Posted September 2026
Photo Credit: Michael LamontThere are musicians who know how to play the notes.
Then there are musicians who seem to know where the notes came from.
Laurence Juber is decidedly in the second category.
Most rock fans will immediately recognize Juber as the Grammy-winning guitarist from the final incarnation of Paul McCartney's Wings. Guitar aficionados know him as one of the world's premier fingerstyle players. But spend an hour talking music with Laurence and you quickly discover those descriptions barely scratch the surface.
Our first Boomerocity conversation began with his new album, I've Got a Feeling, the fifth collection of new arrangements in his long-running LJ Plays The Beatles series.
The series itself owes a considerable debt to Laurence's wife, Hope.
After Laurence had recorded an arrangement of “Rain,” Hope suggested that audiences were asking for an entire album of Beatles arrangements. Laurence wasn't particularly interested.
Her response essentially amounted to: do it for me.
He agreed — provided she produced it.
The first LJ Plays The Beatles arrived more than a quarter-century ago. Even Laurence didn't envision the journey continuing this long.
There was also a little encouragement from someone who knew the material fairly well.
After Paul McCartney received a copy, Laurence recalls him asking, “What about Wings?”
And the journey continued.
What makes Juber's approach fascinating is that he doesn't simply translate familiar Beatles melodies onto acoustic guitar. He dismantles the songs, examines their harmonic architecture and discovers how melody, bass, rhythm and harmony can coexist beneath ten fingers.
During our conversation, Laurence took us deep inside the fingerstyle approaches of George Harrison, Paul McCartney and John Lennon — including the influence of Chet Atkins, Bach and Donovan.
At one point, our discussion managed to travel from Franz Schubert to the guitar makers of 19th-century Vienna to C.F. Martin and finally back to The Beatles.
That's Laurence Juber.Musical history isn't something he merely studied. It's something he appears to carry around with him.
His fascination with records began as a kid listening not simply to songs but to how records were constructed — drums, bass, guitar and arrangement fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. He studied classical guitar, jazz and musicology while simultaneously absorbing the extraordinary explosion of popular guitar music happening around him.
Think about the period.
The Beatles.
The Rolling Stones.
Cream.
Jimi Hendrix.
Peter Green.
Pink Floyd.
In less than four years after Laurence began playing guitar in November 1963, the instrument had undergone a revolution.
Juber eventually became exactly what he'd hoped to become: a studio musician.
And a busy one.
By the late 1970s, he could be working three or four sessions in a single day — moving among legendary London studios including Olympic, Abbey Road and Trident.
Then came Wings.
Denny Laine heard Laurence playing in the house band of a television show featuring David Essex. That connection ultimately led to Paul and Linda McCartney, who were looking for a guitarist capable of moving comfortably across a broad range of musical styles.
Laurence fit the bill.
But Wings is only one chapter.
His subsequent career included decades of Los Angeles studio work on movies, television and records, four albums produced for Al Stewart, composing and arranging, theater work, solo fingerstyle albums and countless sessions. He even got the thrill of playing the James Bond theme while working on The Spy Who Loved Me.
And then there are The Beatles themselves.
Laurence worked with Paul McCartney in Wings, played with Paul and Ringo Starr together on Stop and Smell the Roses, and subsequently worked with George Harrison.
“Three out of four Beatles is not bad,” he told me.
No. No, it isn't.
We also talked about the documentary Man on the Run. Laurence enjoyed the film but believes the final period of Wings received somewhat less attention than its accomplishments deserved. He points to the band's Grammy for “Rockestra Theme,” the success of “Goodnight Tonight” and the live version of “Coming Up,” among other achievements.
Yet there isn't bitterness when Laurence discusses that chapter. Quite the opposite.
“I have no regrets about that period at all,” he said.
Perhaps the most revealing portion of our conversation concerned what happens when Laurence sits down today with one of those Beatles compositions.
At some point, I suggested, perhaps he stops merely arranging the song and begins having a musical conversation with it.
Laurence agreed.
Click Above To Order Your CopyThe melody remains paramount because that's what the listener recognizes. But there is room for reharmonization, improvisation, different guitars, alternate tunings and — most importantly — the musical moment.
Even the lyrics matter.
Although the final performance is instrumental, Laurence says he's conscious of the words because they provide an emotional subtext to the melody. Eventually, the goal is to reach a place where the performance is no longer about “fingers on strings.”
It's simply music.
That may be the best description of Laurence Juber's career.
After all the sessions, tours, albums, movie scores, television work, famous collaborators and decades of accumulated knowledge, he still seems fascinated by what six strings can do.
And he's still listening for whatever comes next.
