar that works really nicely for stuff. So player an example of I have to retune hand. I was in dad gat tuning for the whole time. No, just earlier on. Let me go a quick example here, Um, I just finished. So you're not even looking at I have a tune in here. Yeah, but you are you paying attention to it doing doing it by year. But I'm listening to because I'm watching

you not look at that as your tune. But it's tucked back here. M h okay, locked in. So there was an Italian named len Yanni who was a contemporary of Paganini. In fact, there's thought that the two have them played together, and he was known as the Paganini of the guitar. It would be like eighteen twenties and by any modern standards, he was a shredder and he's a little bit of Lenani's. Then um Um there was

an American guitar player. So what happened was that there was this kind of what we call classical guitar now it's really Spanish classical guitars filtered through Segovia. But there were a lot of um Central Northern European guitar players in the early nineteenth century who were extremely influential professional

guitar players. I mean, the only major difference between what they did and what we do now is they had no recording industry there and the they were very influential on the growth of the American classical guitar And in the second half of the nineteenth century there was a whole school of guitar music in America, which mostly we called parlor guitar music, and that ties in with the history of Martin guitars, which I know my signature model

as a Martin Um. Here's an example. Up Martin's agent in New York in the middle of the century was a manager, Charles de jannon Um and he this is a little bit of a Massurka that he published and very typically marches Masurka's Waltz is Um published in eighty You know that kind of thing played in the parlor. Yeah, but a Mazurka, the you know, this kind of little

bouncy thing is characteristic of the masurk um. So how does that go from from what you played earlier to this to how does that eventually translate to modern American classical and then blues in the Beatles. Well, what happened really was the in the classical area, and there were by the turn of the century there were two major guitar players. It was William Foden, known as the Wizard of the Guitar, and then there was a woman named verd orch At Bickford who and they were kind of

polar opposites. He was very technical, he was famous for his incredible tremolo technique, and she was very artistic and very very much in almost like a precursor of the New Age kind of thing. She was actually an astrologer,

as was her husband too. And then there was something called the BMG move which was the banjo mandelin guitar movement, which was kind of a marketing things that to help sell all these when was that around around the turn of the century, and you have you have Gibson had mandolin orchestras, and there was a lot of that going on. But when Segovia came along in the nineteen twenties, he kind of swept away the American side of it and replaced it with the kind of the gravitas of the

Spanish classical guitar. Well, give us, give us an example, I mean sego Via. You know it's it's classical in that I mean, like Bark it works so well. Was that it works so well on guitar? Well, yeah, I mean bach Bach wrote that for Loot, so it works on guitar. But but here's something to think about, especially the second section. I swear Paul got black from chet Atkins. Chet Atkins recorded that that particular piece, and Georgia George

Harrison owned the record chet Atkins in Hi Fi ninety seven. Um, So George Harrison's and Paul McCartney. Yes, let's get a couple of songs down. Let's see that. I have to record this. I don't know if you have another version of Little Wing in you, because that was amazing yesterday. I'll give you to tunes. I'll do a little Wing, but first singing that we were talking Beatles, I'll give you a track from my latest CD and I've done. Now. This is my third album of Beatle arrangements, really the

fourth if you include the Wings album. Yeah, but that doesn't quite fit in with the Beatles. Thing different. And I have to say I love all the Beatles stuff you do, but I found this album surprising in some of the selection of songs and the arrangements of some of them kind of kind of took me a little like, that's really interesting. And to some extent this was kind of a looser album than some of the others. Um

but his um, she loves You. That's just fantastic. I have to I have to stop this for a second. So I had a conversation about you with Derrick Thompson, who's an author at the Atlantic who wrote a book called How Hits Are Made, and he looked at a lot of historical UM trends and hits and how tofferent

things came about. It was really quite fascinating. And one of the things that he talked about was this industrial designer in the first half of the twentieth century whose name escapes me, but his philosophical insight was called Maya most advanced yet acceptable. And what this person did. He's the guy who literally designed the standard pencil sharpnry we all grew up with, and things like that. You couldn't take something too far out into the future because people

would reject it. It had to be familiar. If you wanted to sell something different, he said, make it familiar. And if you want to sell something familiar, you had

to make it a little different. And so so Derek describes how this works not only with industrial design, but movies and music and and so I bring you up as an example of you know, when you hear most beatle covers, it's either a note for note reproduction, in which case it's worthless, or it's so different that you don't even recognize it, with Joe Cocker being the exception, right. But he but that stood alone his version of of um, I'm trying to remember which cover he did that actually

worked on on on its own. But when I referenced your work, I said, the songs are immediately recognizable melodically as each individual Beatles song, and yet they're so different that they stand alone. And so it's that that picture, the two ven diagrams that overlap of Oh, this is something I totally recognize, but it's such a completely fresh and different version of it that it makes it really quite interesting. And he literally a whole book how hits

are made. The Beatles music encapsulates that because it's especially something like She Loves You, where there are elements of tim Panale of Broadway, there are elements of blues, and there are elements of even folk, but put together in a way that is uniquely them, no doubt about that. So it's that absolutely, that's the thing is it's it's familiar. Well, that's their work was familiar yet, but I'm talking about

my version. But but my ability to take that and then translate it to the guitar, which and I'm using my musicality, my musicianship to do that, then really you know, I've got a foundation to build on. And then the way that I approached the guitar in terms of working to make the melody sing, to make the base interesting, and you know, whether it's reproducing what's on the Beetle record or some interpretation of that is, it's just it works.

It seems to work. You know, someone could sit down at a piano and play the song and there's who cares. There's nothing special there but your versions they're that familiar but different enough that apparently apparently I have a voice on your guitar, so I think that's part of it, to say the least. So you're asking about little wings, all right, before you start, I have to get this teat up. I'm gonna make you start that over again. Chris. You, by the way, you destroyed the room last night, but

I don't know if you're aware of it. People were. So let's let's do a little a little little wing, A little little little little wing. Let me put my strap on now, agetting serious? Oh yeah, really serious. Pay attention to this because his arms on the chair. So it's all proof O amazing, Thank you, Lawrence. That that is just beyond words. We have been speaking with guitartist

extraordinarire Lawrence Juber. If you enjoy this conversation. Well before I get to that, if you enjoy the music you heard, go to Lawrence Duber dot com. There are twenty four or five discs available. Is that about right? So I count if you're a Beatles fan, you have to get all three Beatles albums plus the Wings album, which I think the Wings Album reveals songs that I didn't like in the seventies and eighties, and I have found a newfound uh, I've come upon a newfound respect for them

having having you reveal different aspects of it. But if you are at all a guitar aficionado, a classical music fan, Lawrence's original compositions are really a beauty to behold. You you played um Guitar Noir last night, which is a lovely song. You played Um. I'm trying to remember pH not Telegraph Finger, fingerboard Road. His original work is just an exposition of uh guitar. I don't even want to

say prodigy, just just outstanding. There's a reason musicians are big fans of his because because of because of his work, and and I find his his You know, when my my wife and I are in the car and we can't agree on what we want to hear we pop in one of your discs and everybody's happy. Um So, if you enjoyed the music, go to Laune Stupid dot com and you could see both his tour dates and

all the CDs he has for sale. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes and you can see or Bloomberg dot com or SoundCloud or overcast and you could see the other hundred and forty nine or so such conversations we've had. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg

dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank Taylor Riggs, my producer, and Medina Parwana, my recording engineer slash audiologist, who takes my messy recordings and puts them all uh in in using her technical production expert piece makes it listenable to you. I'm Barry Ridults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.