Interview with Laurence Juber

When considering some of the best guitarists in the world, a full list cannot be complete without the addition of Laurence Juber. The two time Grammy winning studio guitarist is best known for his elaborately intricate finger style guitar solos in addition to playing in Paul McCartney’s Wings. Between touring and amassing new compositions for his next album, LJ takes a moment of his time to share a few words.

Presently on tour in the east coast, LJ discloses that the highlight of his latest tour was playing in Quebec. “But my all time favorite moment on the road had to be in December of 1979.” Says LJ, with a reminiscence of excitement in his voice. “It was a concert for Kampuchea at the Hammersmith Odeon with Pete Townsend, Robert PlantRobert Plant, John BonhamJohn Bonham, John Paul JonesJohn Paul Jones, Dave EdmundsDave Edmunds, James Honeyman Scott, among others. I was playing with all of these rock and roll legends that were my inspiration growing up!” He notes, while touring with Wings. LJ is scheduled to swing back around to the west coast in order to play at Boulevard Music in Culver City on June 12th, and then continue his national tour all summer long.

Denoting the easily apparent range of generations within his fan base, LJ observes that his music transcends age, appealing to guitar fans, Wings fans, and music lovers in general, giving it that timeless quality. “I utilize iconic material from different eras during live performances end everyone seems to enjoy the show.” Says LJ, who readily admits to being a people pleaser. “Isn’t that what being an entertainer is about? It gives me the opportunity to have an audience to communicate to, which is the base of my artistic aspiration as far as expressing myself through the guitar. Over the years I’ve done some folk and some jazz stuff, and if you look at iTunes some of my songs will be classified as folk, rock, jazz, new-age, even classical, because there is no category for what I do and it is sort of genre busting.” LJ chuckles at the idea. “I have to be careful because a lot of guitar fans are interested in what’s going on guitaristically and also attracted to the repertoire as far as wanting to learn a piece. For example, on the album there are very accessible arrangements that seem like they have great appeal while other ones are very challenging because I’m taking a non-traditional approach to get what I’m looking for. Then there are the Wings and Beatles fans that followed my career since Wings or even before that when I was a studio guitarist. Then there are the music fans in general who just like to be entertained, so I try to strike a balance between all of those without compromising my artistic vision. What I do in a live show is a mix of a lot of different styles.” He concludes.

LJ is one of the fortunate few who have had the opportunity to make plenty of records in both the analogue and digital age. ”It allows me to use my knowledge of the process more effectively. For example with digital editing you can do remarkable things, but I learned how to edit audio by cutting tape with a razor blade, old school.” LJ says, admitting that the last time he edited tape with the old school method as on his last analogue recorded album in 2001. “There is no reason to now with high resolution digital... There was a time when we only had 8 tracks or 12 tracks or 24 tracks to work with and now there are unlimited tracks to work with, but it doesn’t mean you can improve the sound by having more. Sometimes less is more.”

As a finger style guitarist, LJ’s money maker, his fingers, have developed and worn down thick calluses. Although his hands are not high maintenance, he confesses to donning some superglue when he is on the road and his hands become cracked. “That’s my best friend on the road, superglue. I don’t use fingernails, so there is not maintenance problem there.” The only time LJ has ever had a manicure is for a record label, Altered Reality, whom had a previous guitarist who hand fingers like that of a lumberjack and they ended up editing in someone else’s fingers. “But it’s an occupational hazard, what can I tell you.” He adds.

LJ vouches on ability to promote one’s self with digital media and the accessibility of the music to the public, though he continues, “We certainly lost something in the process. There is a lot to be said about analogue and you have to be very careful with digital by not taking the life out of it. I am very fortunate that I get to work with engineers who are very skilled at maintaining that kind of quality. You lose a lot of dynamic in that process. A lot of artists tend to try to make their records be as loud as possible, but in order to make things loud you lose the quite. You can’t have both. I enjoy being old school in that respect.” Noting that the economics of digital media are lost when copyright laws are not respected, LJ states, “If everyone pirated music no one would be making music." LJ’s primary method of listening to music is his iPhone, though he laughs, “One of these days I’ll get my vinyl set up again.”

After the tour, LJ’s plans are to return home to LA, where he will master his latest album, LA Plays the Beatles Vol. 2, then proceed with the book of transcripts for the songs within that album. In between the his tour, which lasts all summer long, LJ is starting material for his next album, in addition to being asked to participate in a 3-D movie shoot.

“The first album of Beatles songs I didn’t really want to do,” LJ admits. “but my wife, Hope, said she would like me to do it so that she had something to listen to when she was driving around. It wasn’t the first record we had worked on together but it was the one where we had really solidified out working relationship. As it turned out she had the right idea because that album ended up as Acoustic Guitar magazine’s top 10 guitar records. That was very encouraging.” LJ says of the album released in 2000. “That was ten years ago and I realized I have evolved as a player. There are a lot of tunes I felt like doing arrangements of so I did a volume 2.” LJ also enjoys putting out records periodically simply because they go hand and hand with touring. “When I go back to a venue I’m not just doing the same show but am able to integrate new material. The last album was all original material, the next one was all Beatles songs, one after that I think will go a little jazzy while doing some bluesy tunes with a dark characteristic to them. Some cover tunes and some original tunes.” LJ stops for a moment, contemplating the idea. “We’ll see, it depends on how much I get written. It’s very time consuming to write original concert pieces for guitar and it would typically take six to nine months to come up with enough material for a new album. I’ve got some standard tunes I’m interested in recording so I won’t take quite so long about it.”

Hope, LJ’s wife, is an established writer and director, making the creative process of their working relationship very Fonzie. “She is very imaginative and she encourages me to find the stories, to paint the pictures, to really articulate what I’m doing in a way that is not purely guitar centric. So I’m not doing just the finger work for a song but a much deeper sensibility with more dimension in it. Part of what is appealing to people is that when they come to see me in concert not only are they hearing a complete musical performance and seeing the virtuosity, but also being drawn into something that has more drama or more humor into it. All of those elements go to work together. Hope is very much a part of the creation of that.” On a few occasions LJ and his wife have collaborated, creating three stage musicals and four children’s musical in addition to a rock comedy musical they produced together last year called “It’s the Housewives”. LJ describes, “It’s kind of like Dream Girls meets Spinal Tap. It’s a very funny show. Our work all flows into the same creative stream. I have to carve out the guitar player in me and focus on my own artistry. Then we write some theatrical songs together and we create a different kind of entertainment where we’ve got talented performers on the stage singing songs we’ve written.” LJ explains that although he enjoys working with his wife that and that their fields are similar creatively that it is essentially a different piece of business when it comes to the marketing.

Returning to his new album and its accompanied book of guitar transcripts, LJ details, “With LJ Plays the Beatles Vol. 1 there was a high demand for the transcriptions of the songs, so this [Vol. 2] will be exact transcription of what I play. The guitar players like the chance to address this stuff and for me it’s good to put down on paper what I’m doing because there is a process I go through in order to create these solo guitar arrangements for the record.” LJ continues to discuss his endeavor to be meticulously accurate to capture the tone and character of a particular tune. “I also write passages about the compositions. It’s edutainment in a way.”

Approaching the non-guitar pieces by starting with the melody, LJ begins from a musical point of view. “Even when I’m teaching people, I tell them if you don’t play anything else, play the melody. By simply playing the melody you have something that is communicated to your audience. The average listener has no conception of what is going on with the guitar, but ironically even the guitar players can just look at my fingers and recognize what I’m doing.” He explains.

Presently residing in LA for the last three decades, LJ operates his own personal studio. “Over the years I’ve been very active as a studio musician, playing a lot of TV shows, records, movies, and it gives me access to that sort of community.” He says. “The LA music community is very eclectic. Since then I’ve transitioned into being a concert performer and doing less studio work, although I’ve been producing as well.”

Although not a gamer himself, LJ was asked by Blizzard to create original compositions for the upcoming game, Diablo III. “The representative who asked me to play for Blizzard, Russell Brower, is someone I’ve known for at least 25 years. He was familiar with both my guitar playing and my composing ability. With Diablo, the original game was quite guitar driven and the original composer was no longer involved with the game, so he [Brower] was drawn to me because he knew that I was able to handle both the guitar and composition side of it.” He talks about the video game which will be released next year. “They [Diablo compositions] were original songs that captured the ambience of the original game but needed to evolve because video game music has evolved over the last decade to be really orchestrated and more like movie music. The process for me was more like I am painting a picture than as if I’m scoring a movie.” LJ depicts his time spent playing the game. “They introduced me to some of the early versions of the game so I had a sense of what was going on in terms of the characters and the avatars and all of the dynamics of the game. Then I went and created the songs and we revised it and created a whole bunch of music. It was mostly 12 string guitar and orchestra. On a couple of occasions I’ve had the opportunity to perform with an orchestra doing some of this music… Everything else is conceptual, which is part of my approach in general as a musician, which is also true to my approach as a studio musician. Once I understand the concept of the style I can then work within that mode to create something that fits within that framework but still has some of my original sensibility.”

“One of the great things I learned from McCartney is the pop sensibility.” He explains. “In terms of keeping things within the pop realm and giving your audience more info than they can handle. McCartney has always been the master of the 3 to 4 minute pop song. In Wings I had to choose my moments to play guitar solos very carefully. Even in the Beatles, you didn’t get extended guitar solos. Being aware of the popular music audience allows me to satisfy a room full of people. It does make life difficult because in the general scheme of things, pop instrumental seems to be an oddball category.” Says LJ, who recognizes that this particular genre has never generated mass appeal.

When asked if there is anything about his musical career he regrets, LJ jokes, “I regret that McCartney chose to carry marijuana into Tokyo when Wings was on tour.” Then adds “I remember being more motivated as a teenager to be a live performer, although my main goal was to be a studio musician. I wish that I had gotten into live performance a little early on rather than having to play catch-up later.” He pauses in thought. “I have mixed feelings about not playing piano more when I was younger. My piano technique is really awful I don’t have much to regret. Sometimes I may come out of a project feeling like I didn’t do as well as I thought I might have done, and then sometime later someone will tell me that they love what I did on there. So I don’t have any productional regrets. I am happily married so I don’t have any regrets there. I take it a day at a time and I continue to challenge myself to improve my playing and musicality; and why stop?”

Typically only playing piano when he’s composing for the stage, the guitar sucks up a lot of LJ’s time. “It’s really important to maintain my technique and skill.” LJ says. “I practice every day. I can count the number of times in a year I’ve taken a day off on one hand. Sometimes getting away from it is just the ticket to let something settle in.”

Describing his definitive guitar style in a single word, LJ says thoughtfully, “Musical. It defines what I do. I’m a musician who plays the guitar.” He says simply.