Latest / Masters in Business / Interview With Laurence Juber: Masters in Business (Audio)

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Interview With Laurence Juber: Masters in Business (Audio) · Masters in Business

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Speaker 1: Look ahead, imagine more. Gain insight for your industry with
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Speaker 1: forward thinking advice from the professionals at Cone Resnick. Is
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Speaker 1: your business ready to break through? Find out more at
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Speaker 1: Cone resnick dot com Slash Breakthrough. This is Masters in
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Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio. I have a
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Speaker 1: really interesting and special guest and unusual guests this week.
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Speaker 1: His name is Lawrence Juber. Uh. You may know him
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Speaker 1: if you are a Beatles fan or a Paul McCartney
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Speaker 1: and Wings fan. He was lead guitarist for Wings in
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Speaker 1: the late seventies and eighties, but he is really a
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Speaker 1: musicologist and and best known amongst a musical audience for
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Speaker 1: the work he's done on guitar. He he is a
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Speaker 1: fingerboard guitarist. Uh really a a master prodigy. I don't
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Speaker 1: know what else you can say about him, A alliant
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Speaker 1: technical player. Lots and lots of other guitarists have a
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Speaker 1: universe of respect for him, and when you hear some
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Speaker 1: of the things he plays, you'll understand why he has
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Speaker 1: I don't even want to say dabbled. He has opened
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Speaker 1: up a new world of alternative tunings and that allows
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Speaker 1: him to do some really fascinating things with the guitar,
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Speaker 1: including uh playing the melody, the lead and the vocals
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Speaker 1: at the same time. And you'll hear him at the
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Speaker 1: end of the show play two or three songs as well.
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Speaker 1: Most of the interview he had the guitar on his
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Speaker 1: lap and he would demonstrate different things as he was speaking.
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Speaker 1: If you are at all interested in classical music, rock
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Speaker 1: and pop, or the Beatles, or if you're interested in
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Speaker 1: the financial aspects of being a musician in the modern era,
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Speaker 1: I think you're gonna find this to be quite a tree.
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Speaker 1: It was really delightful having him. He's a charming, dry
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Speaker 1: witted brit And and that very much comes across. So,
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Speaker 1: without any further ado, my conversation with Lawrence Duber. This
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Speaker 1: is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna try something a little different today. My special
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Speaker 1: guest is not from the world to finance, but from
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Speaker 1: the world of music. His name is Lawrence Duber, and
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Speaker 1: let me just give you a few moments on who
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Speaker 1: he is. Born and raised in London. He began studying
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Speaker 1: the guitar at age thirteen or earlier, agan earning money
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Speaker 1: playing the guitar at that age. Upon graduation from university,
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Speaker 1: he immediately began work as a session guitarist. His first
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Speaker 1: project was with the producer George Martin. He was tapped
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Speaker 1: to join Paul McCartney and has then been Wings in
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight as their lead guitarist for their world tour.
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Speaker 1: He has been a studio musician on thousands of sessions,
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Speaker 1: recorded countless television theme shows, film soundtracks. You may have
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Speaker 1: heard his lead in the James Bond movie theme The
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Speaker 1: Spy Who Loved Me. It's the James Bond theme in
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Speaker 1: the movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Voted Guitarists of
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Speaker 1: the Year by Fingerstar Guitar Magazine. Named one of the
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Speaker 1: top acoustic players of all time by Acoustic Guitar mag
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Speaker 1: He has recorded twenty three solo albums since two with
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Speaker 1: a new album coming out in the not too distant future.
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Speaker 1: Many of those albums were released a critical acclaim and
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Speaker 1: he has won two Grammys. No less than a guitarist
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Speaker 1: than Pete Towns. It has called our guest a master
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Speaker 1: of guitar. Lawrence Juber welcome to Bloomberg. Well, thank you
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Speaker 1: very much. Who is this guy anyway? Who is this guy.
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Speaker 1: So I was describing you to somebody, and the interesting
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Speaker 1: thing is, I said, here's a I who has played
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Speaker 1: pretty much with everybody in the world of rock and roll,
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Speaker 1: and he could walk down the street and nobody's gonna
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Speaker 1: recognize him. He's really incognito. Well, you know musicians, A
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Speaker 1: lot of musicians are Incognitie. Yes, unless you pursue the
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Speaker 1: star track, you inevitably kind of full slightly out of
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Speaker 1: the limelight. And that suits me just fine because my
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Speaker 1: ambition from the time I started playing when I was eleven,
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Speaker 1: Did you grow up in a musical household? No, so
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Speaker 1: you're the first musician. Until recently, I thought I was
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Speaker 1: the only musician in my family, not counting your daughter,
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Speaker 1: who I know. That's that's different. So we will get
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Speaker 1: to that. But I discovered through some family tree research
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Speaker 1: a year or so ago that I actually have a
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Speaker 1: third cousin, once removed, who's a sax player in England.
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Speaker 1: So not exactly um immediate family, you know, but I
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Speaker 1: think that what it is is there were a lot
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Speaker 1: of tailors in my family, and as the generations went on,
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Speaker 1: some of them got into couture. But my dad really
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Speaker 1: was an apprentice tailor. And I think that for me,
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Speaker 1: understanding music and appreciating music and the guitar came out
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Speaker 1: of pattern recognition, the patterns of music, the shapes of
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Speaker 1: musical phrases, the shapes of chords on the fingerboard, and
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Speaker 1: the shape of of all of that. I think was
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Speaker 1: was something that kind of underpinned my my musician ship.
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Speaker 1: So my next question was going to be who you're
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Speaker 1: early musical influences, But you're gonna tell me it was
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Speaker 1: Weavers and Tailors, not what I'm expecting. Now, well, that's
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Speaker 1: a good album. I mean, I'm just talking in terms
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Speaker 1: of the neurological side of it. The the inspiration was,
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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I got into listening to music
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Speaker 1: probably know slightly preteens and nineteen sixties three in particular
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Speaker 1: in England was this incredible year because there was this
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Speaker 1: kind of swell of Beatlemania that that started at the
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Speaker 1: beginning of the year with Please Please Me, and then
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Speaker 1: went through Please Please Me from me to you, she
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Speaker 1: loves you and I Want to hold your hand as
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Speaker 1: the you know, every three months we would have a
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Speaker 1: new Beatles single and it would blow up. By November.
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Speaker 1: It was full scale beatle Mania and my eleventh birthday
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Speaker 1: was in November and the Beatles had been on the
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Speaker 1: Royal Command performance a week before, and my parents realized
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Speaker 1: that I was never going to play saxophone like my
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Speaker 1: dad wanted me to, and it was guitar had kind
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Speaker 1: of become legit at that point because the Beatles were
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Speaker 1: becoming so successful, and once I picked it up, I
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Speaker 1: just never put it down. And when did you realize
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Speaker 1: you can earn a living with the guitar. I was thirteen.
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Speaker 1: Local bandleader started bringing me in and playing weddings and
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Speaker 1: bar mitzvahs and stuff actually paid gigs, and I was
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Speaker 1: making more money than babysitting or working in the supermarket supermarket,
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Speaker 1: and it's certainly better work than stocking shelves. Yeah, I mean,
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Speaker 1: I did you know I watched my next door neighbors
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Speaker 1: car because he had season tickets for Tottenham Hotspur and
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Speaker 1: I was a soccer fan back then. I was going
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Speaker 1: to say for an American audience, please, that was one
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Speaker 1: of the London soccer teams and at that time was
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Speaker 1: the like the best soccer team in England. So the
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Speaker 1: question that I think everybody who listens to you has
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Speaker 1: to at one point or another. Thing is you raised
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Speaker 1: on the Beatles and a lot of classic rock and roll,
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Speaker 1: how do you morph towards fingerboard style and acoustic guitar. Well,
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Speaker 1: I started off on acoustic guitar. And you remember nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty three wasn't just Beatlemania, it was also the folk
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Speaker 1: boom so Bob Dylan, Jim Baya's Judy Collins, you know,
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Speaker 1: and we had our English versions of those two. And
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Speaker 1: I was really intrigued by the solo guitar players because
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Speaker 1: the idea of a single performer standing in front of
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Speaker 1: an audience with just an acoustic guitar and often no
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Speaker 1: p a, you know, but just that self sufficiency really
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Speaker 1: was appealing to me. It was one particular piece of
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Speaker 1: music called Angie that was written by another Stone song No,
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Speaker 1: the different Angie the Paul Simon recorded on one of
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Speaker 1: the early Simon and Garf Uncle records, Oh sure, written
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Speaker 1: by Davey Graham who was a British guitar player, and
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Speaker 1: that involved playing a bassline and also playing the melody
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Speaker 1: at the same time. And because I had kind of
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Speaker 1: dabbled with piano when I was very young, but then
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Speaker 1: the piano went away It was at my grandmother's house
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Speaker 1: and they sold it. For some reason that the the
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Speaker 1: idea of being able to play complete musical statements, meaning
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Speaker 1: the bass and the bass and the melody and the
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Speaker 1: rhythm and everything else led me to really being intrigued
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Speaker 1: by that, and by the acoustic guitar, and and so
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Speaker 1: I got into finger style guitar, blank rag time, and
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Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that just really just really grabbed me.
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Speaker 1: I'm Barry Ridholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on
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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Lawrence Juber, master
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Speaker 1: of the guitar, probably best known to an American audience
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Speaker 1: for his work as lead guitarist for Paul McCartney and Wings.
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Speaker 1: He has also recorded numerous soundtracks for television and movies,
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Speaker 1: as well as produced twenty three original albums. You know
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Speaker 1: you said you picked up the guitar? Really? The Week
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Speaker 1: I Want to Hold Your Hands was released by the Beatles.
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Speaker 1: How influential were they amongst everyone else? To you as
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Speaker 1: a musician. The big influence was really that they kind
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Speaker 1: of led the charge of this kind of musical youth
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Speaker 1: culture that that overtook England, because you know, the fift
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Speaker 1: is were kind of a gray period in England. You know,
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Speaker 1: the economy really took a hit after the war and
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Speaker 1: it was not that great economically, and then the sixties
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Speaker 1: come along and things really start to kind of pick
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Speaker 1: up and you have this kind of this first wave
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Speaker 1: of the working class baby boomers or you know that
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Speaker 1: picking up instruments. And it wasn't just the Beatles. It
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Speaker 1: was the Stones and the Animals and the Dave Clark five,
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Speaker 1: and you know a little later, the Kinks and so
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Speaker 1: many English bands that it was remarkable to be growing
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Speaker 1: up at that point in time when there was just
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Speaker 1: this incredible explosion of music. And the Beatles obviously were
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Speaker 1: kind of like the top of the heap because they
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Speaker 1: were the most successful, but they really weren't the only ones.
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Speaker 1: So and my my interests went much broader than them
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Speaker 1: very quickly. And it wasn't like I would sit down
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Speaker 1: and meticulously work out George Harrison's guitar solos. My consciousness was, oh,
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Speaker 1: that's cool, what's the concept behind it, and how do
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Speaker 1: I do that for myself. You're really a bit of
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Speaker 1: a musical historian and musicologist. I was gonna say philosopher.
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Speaker 1: Musicologists actually I'm a guitar ologist. Guitar ologist, so let's
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Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the covers you do. We have,
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Speaker 1: We have a lot of time to talk about other stuff.
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Speaker 1: Here's my beef with covers in general, covers being a
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Speaker 1: copy of a copy of somebody else's songs reinterpret So
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Speaker 1: either what what I primarily hear is either a note
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Speaker 1: for note recreation, which makes me sort of drug and
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Speaker 1: say why bother, or something that's so far afield it's
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Speaker 1: barely recognizable as the original. And what I love about
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Speaker 1: your covers, especially of the Beatles, is that it's immediately
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Speaker 1: recognizable as the song that it is, but it's a
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Speaker 1: very fresh version of it, and you hear nuances and
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Speaker 1: subtleties in the melodies that you might have overlooked in
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Speaker 1: the full four piece or more band version of it. Well,
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Speaker 1: when you strip it down to the musical elements like that,
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Speaker 1: sometimes it exposes really interesting kind of inner workings of it.
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Speaker 1: But but but here's the thing I mean, there are
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Speaker 1: times when my my interpretations are actually pretty much no accurate.
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Speaker 1: But doing it on the guitar, on a solo guitar,
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Speaker 1: and doing it perhaps for example, with you know, in
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Speaker 1: an alter tuning gives it a different texture, not only
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Speaker 1: a different sonic texture, but sometimes a different emotional texture.
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Speaker 1: It has a different resonance to it. And I think
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Speaker 1: what's really important with with especially with Beetle tunes, is
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Speaker 1: because I play it to an audience who know the words,
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Speaker 1: they know the tune, and there's that unsung part of
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Speaker 1: it where the audience is kind of internalizing that their
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Speaker 1: own experience with it. So there's a kind of a
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Speaker 1: depth to it that goes beyond simply the guitaristic or
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Speaker 1: simply the musical. But I try to be true. I
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Speaker 1: try to be true to the melody the spirit of
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Speaker 1: the original to try and encapsulate it, and sometimes it
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Speaker 1: means changing things because I might find that a particular
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Speaker 1: song has a certain angle to it that perhaps wasn't
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Speaker 1: communicated in the way that it was originally recorded. I mean,
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Speaker 1: you know, not every Beatle recording is perfect. It's their iconic.
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Speaker 1: I hate to use that word because it's become so overused,
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Speaker 1: but it's appropriate their iconic, but not necessarily entirely perfect
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Speaker 1: for the fabric of the song. You take something like
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Speaker 1: in My Life, you know, and the Beatles great song
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Speaker 1: and that their version of it on Rubber's Soul is
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Speaker 1: very consistent with the style of the album. But that's
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Speaker 1: a song that could be taken so many different ways
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Speaker 1: and has an example. Of course, I'm in the wrong
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Speaker 1: tuning for that, I'm actually in I'm in dad gad
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Speaker 1: tuning d A d g A d um takes something
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Speaker 1: like thing for example. Now, Frank Sinatra covered that tune
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Speaker 1: and I was just kind of tossing that out there.
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Speaker 1: But if I'm going to do an arrangement of it,
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Speaker 1: I'm probably as well as referencing George Harrison's The Beatles version,
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Speaker 1: I'm going to reference Sinatra's version, for example, because that
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Speaker 1: gives me a different place to be. Here's another example, Blackbird,
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Speaker 1: one of my all time favorite. Now, the thing about
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Speaker 1: Blackbird is that, you know, all the guitar players learned that,
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Speaker 1: but that's the accompaniment you can't get the melody in.
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Speaker 1: So I had to reconceive it, you know, just doing
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Speaker 1: it differently. Now I see what you mean by vertical
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Speaker 1: as opposed to. One of my references for that is
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Speaker 1: Kenny Rankin, because I used to do gigs with Kenny
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Speaker 1: and that was one of the tunes that we would
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Speaker 1: play together. And so I'm not just thinking about Paul
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Speaker 1: McCartney singing the song, you know, and Kenny Rankin had
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Speaker 1: this incredible you know, it sounded like I had a
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Speaker 1: French horn in his throat this incredible tone. So you know,
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Speaker 1: I'm looking for a way to articulate the melody that
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Speaker 1: has perhaps a little more horn like quality to it
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Speaker 1: rather than the kind of the liver pudlion tinged McCartney is.
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Speaker 1: M when you've released your first Beatles album, LJ meets
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Speaker 1: the Beatles, and I want to say plays the Beatles.
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Speaker 1: I was in two thousands. What was the response to that?
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Speaker 1: Very good? I mean I got lots of great reviews,
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Speaker 1: who got voted to one of the top ten all
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Speaker 1: time Acoustic Guitar records in Acoustic Guitar magazine, and sold
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Speaker 1: quite well. I mean, for you know, the the acoustic
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Speaker 1: guitar market is not like a huge market. I mean,
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Speaker 1: it's comparable with the classical market. You know, typically, like
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Speaker 1: a hit classical music album may sell ten thousand copies,
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Speaker 1: but just says a little crossover to part music. It
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Speaker 1: has crossover and and it it, you know, and it
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Speaker 1: still sells. I mean, I personally recommended it to countless
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Speaker 1: people who are Beatles fan and they all come back
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Speaker 1: and and I get repeat business on that because people
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Speaker 1: wear out the CD. I'm Barry Ridults. You're listening to
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Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today
16:50
Speaker 1: is Lawrence Juber. He is a guitarist extraordinaire. Toured the
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Speaker 1: world with Paul McCartney and Wings, has recorded numerous tell
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Speaker 1: vision and movie soundtracks, including the James Bond theme for
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Speaker 1: The Spy Who Loved Me and lots and countless other
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Speaker 1: studio work. Two time Grammy winner. Let's jump into some
17:13
Speaker 1: of the more arcane, technical and altered tunings that you
17:18
Speaker 1: seem to like. Tell us about Dad God Dad God
17:22
Speaker 1: D A D G A D was supposedly developed by
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Speaker 1: Davey Graham, a British guitar player sixties fifty and the
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Speaker 1: Yeah in the late fifties early sixties. It really has
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Speaker 1: a drone tuning for him to jam with Moroccan musicians
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Speaker 1: that got picked up by Jimmy Page, you know, for
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Speaker 1: example cash. You know, it's it lends itself to that
17:55
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But what I discovered when I started
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Speaker 1: fooling around with it was that it also has great
18:02
Speaker 1: possibilities in terms of arranging pop music, and not just
18:07
Speaker 1: current pop music, you know, like rock music, but kind
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Speaker 1: of the Great Anglo American songbook in general. So you know,
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Speaker 1: it works. It just works great for all kinds of stuff.
18:26
Speaker 1: So you can do Cole Porter, Jerome down the whole list. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Gershwin Um and I did an album of Um Harold
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Speaker 1: aland tunes for example, I've got the World on six
18:39
Speaker 1: strings and a number of those students I did in
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Speaker 1: in that tuning because it just kind of lends itself
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Speaker 1: to some really interesting concepts. I mean, you take something
18:47
Speaker 1: like Crimeer River and how the tone and the texture
18:54
Speaker 1: scenarity of it, and it gets these voicings that are
19:15
Speaker 1: very almost pianistic in the way that the notes spread together.
19:18
Speaker 1: Because you have two adjacent scale tones, you have a
19:21
Speaker 1: G N N A, which means that you can get
19:24
Speaker 1: these kind of these kind of pianistic kind of sonarities
19:29
Speaker 1: or or moral orchestral It's it's a way of all
19:32
Speaker 1: orchestrating on the guitar. And then there's also three D
19:35
Speaker 1: strings and two A strings, so octaves again kind of
19:45
Speaker 1: a pianistic kind of approach. Um, and then it lets
19:48
Speaker 1: me do you know where I can use both hands
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Speaker 1: on the fingerboard and get these kind of rhythmic effects.
19:55
Speaker 1: I should be running film in here. I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
19:58
Speaker 1: I'm not. Oh, you know, there plenty of stuff on YouTube,
20:01
Speaker 1: so you don't bother trying to take that stuff down.
20:04
Speaker 1: The copyright issue isn't in it? Or is it just promoting? Well,
20:07
Speaker 1: I mean there's um some of the interestingly enough, I
20:11
Speaker 1: can't if if it's a cover tune and somebody posts
20:15
Speaker 1: it on YouTube, which they do, you don't have I
20:17
Speaker 1: don't have the right to take it down. The copyright
20:19
Speaker 1: owner of the tune has to take it down. You
20:21
Speaker 1: don't have rights in the performance, no, not, not like
20:24
Speaker 1: you do in the in the copyright. Fascinating. I know,
20:28
Speaker 1: if you can monetize the performance, and how do you
20:31
Speaker 1: because you go out and play it again? Well, or
20:33
Speaker 1: because they you know, if if there's advertising attached to it,
20:36
Speaker 1: then there's some monetization involved. But you know, the fact
20:39
Speaker 1: is that YouTube is gargantuan as it is, and as
20:43
Speaker 1: useful as it is as a promotion is really is
20:46
Speaker 1: a kind of a a nasty beast on the back
20:49
Speaker 1: of intellectual property rights that there have been all sorts
20:53
Speaker 1: of articles recently about people who who have released songs
20:57
Speaker 1: they've gotten two hundred million plays and they get a
21:00
Speaker 1: check for eighty seven dollars. Well, yeah, but it gets
21:03
Speaker 1: a little twisted because the structure now, and we're kind
21:06
Speaker 1: of drifting away from guitar tuns. But the structure of
21:10
Speaker 1: of royalty payments is that you have the mechanical and
21:15
Speaker 1: the synchronization rights which belong to the writers and the publishers.
21:19
Speaker 1: But since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you also have
21:22
Speaker 1: a performance royalty. Now, for example, a songwriter may have
21:27
Speaker 1: something played on Spotify or Pandora, which will generate a
21:31
Speaker 1: minute royalty for the writing side, but the royalty for
21:36
Speaker 1: the performer, which doesn't exist in terrestrial radio, but in
21:40
Speaker 1: the digital medium, the royalty for the performer is substantially higher.
21:45
Speaker 1: So I'm very happy when March rolls around and I
21:47
Speaker 1: see my royalty statements from Sound Exchange for airplay that
21:51
Speaker 1: I get on my Christmas music on Pandora, for example.
21:54
Speaker 1: I'm very ridults you're listening to Masters in Business on
21:57
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. My special guests at is Lawrence Duber. He
22:01
Speaker 1: is the two time Grammy Award winning guitarists who toured
22:05
Speaker 1: with Paul McCartney and Wins. He's released twenty three albums,
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Speaker 1: many of which were too critical acclaim. Let's talk a
22:13
Speaker 1: little bit about the future of music. Recording isn't the
22:17
Speaker 1: money maker it used to be, So how do musicians
22:21
Speaker 1: make a living today? It's funny being on a Masters
22:24
Speaker 1: of Business show because I was never a Master of Business.
22:28
Speaker 1: I just knew I play guitar and I can get
22:30
Speaker 1: paid this much for this gig. So I never really
22:33
Speaker 1: learned until I worked with McCartney. I never really learned
22:36
Speaker 1: about the music publishing side of things and how the
22:40
Speaker 1: revenue really comes in, not so much from the artists side,
22:44
Speaker 1: but from the writer publisher side, because that's always been
22:48
Speaker 1: governed by statutory royalty rates. So it's not like somebody,
22:52
Speaker 1: well they do. Record companies will still, you know, try
22:54
Speaker 1: and cut you down on the statutory right. But at
22:57
Speaker 1: least you know that there's a copyright try funeral that
23:00
Speaker 1: says there's nine point one since coming to you for
23:04
Speaker 1: every copy of this particular composition that you write and publish.
23:08
Speaker 1: So I learned a lot from working with Paul because
23:11
Speaker 1: he had become even by the late seventies, had really
23:14
Speaker 1: become the largest independent music publisher in the world. You
23:18
Speaker 1: describe yourself as having a masters in music at McCartney Universe.
23:23
Speaker 1: So what did he teach you about about that business side?
23:25
Speaker 1: And it's really in terms of making how you can
23:28
Speaker 1: make money on that side of things too, own your own,
23:31
Speaker 1: your own soul and your own your your material. And
23:34
Speaker 1: you know, I never consider myself to be a composer
23:37
Speaker 1: until that point where it was like, oh, you mean
23:39
Speaker 1: you don't have to just sit there and wait for
23:40
Speaker 1: a bolt of lightning to come from the heavens that
23:42
Speaker 1: you you know, it's it's a job. It's Paul's very
23:45
Speaker 1: has this great work ethic as far as he still
23:48
Speaker 1: a studio, well not just the touring, but I'm going
23:51
Speaker 1: to write I'm going to write a tune today, or
23:53
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a tune this morning and another
23:55
Speaker 1: one this afternoon. I mean, it's you know, it's like
23:57
Speaker 1: what John and Paul did when they sat down and
23:59
Speaker 1: they said, well, once they started making money, it's like,
24:01
Speaker 1: what what should we write today? Well, let's let's write
24:03
Speaker 1: a swimming pool. I had a new roof I mean,
24:08
Speaker 1: you know you because if you have a hit song,
24:10
Speaker 1: I mean that there is you know, that side of
24:12
Speaker 1: the equation is a valuable one. More recently, the performance
24:18
Speaker 1: riot royalties have have kicked in for for players, for
24:21
Speaker 1: performers in a way that never existed in the past,
24:25
Speaker 1: because you as a studio musician, for example, you wouldn't
24:28
Speaker 1: get any kind of back end on radio airplay. But
24:31
Speaker 1: even the artists never got any radio airplay. So as
24:35
Speaker 1: a studio musician you get paid hourly and then you're out. Well,
24:38
Speaker 1: but then there's a musicians union, you know, I'm I mean,
24:41
Speaker 1: I've been in you know, the English Musicians Union. I've
24:43
Speaker 1: been a member of the air for them since the
24:45
Speaker 1: mid seventies. I have a pension coming from, you know,
24:49
Speaker 1: all the work, especially in the TV and movie end
24:51
Speaker 1: of things, that seems to be better structured and more
24:55
Speaker 1: lawyered up to a large extent. Yes, but but it's
24:58
Speaker 1: also it's a evolved now. I mean, there's there are
25:01
Speaker 1: different funds. There's a secondary payments fund where if you
25:04
Speaker 1: play on a movie score, for example, some tiny portion
25:08
Speaker 1: of the of the growth the distributors growth of secondary markets,
25:12
Speaker 1: like if it goes to DVD or you know, that
25:15
Speaker 1: generates payments to musicians, and that's the kind of thing
25:18
Speaker 1: that in the dry Spells, that's one of the things
25:20
Speaker 1: that musicians can survive on in l A. It's a
25:24
Speaker 1: really odd situation because you go and work for a
25:26
Speaker 1: studio as a as a musician and play on a
25:29
Speaker 1: movie score. You're an employee, but you're walking in there
25:33
Speaker 1: with perhaps with a two hundred thousand dollar violin. You know,
25:38
Speaker 1: your you have your you bring your own equipment to
25:40
Speaker 1: the table. You you kind of are defined really as
25:42
Speaker 1: an independent contractor by anything except the fact that the
25:46
Speaker 1: studio says, no, you're an employee because you're doing this
25:48
Speaker 1: work for higher and you know, a lot of us,
25:51
Speaker 1: a lot of us end up with you know, with
25:52
Speaker 1: corporations so that you can work that better. What's happened
25:56
Speaker 1: is as as the revenue from records else has dropped off,
26:01
Speaker 1: what has kicked in as well as the digital royalty
26:04
Speaker 1: streams for performers is also all the licensing stuff. So
26:08
Speaker 1: that my daughter Elsie is a songwriter and she co
26:10
Speaker 1: wrote a song called Fireball for Pitball, which was a
26:13
Speaker 1: hit a couple of years ago, and that got licensed
26:17
Speaker 1: by a Spanish telecom company for a for a commercial
26:19
Speaker 1: for example, and so everybody that participated that, the writers
26:23
Speaker 1: and the publishers, all get you some piece of it.
26:26
Speaker 1: Plus the performance. The TV performances generate performance royalties on
26:31
Speaker 1: the writer side, so that gets processed through B M
26:34
Speaker 1: I R s CAP or whatever their their membership is.
26:38
Speaker 1: So you have to kind of learn how to be
26:40
Speaker 1: cognizant of the revenue streams and then which used to
26:43
Speaker 1: be CD sales and now it sounds it's like composition
26:46
Speaker 1: and performance, except that, you know, if you were an
26:48
Speaker 1: artist and not the writer, your record royalties were never
26:51
Speaker 1: really that great because record companies would always find ways
26:55
Speaker 1: to cross collateralize or to to you know, to take
27:00
Speaker 1: promotional budgets out of your royalty stream or use controlled
27:03
Speaker 1: composition claus as where yeah, there may be fourteen tracks
27:06
Speaker 1: on your album, but we're only going to pay you
27:08
Speaker 1: for ten kinds of things. You know, where that there
27:10
Speaker 1: are you know, there's always the lawyer loyally side of that.
27:14
Speaker 1: Not a very nice business, was it never was a
27:16
Speaker 1: nice business. The opportunities are there, and there are some
27:19
Speaker 1: people that have been making actually decent money from YouTube videos.
27:22
Speaker 1: For example, if you if you understand how to monetize
27:25
Speaker 1: that stuff. So the the opportunities are there, But the
27:29
Speaker 1: problem is that you go study music in a conservatory
27:32
Speaker 1: that will teach you about how to make a living
27:34
Speaker 1: doing it. You know, one of my pet peeves is
27:37
Speaker 1: that you go study classical guitar. You can come out
27:39
Speaker 1: after three or four years of conservatory and not know
27:42
Speaker 1: how to string a chord sequence together or know how
27:45
Speaker 1: to put repertoire together to play at a wedding, for example,
27:48
Speaker 1: which may be outside of teaching. The only real avenue
27:51
Speaker 1: for for making a living is doing those kind of
27:54
Speaker 1: live performances. Because if you're a classical guitar player, there
27:58
Speaker 1: are maybe fifteen classical guitar players in the world who
28:00
Speaker 1: can make living as concert performance. So, you know, teaching
28:04
Speaker 1: and and playing local gigs becomes a viable way of
28:09
Speaker 1: making a living. That's really, really quite interesting. So we've
28:13
Speaker 1: heard over the years horrible stories about problems with managers
28:18
Speaker 1: stealing from their clients. Why is it that it always
28:21
Speaker 1: seems that big names to people like Billy Joel and
28:26
Speaker 1: I think Sting had an issue and it's a whole
28:28
Speaker 1: one of Philly Joel in particular, because I mean his
28:30
Speaker 1: manager AARTI RiPP had the perfect name. You know, that
28:34
Speaker 1: should have been a warning early on, don't have a
28:36
Speaker 1: business nap manager names Rip. So so why is this
28:40
Speaker 1: always seem to be millions of dollars? Later we discover
28:44
Speaker 1: our our artists not watching their dollars that closely, that
28:48
Speaker 1: millions could go out the door before anyone notices that.
28:51
Speaker 1: How how can you if you're also full time writing, recording, touring,
28:58
Speaker 1: doing all of the stuff that goes along with it, interviews, um,
29:02
Speaker 1: photo sessions, everything that. You know what Joni Mitchell described
29:06
Speaker 1: as the the star making machinery behind the popular song
29:10
Speaker 1: It's a full time job. It was remarkable in Wings
29:12
Speaker 1: that Linda McCartney could be a full time band member
29:15
Speaker 1: and a mother of four kids. You know, it was
29:17
Speaker 1: it was hard for her and that was really the
29:19
Speaker 1: the final demise of the band was that it just
29:22
Speaker 1: became too much and the band was always Paul and
29:24
Speaker 1: Linda's band. So it's just it's difficult to take care
29:29
Speaker 1: of the creative business and take care of the business business.
29:33
Speaker 1: I've managed to be able to kind of balance the two,
29:36
Speaker 1: you know, the right brain and the left brain side
29:38
Speaker 1: of things. But It took me a long time to
29:40
Speaker 1: understand how to do it, and I'm still not that
29:43
Speaker 1: good at it, but I'm getting better now. I've just
29:46
Speaker 1: started my own record label, which means for my next release,
29:50
Speaker 1: which is a Christmas album, I had to license a
29:52
Speaker 1: certain number of tunes. So I got to Harry Fox's
29:55
Speaker 1: website and I buy licenses. And then I discovered that
29:57
Speaker 1: sleigh Ride, written by le Roy Anderson, isn't handled by
30:00
Speaker 1: the Harry Fox agencies, so I had to then contact
30:04
Speaker 1: his family, who then put me in touch with BMG
30:06
Speaker 1: and I got mechanical license there, and just those kinds
30:11
Speaker 1: of things that you know somebody in an office has
30:13
Speaker 1: to do well, I just know. But but the technology
30:17
Speaker 1: now has allowed me to be able to stand and
30:19
Speaker 1: I have a standing desk. I don't sit in my
30:22
Speaker 1: studio when I'm playing guitar UM. I can sit there,
30:26
Speaker 1: stand there, and I can you know, in one screen,
30:29
Speaker 1: I can be taking care of that business. On another screen,
30:32
Speaker 1: I can be doing a guitar arrangement or writing UM
30:36
Speaker 1: an article for a guitar magazine or something like that.
30:39
Speaker 1: That the ability to multitask, I think has made it
30:42
Speaker 1: a lot easier. But when it comes to the kind
30:46
Speaker 1: of the higher level of things in terms of dealing
30:48
Speaker 1: with finances and the fact that wealth can come very
30:51
Speaker 1: quickly and having good wealth management is not anything that
30:56
Speaker 1: a music student is necessarily taught how to do, or
30:59
Speaker 1: in a spiring pop star, especially the younger pop stars.
31:02
Speaker 1: I mean that you know they're lucky when they've got
31:04
Speaker 1: a parent that's kind of keeping oversight. So for people
31:07
Speaker 1: who want to find more of your writings and music,
31:11
Speaker 1: I usually send people to Lawrence Jubber dot com, l
31:14
Speaker 1: AU any other place or any other things that they
31:17
Speaker 1: would want to look for or at. Well, that's a
31:19
Speaker 1: good place to start. And you can always just do
31:22
Speaker 1: a search on YouTube and find all kinds of stuff.
31:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm constantly finding stuff on youtual. I found
31:29
Speaker 1: I found on my Wikipedia page. I discovered the Charles
31:33
Speaker 1: as Nevore album that I played on in Paris in
31:35
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven was number one in France for almost
31:39
Speaker 1: an entire year, and I had no idea I actually
31:43
Speaker 1: read that I found it on my Wikipedia page because
31:45
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I never put that up. Somebody
31:48
Speaker 1: put it up. I mean, I've I've gone in there
31:50
Speaker 1: and I've kind of tweaked a few things. And that's
31:52
Speaker 1: the problem is not only now do you have to
31:53
Speaker 1: deal with the creative side, you also have to deal
31:55
Speaker 1: with the social network side and the web, the eber
32:00
Speaker 1: presence aspect of things too. And I've always pretty much
32:04
Speaker 1: tried to manage myself with all of this because I
32:07
Speaker 1: had a business manager in England and it, you know,
32:09
Speaker 1: it did not end well. And it's like, Okay, I'm
32:12
Speaker 1: not going down that route again. And I like being
32:16
Speaker 1: hands on and that's something I learned. Another thing I
32:18
Speaker 1: learned from Paul is how much he really kind of
32:21
Speaker 1: his hands on with what he does. We've been speaking
32:23
Speaker 1: with Lawrence Duber, guitarist for Paul McCartney. Thank you, l
32:27
Speaker 1: J for being so generous with your time. If you
32:30
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation, be sure and check out our podcast Actors,
32:34
Speaker 1: where we keep the digital tape rolling and continue chatting
32:37
Speaker 1: about all things financial and music. Be sure and check
32:41
Speaker 1: out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com or follow
32:45
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Riolts. I'm Barry Ridholts. You've been
32:50
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Are you
32:58
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33:01
Speaker 1: and advisory professionals from cone Resnick can guide you. Cone
33:05
Speaker 1: Resnick delivers industry expertise and forward thinking perspective that can
33:10
Speaker 1: help turn business possibilities into business opportunities. Look ahead, gain insight,
33:16
Speaker 1: imagine more. Is your business ready to break through? Learn
33:20
Speaker 1: more at cone Resnick dot com slash Breakthrough, cone Resnick Accounting, Tax,
33:25
Speaker 1: Advisory Lawrence. Thank you so much for doing this. This
33:29
Speaker 1: has really been an absolute pleasure, and there's so much
33:33
Speaker 1: stuff to go over. Um, let's jump right into the
33:38
Speaker 1: crazy copyright stuff that's going on. So last year we
33:41
Speaker 1: had or two years ago, we had the Marvin Gay
33:45
Speaker 1: bloodlines issue. Uh, not too long ago, there was a
33:49
Speaker 1: huge Bloomberg story about the Stairway to Heaven copyright issue.
33:54
Speaker 1: And then just recently there was another big copyright Yeah,
33:59
Speaker 1: the at and photograph one. It's the same lawyer that
34:02
Speaker 1: did the blurredlines. Not to be confused with the Tom
34:07
Speaker 1: Petty um issue. Well, yeah, that was I won't back
34:12
Speaker 1: down the Sam Smith one, which which was clearly and
34:15
Speaker 1: Tom Petty agreed, or rather Sam Smith agreed that there would.
34:19
Speaker 1: But see the thing about it is that there are
34:22
Speaker 1: there are there's musical substance. That is, it works in
34:29
Speaker 1: such a way that sometimes you can accomplish you can
34:32
Speaker 1: get to the same place from completely different roots. UM.
34:36
Speaker 1: And you see that UM for example, I mean with
34:40
Speaker 1: the Stairway to Heaven case that is going to Trial,
34:44
Speaker 1: which seemed to be based on very similar classical exactly
34:50
Speaker 1: the um the Spirit song Tourists, which uses this UM,
35:01
Speaker 1: uses this kind of figuration which actually, if you if
35:04
Speaker 1: you break it down musically, actually is the same as um. UM.
35:10
Speaker 1: While my guitar gently weeps, oh really, but it doesn't
35:18
Speaker 1: have the melod doesn't have the same melody. Car but
35:20
Speaker 1: but neither of them came first. I mean you can
35:22
Speaker 1: go back. But but Stairway to Heaven see Stairway to
35:28
Speaker 1: Heaven goes down chromatically. You can do the same thing
35:32
Speaker 1: with my funny out Valentine. You know you can do
35:40
Speaker 1: that same thing. Um. You can do that kind of progression.
35:45
Speaker 1: And when you do a progression like that here you
35:48
Speaker 1: have an A with an octave A above it, you
35:50
Speaker 1: go down to the G sharp the harmony note is
35:54
Speaker 1: that now now you're going to find that in a
35:57
Speaker 1: music textbook. You know, that's part of the substance that's
36:01
Speaker 1: the public domain aspect of music. You could there's a
36:05
Speaker 1: there's a composition, you can find it on YouTube. There's
36:08
Speaker 1: a sonata for guitar and violin from six nine by
36:13
Speaker 1: an Italian composer named Grenada, which has that phrase shows
36:19
Speaker 1: up thirty seconds into it. You know, it's it's not
36:24
Speaker 1: a unique phrase by any means. And it's not the
36:27
Speaker 1: same phrase in the in the Spirit song because it's
36:33
Speaker 1: using the same kind of a pegiation. But that's a
36:36
Speaker 1: guitaristic thing. So you're a little skeptical on well, I'm
36:39
Speaker 1: skeptical on I'm skeptical on it because, Okay, so there's
36:42
Speaker 1: a there's a finger picture acoustic guitar, and there are
36:44
Speaker 1: recorders on the on the Spirit tune, and there's recorders
36:49
Speaker 1: on the stairway to have it, and there's a moment
36:51
Speaker 1: where they there's a very similar sonority. Yeah, there's an overlap,
36:57
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Page had access because Zeppelin open for Spirit
37:01
Speaker 1: while they were performing that song. But it doesn't write
37:05
Speaker 1: to me. It it doesn't right to the level of
37:07
Speaker 1: copyright infringement when it comes to the actual composition. Could
37:12
Speaker 1: it come to that level in regards to the the
37:17
Speaker 1: feel the sound and feel of the recording, perhaps, but
37:21
Speaker 1: does does that really apply? But a musicologist could draw
37:26
Speaker 1: the conclusion and swear a jury, And the reality is
37:31
Speaker 1: that a jury of one's peers in this particular instance
37:34
Speaker 1: should really be all rock and roll famous in order
37:37
Speaker 1: to be able to to have a true, a true
37:42
Speaker 1: evaluation of it. It just goes to the fact that
37:45
Speaker 1: intellectual property is probably best not tried in front of
37:48
Speaker 1: a jury like that, because the nuances of it are
37:52
Speaker 1: beyond easy explanation. I was a little perplexed. Look, I'm
37:56
Speaker 1: a Marvin Gay fan, but I also who didn't love
37:59
Speaker 1: the line song that was everywhere? But I didn't really
38:03
Speaker 1: see that, not really, let's let's not even let's not
38:06
Speaker 1: even hedge it. I did not see one as having
38:09
Speaker 1: ripped off the other. There's a flavor, Yeah, there's a groove.
38:12
Speaker 1: There's a groove flavor to it. But putting a cow
38:14
Speaker 1: bell on a track does not does not represent a
38:18
Speaker 1: breach of copyright. And I read the musicologist report. You know,
38:22
Speaker 1: I studied musicology. I read the musicologist report. You could
38:26
Speaker 1: take Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star and show how there's an
38:31
Speaker 1: alignment of notes that corresponds in such a way that
38:35
Speaker 1: you could perhaps persuade an audience that song A was
38:39
Speaker 1: derived from that, you know, but it was the cow
38:42
Speaker 1: bell that gave it that field, But that cow bell.
38:45
Speaker 1: But but the judge wouldn't let the jury listen to
38:49
Speaker 1: the record. The judgment was not on the basis of
38:52
Speaker 1: the record. The judgment was on the basis of the composition,
38:56
Speaker 1: which was not the same thing. So I I personally
39:00
Speaker 1: thought that that was that opened a can of worms,
39:03
Speaker 1: as I haven't yet looked into the edge shereh and
39:06
Speaker 1: one that that just came up on my radar earlier
39:09
Speaker 1: this morning. And I'm, you know, just busy running around,
39:12
Speaker 1: but I want to look into that because I have
39:14
Speaker 1: a suspicion that what's happening is that there's this movement
39:18
Speaker 1: to try and open up that area. But you know,
39:22
Speaker 1: for example, you take you take the Bau Diddley, You feel, well,
39:28
Speaker 1: how many records, how many songs have used like that?
39:32
Speaker 1: What are you going with that? You're going to give
39:34
Speaker 1: Bo Diddley royalties because they took the groove, you know,
39:40
Speaker 1: but all music is based on what has come before,
39:43
Speaker 1: So then you could look at you know, Ernest Confeld,
39:46
Speaker 1: the great film composer. You listen to some of his
39:52
Speaker 1: music and you put that next to John Williams Star Wars,
39:55
Speaker 1: and you can hear where John Williams got it from.
39:57
Speaker 1: Is it Is it an actual breach of copy? Right? Well,
40:00
Speaker 1: if you're an aggressive lawyer with a with an aggressive musicologist,
40:04
Speaker 1: you could possibly make that case. But there has to
40:07
Speaker 1: be a recognition somewhere that there's a line that there
40:11
Speaker 1: are only a certain number of notes, there are only
40:13
Speaker 1: a certain number of grooves, and there's only a certain
40:16
Speaker 1: kind of sonarity. Does the sonority of a fingerpick guitar
40:20
Speaker 1: and a recorder really right to the level of a
40:23
Speaker 1: copyright infringement? You could say there's a blurred line, but
40:26
Speaker 1: I won't go yeah, that's a terrible pot so um, well,
40:30
Speaker 1: but be in blurredlines case, of course, they opened the
40:32
Speaker 1: writers opened the can of worms by um by preemptively
40:38
Speaker 1: seeking relief against being sued because they knew that they would.
40:42
Speaker 1: They anticipated that that was gonna I think that and
40:45
Speaker 1: again not to go on Marvin Gaye, but they did
40:47
Speaker 1: hear through the grapevine that lawsuit was a lawsuit was coming.
40:51
Speaker 1: I mean, that was really supposed to be out there,
40:54
Speaker 1: so once once we're I think the family reached out
40:57
Speaker 1: to them and that's why they that's why they did
41:00
Speaker 1: a preemptent um. The writer hit get a writ is
41:04
Speaker 1: the among songwriters because it happens so often now. But
41:10
Speaker 1: but a lot of these lawsuits, I just I think
41:14
Speaker 1: they I don't know whether they rise to the level
41:16
Speaker 1: of abusive process. But you know, when it's somebody should
41:19
Speaker 1: come close, Yeah, when it's somebody's like you know, said, well,
41:22
Speaker 1: you know this this little riff clearly was taken from
41:26
Speaker 1: my my song. You know, there was the one with
41:29
Speaker 1: Madonna Madonna record where the judge said, you know this
41:33
Speaker 1: horn stab was so diminimous that they're not going to
41:38
Speaker 1: that doesn't constitute something that needed to be licensed, is
41:42
Speaker 1: to the even the the original recording copyright owners didn't
41:46
Speaker 1: notice for twenty years, you know that. George Harrison, my
41:50
Speaker 1: my sweet lord. You know this is a little bit there.
41:54
Speaker 1: But the songs are so different. But Alan sobias. But
41:57
Speaker 1: Alan Klein was on both sides of the laws suit.
42:00
Speaker 1: How is that the publishing on he's so fine, the Chiffons,
42:04
Speaker 1: he's so fine. And he was also managing, So who
42:09
Speaker 1: brought who brought that suit. I think he did. I
42:12
Speaker 1: don't remember the exact dat. He was on both side
42:15
Speaker 1: of it. All right, So I only have you for
42:17
Speaker 1: a limited amount of time, and I have lots of questions,
42:20
Speaker 1: all right, but I have to I have to play
42:22
Speaker 1: a little bit of Let you play a little music,
42:25
Speaker 1: and this time I'm actually gonna remember to record it.
42:29
Speaker 1: I'm retuning. So which way are you going? I'm going
42:32
Speaker 1: back to dad Gad. I wasn't standard tuning. Just how
42:36
Speaker 1: often are you in standard tuning half the time? Oh? Really? Yeah,
42:41
Speaker 1: I'd still live there, right, It's just that, um My
42:47
Speaker 1: my second home is dad Gad. I thought that was
42:50
Speaker 1: in California. By the way, how do you like being
42:53
Speaker 1: in to paraphrase the sting song, how do you like
42:56
Speaker 1: being an Englishman in California? Oh? I love being in California,
43:01
Speaker 1: whether the geography, everything about it. It's just I mean,
43:05
Speaker 1: my roots have become so entrenched there. I mean, you know,
43:09
Speaker 1: I've got two daughters and two grandchildren. It's like I
43:14
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine going back to England, not just in terms
43:16
Speaker 1: of the weather, but also just being in America always
43:19
Speaker 1: seems like you can get more things done. There's always
43:23
Speaker 1: there's always a certain inertia in English, although there's a
43:26
Speaker 1: difference between I was gonna say, is that true in
43:28
Speaker 1: Europe in general? To some extent? I was just in
43:32
Speaker 1: Italy and I was shocked to find that half of
43:35
Speaker 1: Italy does the siesta like Spain does that. That was
43:39
Speaker 1: always a alright, so I'm going to record this man
43:44
Speaker 1: that I put her on video instead of a photo. Okay,
43:50
Speaker 1: I saw her standing there. I have to put this
46:21
Speaker 1: down to applaud fantastic. So that was great. So now,
46:25
Speaker 1: but here's an example that baseline Paul got it from
46:30
Speaker 1: a Chuck Berry record. Okay, no copyright on a baseline
46:35
Speaker 1: like that. So how long does it take for you
46:37
Speaker 1: to take that original song and then rearrange it in
46:41
Speaker 1: a to this guitar, this tuning. It could be it
46:45
Speaker 1: could be ten minutes, It could be three months. It
46:48
Speaker 1: just depends on Yeah, so I know again, another really
46:52
Speaker 1: surprising song is I Am the Walrisk. Yeah, that took
46:56
Speaker 1: a while. I was gonna say, you could hear. You
46:59
Speaker 1: could hear a lot of of of effort and love
47:02
Speaker 1: went into putting that together. Again, it starts with the orchestration,
47:08
Speaker 1: not what you expect to hear, let's let's get a
47:13
Speaker 1: little bit of that before we try a few originals.
48:03
Speaker 1: Wol fantastic. What are they going to start making a
51:00
Speaker 1: Martin acoustic with a wammy bar? Because I get that.
51:04
Speaker 1: So you're you're just doing it that way without the
51:07
Speaker 1: actual parts. It's called I call it the virtual wammy
51:10
Speaker 1: it is a virtual So so let's talk about some
51:13
Speaker 1: of the other stuff that you've recorded, and again I
51:16
Speaker 1: know I have we have to, So I mentioned I
51:20
Speaker 1: want to talk about some of the originals, but I
51:22
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit
51:24
Speaker 1: about the Wings album. You did, you said? Paul actually
51:29
Speaker 1: had suggested this. Well, gave him LJ plays the Beatles,
51:33
Speaker 1: and he said, well what about Wings? You know, because
51:35
Speaker 1: it's a publisher. He kind of like, you cant help
51:37
Speaker 1: like people who recording. So I was a huge Beatles
51:41
Speaker 1: fan growing up, heartbroken ten when the Beatles break up,
51:46
Speaker 1: but harder nine years, all but heartbroken. And then when
51:49
Speaker 1: some of the Beatles songs, some of the Wings songs
51:53
Speaker 1: came out, and you know, everybody loves Admiral Halsey, Uncle
51:58
Speaker 1: Hal and there's a handful of songs from the from
52:03
Speaker 1: Jet and Live and Let Die, And there's whole bunch
52:05
Speaker 1: of stuff that's great, But there was some early songs
52:08
Speaker 1: of his that when we first heard them, it's like,
52:11
Speaker 1: you know, it really needs the acid wash of John
52:15
Speaker 1: two offsets Paul's sweetness. But your covers completely changed my
52:22
Speaker 1: perspective on it. So silly love songs, maybe I'm malaised
52:26
Speaker 1: my love. Listen to what the man said. I always
52:29
Speaker 1: thought of these as very light pop confesstion, not serious music.
52:35
Speaker 1: Your covers of those reveal we talked earlier about, you
52:39
Speaker 1: referenced revealing certain emotional resonances and nuances that may have
52:45
Speaker 1: gotten lost in in the orchestration. And you've made me
52:49
Speaker 1: relook these songs that I kinda that's fluff, because they're
52:54
Speaker 1: really not. They're beautiful melodies. You know, you look at
52:58
Speaker 1: any of the Great American Songbook songs, you know, just
53:02
Speaker 1: putting aside the Anglo American aspects of it. You look
53:06
Speaker 1: at Gershwin or Jerome Kern or Harold Allen. None of
53:10
Speaker 1: these writers were singers. You know, there were a few,
53:13
Speaker 1: I mean, um uh you you know, um Jogi Carmichael,
53:20
Speaker 1: for example, but but typically you know, they wrote songs
53:24
Speaker 1: for other people to sing. The idea of the songwriter
53:28
Speaker 1: as the artist making the records was was really a
53:31
Speaker 1: sixties phenomenon. I mean, the Beatles were really the first,
53:35
Speaker 1: one of the first bands, certainly the first band to
53:37
Speaker 1: achieve that level of success. Um who wrote their own material.
53:42
Speaker 1: And and that was a battle they had to fight
53:44
Speaker 1: at the beginning with George Martin, because you know, they said,
53:47
Speaker 1: George Martin said, here's the song you're going to record,
53:49
Speaker 1: and they said no, and they did it begrudgingly, and
53:52
Speaker 1: they ended up, you know, how do you do it?
53:54
Speaker 1: Jerry and the Pacemakers had a big hit with the
53:56
Speaker 1: Mickey Most song. They said, we want to do our
53:58
Speaker 1: own songs, and we're writing songs that are good enough
54:01
Speaker 1: to do, you know, and you when you go back
54:05
Speaker 1: in history and you realize that, you know, these composers
54:07
Speaker 1: were writing for other people. We've become so um enamored
54:13
Speaker 1: of the Beatles versions of the songs that to be
54:15
Speaker 1: able to take them and and strip it down to
54:19
Speaker 1: the same kind of musical fabric as you would get
54:22
Speaker 1: with a Gershwin song, or or an Island song or
54:25
Speaker 1: at your own current song, um then becomes an illuminating
54:30
Speaker 1: experience because the nature of the music of it, which
54:40
Speaker 1: is which is lovely. Yeah, it's lovely, and it's you
54:43
Speaker 1: know the what it's it's and it's it's so it's
54:49
Speaker 1: so nuanced, and it's so musically clever without being obviously clever.
54:55
Speaker 1: But you have to kind of strip away the familiar
54:59
Speaker 1: and paulse voice is so familiar, and you've heard it
55:01
Speaker 1: so many times it's easy to lose track of what
55:05
Speaker 1: what the underneath of that is that the only comparison
55:10
Speaker 1: I could think of. I was a huge Pretender's fan.
55:15
Speaker 1: I love the band, Love Chrissie Hines and they She
55:19
Speaker 1: ultimately released an album I think was called Isle of
55:22
Speaker 1: You that's horror and a string quartet in front of
55:25
Speaker 1: an audience, a string quartet, And similarly, you discover, wow,
55:30
Speaker 1: these aren't just you know, headbanging rock and roll. So
55:34
Speaker 1: they're a beautiful right and and in in a number
55:38
Speaker 1: of ways, you've forced me to relook at a number
55:42
Speaker 1: of songs that I always kind of, you know, shrugged off,
55:46
Speaker 1: especially the wing songs. That little that little stands you
55:49
Speaker 1: just played. That's a lovely little melody, and it's too
55:53
Speaker 1: easy to dismiss it as that's just a pop song
55:55
Speaker 1: until you hear it in that context. But you know, um,
55:58
Speaker 1: I Got Rhythm is just a pop song until you
56:01
Speaker 1: hear it sung by you know, Tony Bennett or somebody.
56:05
Speaker 1: I mean, it's these are vehicles for interpretation and that,
56:10
Speaker 1: you know. And it's not like there aren't a million
56:12
Speaker 1: cover songs of Beatles records. You know, a lot of
56:14
Speaker 1: them have just kind of got lost over the years.
56:17
Speaker 1: You know, you have to rediscover it's not just um,
56:21
Speaker 1: Joe Cocker doing with a little help from my friends,
56:23
Speaker 1: for example, which is you know, one of those iconom
56:27
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of them, you know, you know,
56:30
Speaker 1: but it runs into that problem if it's too exacting,
56:33
Speaker 1: why bother? And if it's so far afield. I mean,
56:36
Speaker 1: Joe Cocker made that his own, but there are so
56:38
Speaker 1: many covers you here, and it's like, well, you know
56:41
Speaker 1: that it's a business. I mean, the fact is that
56:43
Speaker 1: you have an artist, you have a record company, you
56:45
Speaker 1: have an artist in repertoire, and our person who says, okay,
56:48
Speaker 1: we have to put together a repertoire for this album,
56:51
Speaker 1: and and it's just how do you bring something fresh
56:55
Speaker 1: to it? Um? And it depends on the artist. It
56:58
Speaker 1: depends on the artist tree involved. So speaking of artistry,
57:03
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of your original songs. And in
57:07
Speaker 1: the last five or ten minutes we have I just
57:09
Speaker 1: have five, and then I would there's a number of
57:13
Speaker 1: questions I haven't even remotely gotten to. So let me
57:17
Speaker 1: ask you two quick questions before we get to your
57:21
Speaker 1: uh some some of my favorite stuff of yours. So
57:24
Speaker 1: you're in the business of being a professional musician. What
57:27
Speaker 1: do you do when a recent college grad comes to
57:30
Speaker 1: you and says, I'm thinking of a career in music.
57:33
Speaker 1: What what sort of advice would you give to that person?
57:36
Speaker 1: I would say, don't think about it, do it really
57:39
Speaker 1: despite all the changes and the challenges, and just be
57:42
Speaker 1: be educated, be aware of where the revenue streams are,
57:46
Speaker 1: be aware of how difficult it is to make a
57:50
Speaker 1: living as a musician, and be properly prepared for it. See,
57:54
Speaker 1: I think that what happens is you get a lot
57:56
Speaker 1: of people who base their musical education on emulate ing
58:01
Speaker 1: somebody else without having the foundation two to build a
58:06
Speaker 1: career on. You know, there was a time when you could,
58:10
Speaker 1: perhaps you know, back in the sixties or the fifties,
58:13
Speaker 1: you could hear somebody and say, oh, I can do that,
58:16
Speaker 1: and you know, be do your own version of Johnny
58:19
Speaker 1: Cash or Elvis or whatever. But now you know the
58:23
Speaker 1: music businesses so that the real kind of money end
58:26
Speaker 1: of the business is so focused on a certain segment
58:30
Speaker 1: of audience in terms of you know, basically kind of
58:33
Speaker 1: preteens and teens. And you know, if you're a female
58:36
Speaker 1: artist and you're over the age of twenty, then your
58:39
Speaker 1: your chances of getting signed to a record deal diminish
58:44
Speaker 1: quite rapidly. Um. One of the reasons my daughter Elsie
58:48
Speaker 1: really focused on the songwriting side of it, because it's
58:52
Speaker 1: if you make inroads as a songwriter, then you have
58:56
Speaker 1: more freedom as an artist. You know, it depends whether
58:58
Speaker 1: you want to be a pop star when you whether
59:00
Speaker 1: you want to be an artist. And I think the
59:02
Speaker 1: advice I would give is what are your goals? Do
59:04
Speaker 1: you simply want to be up on stage with lights
59:06
Speaker 1: and and um and group is and you know, is
59:11
Speaker 1: it just the glamor of it that that attracts you
59:14
Speaker 1: or is it a serious desire to make music and
59:19
Speaker 1: to make that your focus and and you know, so
59:22
Speaker 1: I think it's important to set realistic goals. Um, and
59:27
Speaker 1: it is possible to make money as a musician, but
59:29
Speaker 1: you know, if you join a band and you go
59:31
Speaker 1: out on the road, don't expect to at least not
59:34
Speaker 1: straight away. So that leads me to a question I
59:36
Speaker 1: asked all my guests, which which is simply, what do
59:39
Speaker 1: you know today that you wish you knew when you
59:42
Speaker 1: started let's pull it years ago? I think I wish
59:47
Speaker 1: that I had been better informed about the writing and
59:52
Speaker 1: the publishing side of it so that I could have
59:54
Speaker 1: started that earlier. But I did it when I did it,
59:57
Speaker 1: and that's that's fine. So speaking of which, let's let's
1:00:01
Speaker 1: get one more tune from you before you have to
1:00:04
Speaker 1: go out, which is what what is your favorite original?
1:00:08
Speaker 1: In terms of that's like asking which one is my
1:00:11
Speaker 1: favorite kids? Okay, I won't ask you that, but I
1:00:15
Speaker 1: will say what's your favorite not your favorite song? What's
1:00:19
Speaker 1: your favorite original song? To play? What do you have
1:00:21
Speaker 1: the most fun playing? Which is a different question. It
1:00:26
Speaker 1: is a different question. And um, and I do notice
1:00:29
Speaker 1: when I when I saw you at the Cunning Room,
1:00:32
Speaker 1: you look like you're having a ball playing. Oh yeah,
1:00:36
Speaker 1: let me let me do this one because it's a
1:00:38
Speaker 1: It's a tune called catch and it's just it's I
1:00:42
Speaker 1: usually open the show with it because it just kicks
1:00:45
Speaker 1: everything into games. M kokoo fantastic. I have the greatest
1:03:29
Speaker 1: job in finance, Larry, Thank you so much for being Larry.
1:03:35
Speaker 1: Where did that come from? LJ? Thank you so much
1:03:37
Speaker 1: for being so generous with your time. Um, if you've
1:03:41
Speaker 1: enjoyed terrific. If you've enjoyed this conversation, be sure and
1:03:44
Speaker 1: look up an inch or down an inch for any
1:03:47
Speaker 1: of the other nineties seven or so conversations we've had.
1:03:51
Speaker 1: Be sure and check out all of l j's music
1:03:54
Speaker 1: and books and everything else at Lawrence Juber dot com.
1:03:59
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Masters and Guitar on Bloomberg Radio.
1:04:09
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