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08/01/2024 12:00 AMIts not often that I meet someone who can say they have met one of The Beatles. And then, recently, I got a chance to talk with someone who has worked with more than half of them. English guitarist Laurence Juber–who recorded with George, Ringo, and most notably, joined Paul McCartney and Wings in the late ’70s for the group’s studio album Back to the Egg–will be playing at the United Church of Chester on Saturday, Aug. 3.
McCartney may be the most ridiculed of the Fab Four, being known as the “cute one” who just wrote “silly love songs,” according to his late colleague and the “smart one” John Lennon. But Juber’s experience with the Fab’s most pop-inclined songwriter was anything but lacking seriousness and discipline when he joined, even during a time when punk exploded in Britain and the rules were seemingly tossed out the window.
“With McCartney, I had an education,” said Juber. “I was in [Wings] for three years. I learned many, many things in terms of the creative process, making records, not from the perspective of the studio musician, but from the perspective of a band member, which is a different experience.”
But the guitarist audience is not just “a Beatles/Wings audience” as Juber points out. He has developed his own audience. He has released records since 1982 with his first studio album Standard Time in 1982, and garnered a significant following of fans for his fingerpicking-style arrangements of the greatest compositions ever penned in pop music.
That is the kind of treat Juber will deliver at his performance at the United Church of Chester on Aug. 3, next to his own original material in blues, jazz, and rock and roll.
Juber has released several fingerpicking-style cover albums of Beatles tunes, including his most recent A Day in My Life, which was recorded at none other than Abbey Road Studios. Given this and where Juber began as a musician, things seem to have come full circle.
“I fell in love with a guitar right around the time of the first cresting wave of Beatlemania in England,” he said.
Unlike American audiences, Juber said the English populace did not have an “Ed Sullivan moment” but directly witnessed the unprecedented acceleration of Beatlemania throughout the Fab’s formative year of 1963, prior to finally rattling the United States.
It was during the first wave Beatlemania in Britain that Juber fell in love with the guitar and began a mostly self-taught process of learning the instrument. But as any seasoned musician knows, it is the specific term “musician” that is crucial for instrumental development rather than just simply referring to oneself according to their respective instrument.
“I found myself listening to music analytically, and I realized that understanding music was kind of an essential factor in what I wanted to do as a guitar player,” he said.
Learning about music beyond the guitar was a part of an education Juber received before joining Wings when he became a studio musician. In this capacity, he has produced and arranged four records with folk artist Al Stewart, performed the music for television shows like Happy Days and Home Improvement, and scored the soundtracks for the video game Diablo III and the sci-fi film World Gone Wild.
He has also collaborated with Belinda Carlisle and Harry Styles, specifically with the latter, on the song “Treat People with Kindness,” which might as well be the overall message of many Beatles songs. Talent runs in the family, too, as Juber’s daughter, Ilsey Juber, was a co-writer on Harry Styles' song, while her fingerprints are also on compositions by Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, the 1975, and Kacey Musgraves.
But the “quintessence” of his musicality is “getting up in front of an audience and playing my own compositions, my Beatle arrangements, Great American Songbook, other rock and roll standards, and engaging an audience with solo acoustic guitar in a way mostly they haven’t heard,” he said.
Hearing acoustic guitar in a way I have not heard before, specifically with Beatles songs, is what I found listening through A Day in My Life. Listeners will hear different arrangements of “Rain,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the latter of which Juber achieved in DADGAD tuning. Even the arrangement of “Blackbird,” the acoustic song to beat all acoustic songs (I make exceptions for “The Rain Song” by Led Zeppelin and “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell”), is different.
“When Paul plays ‘Blackbird’ on the guitar, or when anybody plays ‘Blackbird’ on the guitar, in standard tuning in the key of G, what you've got is an accompaniment because he's singing the melody on top.”
In Juber’s case doing it as a solo guitar arrangement, “the melody has to be worked into the accompaniment,” something that finger-picking can allow, giving new life to the vocally-derived melody.
Like any other musician, Juber is, on an individual level, the culmination of his influences. But historically speaking, his background is, perhaps, to be envied.
The breadth of homegrown influential acts and others outside of Britain is astonishing. From the Rolling Stones to the Kinks, to folk revivalists Fairport Convention, the groundbreaking sounds of Motown over Radio Luxembourg, and jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Django Reinhardt, Juber had a “very eclectic kind of smorgasbord of musical delights” and listen to with an “analytical ear.”
“That, in a nutshell, is very much a part of what happens when I’m playing solo guitar, is that I'm performing with all of those influences,” he said.
At the United Church, Juber said he is looking forward to presenting a “real musical experience with an arc to it, with moments of excitement, moments of emotionality, moments of poetry, and moments of raw rock and roll.”
And a splendid time is guaranteed for all.
“Anybody that comes to this concert is going to have a great time. I'm looking forward to it.”
Juber’s concert will take place at The United Church of Chester, 29 West Main Street, Chester, on Saturday, Aug. 3. The show is at 8 p.m. and doors open at 7 p.m. To find out more about the concert and to buy tickets, visit www.uccchester.org.