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What to Do When Paul McCartney Comes Calling · Masters in Business

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
0:09
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, we have a return guest,
0:12
Speaker 1: and and what a delight Lawrence Juber one of the
0:15
Speaker 1: world's greatest acoustic guitarists, highly regarded by his peers. Everybody
0:22
Speaker 1: who I know who is a professional or amateur musician
0:26
Speaker 1: or guitarist is in awe of this guy's technical skills, prowess, musicology, musicality.
0:35
Speaker 1: He is just a quadruple threat. The work he does
0:39
Speaker 1: is really quite fascinating. I found him because I'm such
0:43
Speaker 1: a huge Beatles fan, and his cover versions of Paul
0:48
Speaker 1: McCartney's Wings and three albums of Beatles songs, it's just
0:54
Speaker 1: astonishing and delightful and there's really nothing else, nothing else
0:59
Speaker 1: like it. My my recording engineer Medina, was just blown
1:02
Speaker 1: away by the version he did of Uh, she Loves You.
1:07
Speaker 1: But any of the songs he he does are just
1:10
Speaker 1: so unique to him and yet so obviously a Beatles song.
1:15
Speaker 1: They're just just amazing. And what's really fascinating is the
1:18
Speaker 1: depth of his musical knowledge and his understanding of the
1:23
Speaker 1: history of both the guitar as an instrument and the
1:27
Speaker 1: history of music and how it's developed. It's it's really fascinating.
1:31
Speaker 1: I love his work. I find him fascinating. I was
1:34
Speaker 1: thrilled to be able to sit here and and listen
1:36
Speaker 1: to him. Um. I recorded two of his songs and
1:39
Speaker 1: I put them up on YouTube. One of the Beatles.
1:42
Speaker 1: The other is Little Wing, which is just insane version
1:46
Speaker 1: of that song. So, with no further ado, here is
1:49
Speaker 1: my conversation with Lawrence Duber, my extra special guest today,
1:58
Speaker 1: is one of my very every musicians in the world.
2:01
Speaker 1: His name is Lawrence Juber. He was born and raised
2:05
Speaker 1: in London, uh Immediately upon graduation from university, began working
2:10
Speaker 1: as a session guitarist with a little known producer named
2:13
Speaker 1: George Martin. He was a studio musician on thousands of
2:18
Speaker 1: sessions before he was invited by Sir Paul McCartney's band
2:22
Speaker 1: Wings for their ninety eight tour. That's really what brought
2:26
Speaker 1: him to wider spread public notice. He has recorded twenty
2:30
Speaker 1: five solo albums, many of which have received critical acclaim.
2:34
Speaker 1: He has won two Grammys. He was named top acoustic
2:38
Speaker 1: guitar player of all time by Acoustic Guitar Magazine and
2:43
Speaker 1: has been called a master of the acoustic guitar by
2:46
Speaker 1: no less than the Who's Peter Townsend, Lawrence Juber. Welcome
2:51
Speaker 1: back to Bloomberg. Happy to be here. So we could
2:55
Speaker 1: do the whole conversation with you, just answering music without
3:01
Speaker 1: so before we get into the specifics, I have to
3:05
Speaker 1: give you kudos. The last time you were here and
3:08
Speaker 1: people I did not mention that you're also a musicologist.
3:13
Speaker 1: We had a long conversation about what was the copyright
3:17
Speaker 1: suit against led Zeppelin to Heaven, and you very specifically said,
3:23
Speaker 1: I don't see how both of them, meaning Zeppelin and
3:27
Speaker 1: the plaintiff didn't steal the music from this, this classical
3:34
Speaker 1: piece of work from the fifteen hundreds or sixteen hundred.
3:38
Speaker 1: And it turned out the court more or less agreed
3:40
Speaker 1: with you. It was basically it was a public domain
3:44
Speaker 1: and you can't steal. But you've got to look at
3:47
Speaker 1: the context in terms of led Zeppelin, that they were
3:51
Speaker 1: in the habit of purloining existing material. Oh really, that
3:57
Speaker 1: was I mean, one can one can look at that,
4:00
Speaker 1: but it's not uncommon when you say proloining. There's a
4:04
Speaker 1: difference between inspired by and stolen front and like having
4:09
Speaker 1: to add other composers to the credits down the line
4:12
Speaker 1: when they got caught out. We just saw that happened
4:15
Speaker 1: recently with with blurred Lines, and we saw that not
4:18
Speaker 1: too long ago with another big song, Birdlines. Bloodlines is
4:22
Speaker 1: a weird one. Yeah, I was surprised by that. It
4:24
Speaker 1: was almost like the drum line was well, yeah, the
4:27
Speaker 1: thing that the weird thing about it was the judge
4:29
Speaker 1: didn't allow the record to be played, and yet it
4:33
Speaker 1: was the groove on the record that was actually what
4:36
Speaker 1: had been taken. And you know, if that was the case,
4:39
Speaker 1: if groove was the issue, you know, Bo Diddley would
4:43
Speaker 1: have been a multimillionaire on the basis of everybody from him,
4:48
Speaker 1: whereas like Chuck Berry actually did get you know, did
4:53
Speaker 1: get compensated for Beach Boys, you know, surfing USA taking,
4:58
Speaker 1: you know, and John and and got sued, you know
5:01
Speaker 1: because here comes on the flat top, you know, and um,
5:04
Speaker 1: it's from you Can't Catch Me. It's did he lose? Yeah,
5:08
Speaker 1: he loves that. And obviously George Harrison, well, but George
5:11
Speaker 1: Harrison was really weird because Alan Klein owned the publishing
5:15
Speaker 1: catalog for both that for both songs, so he was
5:18
Speaker 1: basically himself yeah, that can that happens my my my
5:24
Speaker 1: brother in law, Ross Handles, has handled the Beach Boys
5:29
Speaker 1: record company for a while and there was one particular lawsuit,
5:32
Speaker 1: you know, there's all this intrigue within the Beach Boys,
5:34
Speaker 1: you know where Al al Jardine was on both sides
5:38
Speaker 1: of a lawsuit. He was basically suing himself and the
5:41
Speaker 1: judge pointed that out. So the problem with that is
5:44
Speaker 1: that your legal costs or twice as much, but you're
5:46
Speaker 1: guaranteed to win. That's right. So you lose, so you
5:50
Speaker 1: can lose, but you can also win. So so is
5:53
Speaker 1: this an ongoing problem with copyright issues and music? You
5:56
Speaker 1: would think that everything is always based loosely on what
6:00
Speaker 1: came before. Well, there is that, I mean, there are
6:02
Speaker 1: there are elements that the substance of music is in
6:07
Speaker 1: the public domain. I mean very simply. You know, you
6:09
Speaker 1: take a string is a guitar straight and you touch
6:13
Speaker 1: it halfway. You have an octave, You touch it in thirds,
6:18
Speaker 1: you have a fifth, fourth, five, and then you you
6:23
Speaker 1: keep going up there and you get what's called the
6:25
Speaker 1: harmonic series. And out of that harmonic series you build chords,
6:31
Speaker 1: you build melodies. The building blocks are pretty fundamental and
6:37
Speaker 1: how you arrange those building blocks and do it in
6:39
Speaker 1: a way to avoid stepping on somebody else's copyright is
6:43
Speaker 1: the challenge. And in in the songwriting world, the the
6:47
Speaker 1: the the adage is right a hit, get it rid
6:52
Speaker 1: because the well you saw the Tom Petty song sounded
6:57
Speaker 1: so much so, and I bet you that he didn't
7:00
Speaker 1: actually copy here. It was just simply that that's kind
7:05
Speaker 1: of a progression that you and I mean that there
7:07
Speaker 1: were some Australian guys that put together a YouTube video
7:11
Speaker 1: where they took dozens of songs, all of which were
7:14
Speaker 1: number one records, and all had exactly the same court
7:16
Speaker 1: sequence because there's no copyright on the court sequence copyright
7:20
Speaker 1: strictly speaking copyrights on melody and lyrics, so in the
7:24
Speaker 1: case of blurred lines, they were going outside of the
7:27
Speaker 1: bounds of that. And what you end up with is
7:29
Speaker 1: is just aggressive proactive musicologists finding lawyers and lawyers that
7:36
Speaker 1: they team up with that that can really muddy the
7:39
Speaker 1: waters with all of it. What was the talking pacabell
7:42
Speaker 1: Cannons and geek that everybody said that that a lot
7:45
Speaker 1: of songs have loosely been based on It's a similar sequence.
7:51
Speaker 1: I mean that's the pacabell But for example, you know,
7:58
Speaker 1: these kind of sequences is not uncommon, so you get
8:12
Speaker 1: that that sequence. So many songs, you know, like Journey,
8:23
Speaker 1: you know, Don't Stop Believing is based on that. But
8:26
Speaker 1: it's not a copyright herble thing. That substance of it
8:29
Speaker 1: is just is truly in the public domain. It's how
8:32
Speaker 1: you articulate it. It's what lyrics you put to it,
8:35
Speaker 1: what you do melodically, and how much of a melody
8:40
Speaker 1: is the same as something else. My special guest today
8:43
Speaker 1: is Lawrence Duber. He played with Sir Paul McCartney and
8:47
Speaker 1: Wings on tour in the late seventies and recorded too,
8:51
Speaker 1: And what did you record with them? I'm back to
8:53
Speaker 1: the Egg album. What's the big song from that? The
8:56
Speaker 1: single that was contemporaneous with that was coming up, It
8:59
Speaker 1: was good Night Tonight and then it was getting closer
9:03
Speaker 1: and arrow through me that that period the late like
9:07
Speaker 1: the Indian Summer of Wings as they call it. But
9:09
Speaker 1: then after that coming because the last Wings number one
9:12
Speaker 1: was coming up, which was live and that you're playing
9:17
Speaker 1: with George Martin, You're doing a lot of session work.
9:20
Speaker 1: What's it like when the call comes from McCartney, Hey,
9:23
Speaker 1: I need a guitarist for the next tour. It didn't
9:27
Speaker 1: quite come that way. I had been playing on a
9:29
Speaker 1: TV show with David Essex, was big English pop star
9:32
Speaker 1: at the time, and each week they would have a
9:34
Speaker 1: different musical guest. So one week was Twiggy, which was
9:37
Speaker 1: kind of fun. They did send in the clowns together
9:40
Speaker 1: Um Ronnie Specter the next week. Then the next week
9:43
Speaker 1: was Denny Lane, and Denny was one of the founding
9:46
Speaker 1: member of Wings with Paul and Linda and Um had
9:51
Speaker 1: originally been the lead singer with the Moody Blues and
9:54
Speaker 1: We did Go Now, which was a big Moody Blues hit.
9:57
Speaker 1: UM and Denny liked my playing and we kind of bonded.
10:01
Speaker 1: And then a couple of months after I ran into
10:04
Speaker 1: him at a London studio where Paul and Linda were
10:08
Speaker 1: working with him, and then he introduced me, but there
10:11
Speaker 1: was still I mean, this was kind of September October
10:14
Speaker 1: of seventy seven. I got the call in April of
10:17
Speaker 1: seventy eight, so it wasn't like an overnight thing, and
10:20
Speaker 1: I was very entrenched as a studio musician. I had
10:23
Speaker 1: that would been my ambition from the time I was thirteen. Now,
10:26
Speaker 1: of course, if I knew then what I know now,
10:29
Speaker 1: I would have oriented myself to be being a songwriters
10:33
Speaker 1: a lot more money at that. But nonetheless, my my
10:36
Speaker 1: goal was to play guitar and make a living doing
10:38
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a professional guitar player, whatever that took,
10:41
Speaker 1: being in top forty bands, playing in jazz bands. I
10:45
Speaker 1: played in the National Uth Jazz Orchestra. I'd established myself
10:49
Speaker 1: and I was working at abbey Road in the Iconic
10:52
Speaker 1: studio to the Beatles Studio on a session and I
10:55
Speaker 1: got a phone call. Now getting a phone call on
10:58
Speaker 1: a session at abbey Road was usual. This is for
11:02
Speaker 1: for the younger listeners. Back then. We didn't all have
11:05
Speaker 1: cell phones. It was literally white courtesy phone. Lawrence Juber
11:10
Speaker 1: coming in for you, and the phone was up in
11:12
Speaker 1: the next of the control room. And there's a big
11:15
Speaker 1: long staircase. And you never went up there as as
11:18
Speaker 1: a musician, you know, you stayed down stayed downstairs on
11:22
Speaker 1: the studio floor. But I had to go up. And
11:24
Speaker 1: I've never seen the control room before. So go up
11:26
Speaker 1: in the control room, go take the phone call, and
11:29
Speaker 1: it's McCartney's office as MPL and the guy says, Jenny
11:35
Speaker 1: wants to know if you can come and jam on Monday,
11:37
Speaker 1: and oh, by the way, Paul and Linda will be there.
11:40
Speaker 1: And as it happens, I was free, thank goodness. And
11:42
Speaker 1: if you weren't, if I wasn't, I would have made myself.
11:46
Speaker 1: And I kind of went into a slight panic because
11:49
Speaker 1: I didn't really know any of the Wings stuff. You know,
11:51
Speaker 1: at that time, I was into being a hot shot
11:53
Speaker 1: studio player, and it wasn't. I was listening to pop records,
11:56
Speaker 1: but you know, there weren't a lot of guitar solos
11:59
Speaker 1: on the Wing records, and now that was the thing,
12:01
Speaker 1: you know. I was much more into more of the
12:04
Speaker 1: progressive FUSIONI Staff and Weather Report and UM returned to Forever,
12:10
Speaker 1: and I was listening to like Chick Career and then
12:12
Speaker 1: like Los Angeles guitar players like Larry Carton, Lee Written On,
12:16
Speaker 1: you know, those kind of like jazz guy, fusion guy
12:19
Speaker 1: studio players and UM. But so I brought some LPs
12:23
Speaker 1: from my brother and listened over the weekend. But I
12:26
Speaker 1: realized there was no way I was going to be
12:27
Speaker 1: able to anticipate what we were going to do, and
12:29
Speaker 1: as it turned out, we jammed on some chuck Berry
12:31
Speaker 1: grooves and some reggae kind of field things, and they said,
12:35
Speaker 1: what are you doing for the next few years, at
12:38
Speaker 1: which point I had to think about it deeply for
12:39
Speaker 1: a nano second, because you know, I'd established myself so
12:44
Speaker 1: when I worked really hard and I was making a
12:46
Speaker 1: decent living doing it, but I couldn't turn down the
12:49
Speaker 1: opportunity to work with Paul McCartney. So you know, I said, well,
12:53
Speaker 1: I guess I'm playing with you. I think the rule
12:56
Speaker 1: of thumb is when Paul McCartney says, what are you
12:58
Speaker 1: doing for the next few years, you tell me exactly.
13:03
Speaker 1: So it was it was a big change now, but
13:07
Speaker 1: personally it happened at a really crucial point in my
13:11
Speaker 1: life because my father passed away a month earlier, so
13:14
Speaker 1: it was a very kind of emotionally wrenching period. And
13:19
Speaker 1: you know, to then step into the situation where not
13:21
Speaker 1: only was I working for Paul, but he was kind
13:24
Speaker 1: of an artistic mentor as well, and it really was.
13:27
Speaker 1: It became an extension of my education because I had
13:30
Speaker 1: studied London University got about your music degree in musicology
13:34
Speaker 1: and music theory. I never really studied guitar formally, except
13:38
Speaker 1: in high school. I had classical guitar lessons, but it
13:41
Speaker 1: wasn't my ambition to be a classical guitar player. It
13:45
Speaker 1: was simply a way to have the necessary grade level
13:49
Speaker 1: in performance to be able to continue to study music theory,
13:53
Speaker 1: because what intrigued me was the way that music was
13:56
Speaker 1: put together, and watching you play various songs, it's clear
14:00
Speaker 1: that you don't just pick up a guitar and strum.
14:03
Speaker 1: All of the compositions I've seen you perform have been
14:07
Speaker 1: constructed painstakingly with great a forethought, if that's even a word.
14:13
Speaker 1: But it's clear that these aren't just oh, let me
14:17
Speaker 1: run off a few riffs. You really spend time charting
14:21
Speaker 1: these things out in great theme, figuring out how all
14:23
Speaker 1: the parts work together. I mean, that's that's the challenge,
14:26
Speaker 1: that's the technique. So McCartney's and Linda say to you, hey,
14:31
Speaker 1: let's go on tour. What's actually not not straight away? No,
14:35
Speaker 1: first thing that happens when we went up to Scotland
14:37
Speaker 1: to his farm and spent a few weeks just working
14:41
Speaker 1: through potential material for an album. So before we're even
14:45
Speaker 1: rehearsing for the tour came away date way later because
14:49
Speaker 1: he owed he had just signed with Columbia Records, had
14:52
Speaker 1: been on Capitol for years. Signed with Columbia as a
14:56
Speaker 1: signing bonus, he got a great deal on the Frank
14:59
Speaker 1: Music CBS Songs Frank Music catalog, which included Greece, chorus
15:04
Speaker 1: Line and Annie, all of which got made into movies
15:06
Speaker 1: within a year of him acquiring those copyrights. Yeah, hit,
15:10
Speaker 1: Paul was well on the way to becoming the largest
15:13
Speaker 1: independent music publisher in the world. Because if Linda's father,
15:17
Speaker 1: Lee represented a lot of the composers. Lee Eastman was
15:20
Speaker 1: big time, big time music lawyer, and in fact, after
15:25
Speaker 1: we had spent some time in Scotland and we shot
15:27
Speaker 1: a video from an existing track, we then came to
15:30
Speaker 1: New York, went out to Long Island, out to the
15:33
Speaker 1: Hampton's and spent a few days getting to know chat
15:37
Speaker 1: about the business end of it with with Lee Eastman,
15:39
Speaker 1: which was pretty impressive, I have to say. And then
15:43
Speaker 1: we went back to England and then went up to
15:46
Speaker 1: Scotland again and started recording an album, which we continued
15:49
Speaker 1: to do in Scotland, and then we went down to
15:51
Speaker 1: a castle on the South coast of England, Limb Castle,
15:54
Speaker 1: which like a thirteenth century with battlements and ghosts and
15:59
Speaker 1: spiral stay cases. It was great. And then we went
16:02
Speaker 1: into Abbey Road and did some recording there and ended
16:04
Speaker 1: up actually in the basement of Paul's studio, Paul's office
16:08
Speaker 1: in Soho Square, London, one Soho Square, which is like
16:12
Speaker 1: a great addressed and we built a replica of the
16:16
Speaker 1: control room of Abbey Road studio too so that we
16:18
Speaker 1: could mix the album because we couldn't get into Abbey
16:21
Speaker 1: Row because Kate Bush I think Cliff Richard and Kate
16:24
Speaker 1: Busch were using it and we couldn't get the studio
16:27
Speaker 1: that we wanted, so we just Paul created his own.
16:30
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the business of music.
16:32
Speaker 1: You mentioned you were happy earning a living as a
16:36
Speaker 1: studio musician. Do those careers still exists to the same
16:40
Speaker 1: degree they used to? They do to some extent, I mean,
16:44
Speaker 1: you know, the union a for them used to have
16:47
Speaker 1: a lot of cloud and in some areas it still does.
16:50
Speaker 1: I mean in television movies as long as their studio movies.
16:55
Speaker 1: This you know, and and it certainly can be rewarding,
16:59
Speaker 1: but it's not as reliable a source of income as
17:02
Speaker 1: it was even twenty years ago. I mean it really
17:07
Speaker 1: the amount of that kind of work has diminished because
17:10
Speaker 1: the technology has had an enormous impact. Whereas it used
17:14
Speaker 1: to be that you'd have to put together an orchestra
17:17
Speaker 1: to do a score, and now you can do it,
17:18
Speaker 1: you know, in your bedroom basically, um with a laptop.
17:23
Speaker 1: So it doesn't necessarily have the same dimension to it.
17:27
Speaker 1: But then you know, that depends on the budget. But
17:29
Speaker 1: but being a studio musician is was always really going
17:34
Speaker 1: back to the twenties, was a viable way of making
17:37
Speaker 1: a living, just not nearly as much as it was
17:41
Speaker 1: not nearly as much today as it once was. Correct,
17:43
Speaker 1: I mean, now really we had the money. Is is
17:45
Speaker 1: in the songwriting and my daughter Elsie, for example, is
17:48
Speaker 1: has becoming a successful songwriter, and I see how it
17:52
Speaker 1: works for her in terms of and it's not just records.
17:57
Speaker 1: It's not just records and television streaming is streaming is
18:00
Speaker 1: not a great source of revenue for songwriters. For performers,
18:04
Speaker 1: it's better the ratio for they find something of mine
18:07
Speaker 1: gets played on serious example, Pandora. Hopefully Pandora will still
18:13
Speaker 1: be around for a while if it gets played there.
18:16
Speaker 1: I make seventeen times as much as a performer as
18:20
Speaker 1: I would as the as the writer publishing. Does that
18:24
Speaker 1: make any sense? That seems it makes sense if you're
18:26
Speaker 1: the performer, but if you're the performer writer, I guess
18:30
Speaker 1: there's a certain comma involved because performers never got and
18:33
Speaker 1: still don't get money from terrestrial radio at all. It
18:36
Speaker 1: was always looked at as promotional and not exactly exactly.
18:41
Speaker 1: It's free promotion for your concerts, but that which is
18:44
Speaker 1: why it used to be free promotion for your albums.
18:47
Speaker 1: Well before that was free promotion for your live performances.
18:50
Speaker 1: So we went from live performances as a big source
18:53
Speaker 1: of income to albums album and now we're back to
18:56
Speaker 1: live performances to a largic live performances and T shirts,
19:02
Speaker 1: merchandise um and and CDs have you know, dropped off
19:05
Speaker 1: a lot, but you know, show merchandise in terms. I mean,
19:08
Speaker 1: you've seen me at my shows, you know, with with
19:10
Speaker 1: a stack of CDs and a line of people running
19:13
Speaker 1: signatures and stuff. So that's that's a away And it's
19:17
Speaker 1: great because I would get to meet the fans, but
19:20
Speaker 1: I also get to hand over the work you know
19:24
Speaker 1: the artistic work. But but the real money in songwriting
19:28
Speaker 1: is in first of all, is in radio, airplay and
19:32
Speaker 1: television and synchronization licenses. So a song, I mean, for example,
19:37
Speaker 1: else co wrote Fireball for Pitball and that got used
19:42
Speaker 1: big song got used on Dancing with the Stars. They
19:45
Speaker 1: pay a synchronization license for the right to use it,
19:48
Speaker 1: and then b m I collect performance royalties for it.
19:52
Speaker 1: So there are revenue streams that develop out of that. UM.
19:56
Speaker 1: Cell phone company might license it or CBS, you know
20:00
Speaker 1: se Um. She also co wrote a song for Major
20:03
Speaker 1: Laser called Powerful and CBS Television we're using it as
20:07
Speaker 1: background for promos for upcoming shows, so they pay a
20:11
Speaker 1: license fee for that that generates b m I UM.
20:14
Speaker 1: So there are there are solid revenue streams that come
20:19
Speaker 1: from that kind of activity. UM. And that's really where
20:23
Speaker 1: the music publishes, you know, that's that's their lifeblood, is
20:28
Speaker 1: that kind of activity, and it's worth their while to
20:31
Speaker 1: have a roster of successful songwriters that who's publishing they administer,
20:36
Speaker 1: and that you know, publishing is typically kind of a
20:39
Speaker 1: a lot of pennies that add up to a substantial stream.
20:42
Speaker 1: So so the thought of a couple of people getting
20:44
Speaker 1: together in a garage, recording an album, going on tour
20:49
Speaker 1: still a viable business model, and there are people that
20:52
Speaker 1: are doing that, especially if they get good social media support,
20:55
Speaker 1: who can actually make some decent money. And I hear
20:58
Speaker 1: rumor of people that actually make money out of YouTube videos.
21:01
Speaker 1: But but the reality of it is that YouTube doesn't
21:05
Speaker 1: really monetize as well as some other outlets. But it's
21:10
Speaker 1: a it's a new frontier because digital just changed everything basically. Really,
21:15
Speaker 1: that's that's fascinating. So so given the shift to digital
21:20
Speaker 1: from analog recordings and the way you as a musician
21:25
Speaker 1: have changed, um where you focus your time. What does
21:29
Speaker 1: this mean for people who want to go into the
21:32
Speaker 1: field of music. Is their emphasis completely different than it
21:36
Speaker 1: once was to some extent, yes, I mean I think
21:39
Speaker 1: it's it's actually broadened the field. I mean, thirty years ago,
21:43
Speaker 1: there were no video game that's a source of revenue
21:46
Speaker 1: from I've written for video I've written for Blizzard Entertainment, Activision, Blizzard.
21:50
Speaker 1: I did music for Diablo three, which is a big
21:52
Speaker 1: game that was a giant game, and that's something that
21:57
Speaker 1: didn't exist in a previous generation. As a man named
22:00
Speaker 1: Tom Tommy Tallarico, who is the most successful of all
22:05
Speaker 1: the video game composers, going back to like Super Mario
22:07
Speaker 1: Brothers kind of like you know, those very like Nintendo games.
22:11
Speaker 1: That's a new end of the business. Let's talk a
22:14
Speaker 1: little bit about some of the guitarists you mentioned. You
22:18
Speaker 1: mentioned a few names earlier. Remind me of who you
22:24
Speaker 1: referred to out in l A. Well, I mean the
22:27
Speaker 1: number one on the list I think for everybody is
22:29
Speaker 1: Jango Reinhart. Oh well, yeah, but the guys in l
22:32
Speaker 1: A would be like Larry Carlton and Lee Writtener, you
22:34
Speaker 1: know who. And that started off the studio players. There
22:37
Speaker 1: was a pass of being a studio player in l A.
22:40
Speaker 1: That was followed by like Bonnie Castle, um, and and
22:44
Speaker 1: players like that who were studio guys but also were
22:48
Speaker 1: jazz players so they could do and roll. They could,
22:53
Speaker 1: but they preferred the jazz. I mean Bonnie Castle, for example,
22:55
Speaker 1: was actually a mentor to Phil Specter really and played
22:59
Speaker 1: on a number of the records. And you know, like, um,
23:02
Speaker 1: but when you go back and you listen to some
23:04
Speaker 1: of those, especially like the fifties movie score, some of
23:07
Speaker 1: the Man Seni stuff, and you're here, like some really
23:10
Speaker 1: kind of like jazz guy. Well, I'm not tuned for
23:13
Speaker 1: the man seen you right now, but um, but some
23:17
Speaker 1: but some of the jazz guy you know, like especially
23:19
Speaker 1: at Barney Kessele, who was a big hero of mine.
23:21
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the jangle. Yeah, the Belgian Gypsy who
23:31
Speaker 1: I think everybody kind of looks to us being probably
23:35
Speaker 1: the greatest guitarist of all time. Really certainly the father
23:39
Speaker 1: of that style of on the European side, yes, but
23:43
Speaker 1: but the father of American jazz guitar was Eddie Lang. Um.
23:49
Speaker 1: And then how does he differ from Reinhardt. Well, Eddie
23:53
Speaker 1: lang was of Italian descent, and you know he worked
23:57
Speaker 1: with Bing Crosby. I mean he was being Crossby's right
24:00
Speaker 1: hand man, so different stylistic area. I mean, Django was
24:04
Speaker 1: very much in the Gypsy chairs kind of It's kind
24:09
Speaker 1: of like there's that rhythm is what they called the
24:11
Speaker 1: pump pump, and it kind of just sits in the
24:14
Speaker 1: particular kind of groove. Um, Eddie Lange was was a
24:18
Speaker 1: very versatile guitar player. I did a lot of records
24:20
Speaker 1: with Joe Anuti around thirty but even prior to that,
24:25
Speaker 1: I mean the first Bona fide recorded blues guitar solo
24:31
Speaker 1: was Lonnie Johnson recorded a piece called hight Glide in
24:37
Speaker 1: seven and that has all the you know, all those
24:41
Speaker 1: kind of with him and a piano player, but all
24:54
Speaker 1: those bent notes and vibrato and improvised blues solos. That's
24:59
Speaker 1: that was really the beginning of it, because the guitar
25:01
Speaker 1: didn't really kind of have make a big mark in
25:04
Speaker 1: the recording industry until the mid mid to late twenties.
25:09
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of your contemporaries, or let's let's
25:12
Speaker 1: I'll work my way, um historically, let's talk about Less
25:16
Speaker 1: Paul a little bit. Oh yeah, what what is my
25:18
Speaker 1: great regret in life? As a grad students, I lived
25:22
Speaker 1: on seventeenth and third, around the corner from Fat Tuesdays,
25:26
Speaker 1: where he played every week, and I kept saying to myself, Oh,
25:29
Speaker 1: I have to go see less Ball. And five years later,
25:33
Speaker 1: well then he was led over to Iridium. M I
25:36
Speaker 1: missed the window closed before. Yeah. I actually went to
25:39
Speaker 1: play with him at Iridium on a Monday, a very
25:42
Speaker 1: rainy Monday night after a huge northeaster, and he couldn't
25:45
Speaker 1: get there, He couldn't get out of his house because
25:47
Speaker 1: the bridge had been washed washed over. But I played
25:50
Speaker 1: with his band. I played with the Less Paul band.
25:52
Speaker 1: What I never got to actually play with Less. What
25:54
Speaker 1: do you think of him as a guitarist? Fabulous, one
25:58
Speaker 1: of the great jazz guitar play before it became kind
26:01
Speaker 1: of a pop star with with Mary Ford and and
26:04
Speaker 1: of course not not just a great jazz player, but
26:07
Speaker 1: also really the father of the modern recording technology. I mean,
26:13
Speaker 1: you know, the modern studio, modern recording studio. Pretty much
26:16
Speaker 1: Les Paul is to the recording studio what Thomas Edison
26:20
Speaker 1: was to the lightbulb, and not only to the recording studio,
26:23
Speaker 1: but also to the electric guitar. Song electric guitar to
26:27
Speaker 1: some degree. But he didn't invent the electric guitar, but
26:30
Speaker 1: he did invent a lot of things like multitrack recording.
26:33
Speaker 1: So you you recorded a version of Peter Towns It's
26:36
Speaker 1: you did a few Who songs, which I believe you
26:41
Speaker 1: once said Towns had said was impossible to do on guitar.
26:46
Speaker 1: He didn't say that to me. He was amazed that
26:49
Speaker 1: I could do it on guitar. I mean, you know,
26:51
Speaker 1: I do it in dad gad tuning, which is one
26:57
Speaker 1: of the alter tunings that I use the intro, which
27:03
Speaker 1: is a synthesizer like a sequence synthesizer thing, which is
27:09
Speaker 1: why he thought it could be done on a guitar.
27:18
Speaker 1: So you know, it's like that, and it's you. You
27:21
Speaker 1: have to be you have to figure it out, and
27:24
Speaker 1: you can't do it in standard tuning. And then it
27:27
Speaker 1: kind of breaks into I don't do Roger Daughters scream.
27:34
Speaker 1: What do you think of towns It as a writer
27:36
Speaker 1: and a guitar. Oh, it's fabulous. I mean one of
27:38
Speaker 1: the great great rock is what makes him so good
27:42
Speaker 1: to pull a line from? That's right, it's just that
27:50
Speaker 1: the combination of talent and clearly there's a genetic component
27:53
Speaker 1: because his dad was a musician. There's a combination of talent, persistence, experience.
28:02
Speaker 1: You know, you can't do what he does without having
28:07
Speaker 1: that that intensity of dedication. It's not easy to maintain
28:13
Speaker 1: a career, to to start a career in the music business,
28:17
Speaker 1: and then to maintain it for thirty or forty years. Yeah,
28:20
Speaker 1: I mean, but look at and look at McCartney. I mean,
28:22
Speaker 1: it's still going out and doing tree. Yeah, it's amazing.
28:25
Speaker 1: That's um. What about Mark Knopfler, who I find to
28:29
Speaker 1: be fast, great player, really interesting because he you know,
28:32
Speaker 1: he plays fingerstyle, yes, and he's a lefty, but he
28:35
Speaker 1: plays right handed. There's a few a few guitar players
28:38
Speaker 1: who are lefties, who are leftist who play right does
28:41
Speaker 1: that well? We know Hendrix used to play in a
28:43
Speaker 1: handful of other guys used to play actually lefty. What
28:46
Speaker 1: does it do if you're a lefty playing right? He
28:49
Speaker 1: does it give you an advantage with your left hand?
28:51
Speaker 1: You know it? That's you do? You have to ask
28:53
Speaker 1: a neurologist. Um, I mean, it's remarkable to me what
29:00
Speaker 1: what I can do with my left hand, and yet
29:02
Speaker 1: if I pick up a pen, it's it's like hopeless,
29:06
Speaker 1: you know. But but but the fact is that both
29:11
Speaker 1: hands have to be especially with fingerstyle, they really have
29:14
Speaker 1: to be equally quiet, and the left hand is actually
29:17
Speaker 1: doing more, but the left hand corresponds to the right brain.
29:21
Speaker 1: So it's kind of there's a creative flow that happens.
29:25
Speaker 1: Makes sense, your most cock cockingen, Oh, you're amost great.
29:30
Speaker 1: I saw him at a tiny pub in college and
29:33
Speaker 1: he was just mesmerized. You know, he's great. Um, I
29:37
Speaker 1: taught he has a camp in Pomeroy, Ohio called fur
29:41
Speaker 1: Piece Ranch, and I taught there and got to hang
29:46
Speaker 1: with him, and you know, and like we're in breakfast
29:49
Speaker 1: one morning, yourman pulls out his guitar and starts singing
29:51
Speaker 1: songs for us, and it's so cool. Just out a
29:53
Speaker 1: left field. Yeah, just really a very talented individual. I
29:58
Speaker 1: was never a giant hot tune a fan, but I
30:00
Speaker 1: always thought he was a fascinating musician. I liked what
30:04
Speaker 1: he did. An interesting point of background is that he
30:08
Speaker 1: studied from the DC area originally and studied with Sophocles Papas,
30:13
Speaker 1: who was one of Segovia's proteges. Interesting, I have a
30:19
Speaker 1: handful of guitarists they have to run. I have to
30:21
Speaker 1: ask you about Eric Clapton. Yeah, well, you know, what
30:26
Speaker 1: can you say The Blues Breaker's album with Joe male
30:30
Speaker 1: Um hide Away, You know, I mean that that was
30:39
Speaker 1: an epiphany for me hearing that for the first time.
30:43
Speaker 1: And then Frank Zappa talk about Zappa that much brilliant
30:47
Speaker 1: guitarists and an even more brilliant composer, one of the greats.
30:52
Speaker 1: But you know, just so eccentric, you kind of you
30:55
Speaker 1: don't even realized just how how dense and what kind
31:01
Speaker 1: of what kind of granular detail is on it? Going
31:06
Speaker 1: on his music. I used to see him a lot
31:07
Speaker 1: in London when he I saw him at the Albert
31:09
Speaker 1: Hall with Don Preston playing the huge organ there. That
31:12
Speaker 1: was really cool. What's fascinating is his son Dweezel, who's
31:15
Speaker 1: also a good guitarist, pulls out each year these kids
31:19
Speaker 1: out of Berkeley College and Music and they're nineteen and
31:23
Speaker 1: twenty years old and they tour playing Zappa's music and
31:27
Speaker 1: they're amazing. But there's a lesson in estate planning because
31:31
Speaker 1: you know that there's a conflict within the Zappa family
31:34
Speaker 1: and Dweezel can't promoted a Zappa plays Zappa but you
31:39
Speaker 1: know this litigation ongoing, and yeah, yeah, you gotta, you
31:43
Speaker 1: gotta get stuff like that straight. To say the least,
31:46
Speaker 1: we have been speaking with Lawrence Jubber. I'll be sure
31:49
Speaker 1: and check out my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com.
31:53
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. We
31:56
Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
32:00
Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Barry Ridholtz.
32:04
Speaker 1: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome
32:23
Speaker 1: to the podcast, Lawrence. Thank you so much for doing
32:26
Speaker 1: this and bringing your acts and playing a little bit um.
32:31
Speaker 1: We were just saying, you develop an intuitive sense of
32:35
Speaker 1: of timing. You can you can tell when you've done
32:40
Speaker 1: a ninety minutes show, you have a pretty good sense
32:42
Speaker 1: of how long the show just ninety minutes, sixty minutes,
32:47
Speaker 1: forty five, kind of you just you know how many tunes. Well,
32:52
Speaker 1: it's partially a number of tunes, but also just you
32:55
Speaker 1: kind of just feel it, you know, I mean, And
32:58
Speaker 1: that's for me, that's always been part of the professionalism
33:01
Speaker 1: of it is to you know, the contract says you
33:03
Speaker 1: play for ninety minutes. I play for ninety minutes and
33:06
Speaker 1: then maybe do an encore after that. But but it's
33:09
Speaker 1: always important to me to deliver. And my philosophy was
33:14
Speaker 1: always make myself indispensable, you know, which means be professional,
33:19
Speaker 1: be on time, be in tune with the right instruments.
33:23
Speaker 1: And and then that translated once I got onto the
33:26
Speaker 1: stage where I was being the artist to be able
33:30
Speaker 1: to deliver and be entertaining and engage an audience and
33:33
Speaker 1: all of those things. So let's let's talk about engaging
33:36
Speaker 1: an audience. I have seen you sometimes deliver lots of
33:41
Speaker 1: stage pattern, lots of backstory, not quite full on John
33:46
Speaker 1: Pizreeli anecdotes. But I can do anecdotes at times. But
33:50
Speaker 1: then there are other times I've seen you were your
33:52
Speaker 1: all business and I'm playing music and nothing's getting in
33:55
Speaker 1: my way, especially when I'm I'm kind of I mean,
33:58
Speaker 1: I've been on the road now for over a week,
34:01
Speaker 1: and the more gigs I do, the more my chops
34:06
Speaker 1: get kind of you know, like get so you have
34:09
Speaker 1: to limber up. You you can have you can come
34:11
Speaker 1: off the off the road and be a little rusty
34:13
Speaker 1: when you're starting. Um, yeah, a little um. I mean
34:18
Speaker 1: it's it. And but it changes from one gig to
34:22
Speaker 1: the next. I mean certain shows, depending on the environment,
34:25
Speaker 1: I might be more improvisational or lean more towards the
34:29
Speaker 1: set pieces. Um, sometimes it'll just feel really loose and
34:33
Speaker 1: I'll stretch things out. It's like when I'm playing Little Wing,
34:36
Speaker 1: for example, that I and you destroy that song, but
34:41
Speaker 1: I leave a space for myself where it's completely improvised.
34:44
Speaker 1: You know, I'm playing over the changes. But but but
34:47
Speaker 1: I never play it the same way twice. In fact,
34:48
Speaker 1: I never try not to play anything exactly at the
34:51
Speaker 1: same time. That was the question I was going to
34:52
Speaker 1: ask you, because there are certain songs, especially when you're
34:55
Speaker 1: doing covers um that they sound pretty similar from song
35:00
Speaker 1: to song, and then there are other versions where it's like,
35:03
Speaker 1: I didn't never heard that before, Where did that come from?
35:07
Speaker 1: Just it's it's the moment, it's being in the musical moment,
35:11
Speaker 1: you know, and it's it's kind of I have to
35:13
Speaker 1: be very conscious of what I'm doing and where I am,
35:16
Speaker 1: but but also allow myself to get to seek transcendence. Okay,
35:21
Speaker 1: you know, how does one seek transcendence by not interfering?
35:26
Speaker 1: Because where you go what you do is more complex
35:30
Speaker 1: than most Because if somebody is just playing a single
35:35
Speaker 1: lead and they're there, I don't care how fast or
35:39
Speaker 1: slow they're playing, though it's it could be Edi van
35:41
Speaker 1: Hallen or whoever. They're thinking about the sequence of those
35:46
Speaker 1: notes and what they're playing. You're playing nine things at
35:49
Speaker 1: once because it's vertical rather than that's exactly what I'm saying.
35:54
Speaker 1: It's one moment to the next. So when when you're playing,
35:57
Speaker 1: you're not thinking in terms of no, no, no, you're
36:00
Speaker 1: thinking in terms of these six chord, these six strings
36:05
Speaker 1: at once and one of my playing and there's a
36:07
Speaker 1: lot of things going on when I'm working stuff out, yes,
36:10
Speaker 1: but in performance I'm really trying to tell a story.
36:14
Speaker 1: The muscle memory just takes off. So the muscle memory
36:17
Speaker 1: is in there the and that's really the stuff that
36:19
Speaker 1: gets warmed up during the course of the tour is
36:23
Speaker 1: that I just become more finely tuned in the narrative
36:27
Speaker 1: aspect of it, which then allows me to be the
36:31
Speaker 1: freedom to to do um. You know, in music, there's
36:35
Speaker 1: a term called rubato, which which means that, you know,
36:38
Speaker 1: you can kind of play around with the tempo a
36:40
Speaker 1: little bit, but the Italian means to rob and like
36:46
Speaker 1: strict rubato, you don't actually slow anything down. It's just
36:49
Speaker 1: if you slow down in part of the bar, you
36:52
Speaker 1: you speed up, and the rest of the always stay
36:55
Speaker 1: you always stay in the pocket. And that stuff that
36:59
Speaker 1: I find myself elf being more casual about as a
37:04
Speaker 1: tour progressive, which makes it interesting because then it changes
37:08
Speaker 1: the texture a little bit. Who is recognizing that when
37:11
Speaker 1: you're doing it? I am now a few I mean
37:15
Speaker 1: the musicians were. There was a concert pianist in the
37:18
Speaker 1: audience last night show. Who who recognize such that that
37:22
Speaker 1: kind of you have a conversation afterwards, I noticed you,
37:26
Speaker 1: Yeah we did, And that's just But but you know,
37:30
Speaker 1: the the average Aorgiance member just is there to be entertained.
37:33
Speaker 1: They're not necessarily going to pass things like that. They're
37:36
Speaker 1: going to just enjoy the concert. So what sort of
37:40
Speaker 1: stuff do you enjoy playing? What is entertaining for you
37:44
Speaker 1: when you're out on tour? Oh? I particularly like it
37:48
Speaker 1: when I can actually create that space to be able
37:51
Speaker 1: to be improvisational. So it doesn't matter what the song is.
37:54
Speaker 1: The song is just the backdrop for you. That's the
37:57
Speaker 1: canvas for you to paint the bon Yeah, and sometimes
38:01
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, paint by not paint by numbers
38:03
Speaker 1: in the sense of just being by rote. But but
38:06
Speaker 1: you know, I there are areas to fill in the color,
38:10
Speaker 1: but other places where it will just kind of take
38:13
Speaker 1: off into its own, its own kind of thing. Do
38:18
Speaker 1: you when you're being transcendent it works itself out? Do
38:21
Speaker 1: you ever paint yourself into a corner totally and think
38:24
Speaker 1: how am I going to get out of that? But
38:25
Speaker 1: that's that's the fum pie is getting out of it.
38:28
Speaker 1: In live in real time. There's no no when you're
38:31
Speaker 1: in front of an audience, is no, hey, let's re
38:33
Speaker 1: record this. I messed up in Medina. Rewind that I
38:36
Speaker 1: screwed up. It's I have to figure out all my
38:40
Speaker 1: fingers will figure out a way. But you know, but
38:42
Speaker 1: but I have the the musical knowledge. I have the
38:45
Speaker 1: understanding that I know where I'm going, and it's not
38:49
Speaker 1: where you've been. You know, if you stop and think
38:51
Speaker 1: about what you just did, you don't get to the destination.
38:55
Speaker 1: And it's all about destination from one move to the next.
38:59
Speaker 1: It's where does it go next? What's the resolution of
39:02
Speaker 1: this harmony? What's the evolution of this fingering? And you know,
39:08
Speaker 1: I mean there could be a certain amount of stress
39:12
Speaker 1: involved if it's like, oh, okay, you know. But sometimes
39:17
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'll like, you know, the stage
39:19
Speaker 1: lights will kind of blind me for a second and
39:21
Speaker 1: I'll land on the wrong frat. But you know, you
39:23
Speaker 1: slide up one or you slide back one, and nobody
39:26
Speaker 1: really picks it up, no, because it ends up just
39:29
Speaker 1: becoming part of the texture. And then it was like, oh,
39:31
Speaker 1: I'll do that again because it sounded cool. You have
39:34
Speaker 1: a lot of guitarists and a lot of musicians as fans.
39:38
Speaker 1: Does that affect the way you play? Are you thinking
39:40
Speaker 1: about that? Hey, if I do this, this subgroup of
39:44
Speaker 1: fans are going to appreciate it, or you're you're more
39:47
Speaker 1: in the moment and more in the moment people, Although
39:50
Speaker 1: it might change if it's a jazz audience. You know,
39:53
Speaker 1: if I'm playing with my trio, for example, then I'll
39:56
Speaker 1: be less of the solo self sufficiency thing a much
40:00
Speaker 1: more into having a bass player there that's going to
40:02
Speaker 1: lay down something that I can then really fly over
40:07
Speaker 1: the top. And then you know, there's a little bit
40:09
Speaker 1: of kind of strutting one stuff for the jazz jury
40:13
Speaker 1: as we refer to it. How often are you out
40:16
Speaker 1: with the trio versus not that often? I mean if
40:20
Speaker 1: a festival thing comes up. Or last December we did
40:22
Speaker 1: a Christmas tour for my Christmas album because we recorded
40:25
Speaker 1: it that way the previous Christmas bas bas and upright
40:29
Speaker 1: bass and drums like you know, just light drums. But
40:32
Speaker 1: then you know, second set, I had strapped on an
40:34
Speaker 1: electric guitar and we turned into a a um you'll
40:39
Speaker 1: tide jam band. Shall we say? Who are some of
40:42
Speaker 1: the other musicians that you have been foundational to your development. Well,
40:47
Speaker 1: one one musician that was very helpful to me was
40:50
Speaker 1: was I Isaacs, who was an English studio guitar player
40:54
Speaker 1: for a period, played with with Stephan Grappelli, who's Jenga
40:59
Speaker 1: Ryan's violinist, and I was just I think he was
41:03
Speaker 1: the one who kind of said, look, you've've got all
41:06
Speaker 1: the technique, you just need to learn how to use it. Um.
41:11
Speaker 1: And then there was a man named Tony Romano who
41:13
Speaker 1: was we talked about Eddie lang and Tony was was
41:19
Speaker 1: a singer and a guitar player that traveled with Bob
41:21
Speaker 1: Hope and Francis Langford in the USO UM and you
41:25
Speaker 1: typically it would just be the three of us and
41:27
Speaker 1: three of them and then with Jerry Cologna, the comedian,
41:29
Speaker 1: and maybe some dances that would go and do all
41:31
Speaker 1: the U s O tours during World War Two. And
41:34
Speaker 1: Tony was I mean, the best lesson I ever got
41:39
Speaker 1: was with him saying, play big notes. What does that mean? What? What?
41:43
Speaker 1: Play big notes and notes that mean something? You know,
41:47
Speaker 1: because you can play a whole flurry of notes, but
41:49
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily have any kind of substance to them,
41:53
Speaker 1: no importance to them. But you know, you want to
41:56
Speaker 1: play one note and you put some expression into it
42:05
Speaker 1: and it it then has all this dimension to it.
42:09
Speaker 1: So I dimensional note, not just a one dimensional note,
42:12
Speaker 1: but something you know. I'm going to get very um
42:16
Speaker 1: local and retro on you. As a kid, there was
42:19
Speaker 1: a local band called the Good Rats. I don't know
42:22
Speaker 1: if you know them, I have heard of them, and
42:24
Speaker 1: they had a song called Tasty. And you what you've
42:28
Speaker 1: just mentioned with big notes is a line from one
42:31
Speaker 1: of their songs. Speed ain't nothing without class. You have
42:34
Speaker 1: to play tasty. And it's very much along that those
42:37
Speaker 1: lines of the notes have to matter. It doesn't matter,
42:41
Speaker 1: you know. I mean you can play fast and then
42:43
Speaker 1: you know there's value. And you've seen me in concert.
42:45
Speaker 1: I mean there's value in playing you know, those those
42:48
Speaker 1: that kind of flourishes, you know, those that that kind
42:51
Speaker 1: of thing. But but it needs it needs to be
42:54
Speaker 1: balanced with expression. So me anyway, One of the questions
42:59
Speaker 1: I get from listeners all the time is ask your
43:01
Speaker 1: guests about books. What sort of stuff do you read?
43:05
Speaker 1: You're you're traveling a lot, a lot of airplane stuff.
43:08
Speaker 1: I mean, I just load up my kindle with you know,
43:10
Speaker 1: kind of adventure are some extent. Recently, I've been reading
43:17
Speaker 1: reading some musicology. David Burns had an interesting book out
43:21
Speaker 1: not too long ago, Um of the talking heads to
43:27
Speaker 1: be called musicology or something like. I'm into guitar ology,
43:32
Speaker 1: where guitar meets musicology. I've been doing a lot of
43:34
Speaker 1: study of nineteenth century guitar music, and partially because of
43:38
Speaker 1: my association with Martin guitars. Um and I have a
43:42
Speaker 1: talk that I give guitar Mania to Beatlemania, which is
43:45
Speaker 1: a slide show history of the guitar. And I can
43:48
Speaker 1: play some examples of period pieces. And I have an
43:54
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three Martin Parlor guitar that works really nicely
43:58
Speaker 1: for stuff. So player an example of I have to
44:01
Speaker 1: retune hand. I was in dad gat tuning for the
44:06
Speaker 1: whole time. No, just earlier on. Let me go a
44:12
Speaker 1: quick example here, Um, I just finished. So you're not
44:21
Speaker 1: even looking at I have a tune in here. Yeah,
44:23
Speaker 1: but you are you paying attention to it doing doing
44:25
Speaker 1: it by year. But I'm listening to because I'm watching
44:30
Speaker 1: you not look at that as your tune. But it's
44:32
Speaker 1: tucked back here. M h okay, locked in. So there
44:54
Speaker 1: was an Italian named len Yanni who was a contemporary
44:57
Speaker 1: of Paganini. In fact, there's thought that the two have
45:00
Speaker 1: them played together, and he was known as the Paganini
45:03
Speaker 1: of the guitar. It would be like eighteen twenties and
45:07
Speaker 1: by any modern standards, he was a shredder and he's
45:11
Speaker 1: a little bit of Lenani's. Then um Um there was
45:38
Speaker 1: an American guitar player. So what happened was that there
45:40
Speaker 1: was this kind of what we call classical guitar now
45:43
Speaker 1: it's really Spanish classical guitars filtered through Segovia. But there
45:47
Speaker 1: were a lot of um Central Northern European guitar players
45:54
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century who were extremely influential professional
45:59
Speaker 1: guitar players. I mean, the only major difference between what
46:02
Speaker 1: they did and what we do now is they had
46:04
Speaker 1: no recording industry there and the they were very influential
46:10
Speaker 1: on the growth of the American classical guitar And in
46:14
Speaker 1: the second half of the nineteenth century there was a
46:17
Speaker 1: whole school of guitar music in America, which mostly we
46:21
Speaker 1: called parlor guitar music, and that ties in with the
46:24
Speaker 1: history of Martin guitars, which I know my signature model
46:27
Speaker 1: as a Martin Um. Here's an example. Up Martin's agent
46:31
Speaker 1: in New York in the middle of the century was
46:35
Speaker 1: a manager, Charles de jannon Um and he this is
46:39
Speaker 1: a little bit of a Massurka that he published and
46:41
Speaker 1: very typically marches Masurka's Waltz is Um published in eighty
47:05
Speaker 1: You know that kind of thing played in the parlor. Yeah,
47:08
Speaker 1: but a Mazurka, the you know, this kind of little
47:11
Speaker 1: bouncy thing is characteristic of the masurk um. So how
47:14
Speaker 1: does that go from from what you played earlier to
47:17
Speaker 1: this to how does that eventually translate to modern American
47:23
Speaker 1: classical and then blues in the Beatles. Well, what happened
47:27
Speaker 1: really was the in the classical area, and there were
47:31
Speaker 1: by the turn of the century there were two major
47:34
Speaker 1: guitar players. It was William Foden, known as the Wizard
47:36
Speaker 1: of the Guitar, and then there was a woman named
47:39
Speaker 1: verd orch At Bickford who and they were kind of
47:42
Speaker 1: polar opposites. He was very technical, he was famous for
47:44
Speaker 1: his incredible tremolo technique, and she was very artistic and
47:49
Speaker 1: very very much in almost like a precursor of the
47:53
Speaker 1: New Age kind of thing. She was actually an astrologer,
47:56
Speaker 1: as was her husband too. And then there was something
47:58
Speaker 1: called the BMG move which was the banjo mandelin guitar movement,
48:02
Speaker 1: which was kind of a marketing things that to help
48:06
Speaker 1: sell all these when was that around around the turn
48:09
Speaker 1: of the century, and you have you have Gibson had
48:12
Speaker 1: mandolin orchestras, and there was a lot of that going on.
48:15
Speaker 1: But when Segovia came along in the nineteen twenties, he
48:18
Speaker 1: kind of swept away the American side of it and
48:21
Speaker 1: replaced it with the kind of the gravitas of the
48:24
Speaker 1: Spanish classical guitar. Well, give us, give us an example,
48:28
Speaker 1: I mean sego Via. You know it's it's classical in
48:32
Speaker 1: that I mean, like Bark it works so well. Was
48:46
Speaker 1: that it works so well on guitar? Well, yeah, I
48:49
Speaker 1: mean bach Bach wrote that for Loot, so it works
48:52
Speaker 1: on guitar. But but here's something to think about, especially
48:55
Speaker 1: the second section. I swear Paul got black from chet Atkins.
49:05
Speaker 1: Chet Atkins recorded that that particular piece, and Georgia George
49:09
Speaker 1: Harrison owned the record chet Atkins in Hi Fi ninety seven. Um,
49:15
Speaker 1: So George Harrison's and Paul McCartney. Yes, let's get a
49:18
Speaker 1: couple of songs down. Let's see that. I have to
49:23
Speaker 1: record this. I don't know if you have another version
49:27
Speaker 1: of Little Wing in you, because that was amazing yesterday.
49:29
Speaker 1: I'll give you to tunes. I'll do a little Wing,
49:33
Speaker 1: but first singing that we were talking Beatles, I'll give
49:38
Speaker 1: you a track from my latest CD and I've done. Now.
49:41
Speaker 1: This is my third album of Beatle arrangements, really the
49:45
Speaker 1: fourth if you include the Wings album. Yeah, but that
49:48
Speaker 1: doesn't quite fit in with the Beatles. Thing different. And
49:52
Speaker 1: I have to say I love all the Beatles stuff
49:55
Speaker 1: you do, but I found this album surprising in some
50:00
Speaker 1: of the selection of songs and the arrangements of some
50:05
Speaker 1: of them kind of kind of took me a little like,
50:09
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. And to some extent this was kind
50:12
Speaker 1: of a looser album than some of the others. Um
50:15
Speaker 1: but his um, she loves You. That's just fantastic. I
52:39
Speaker 1: have to I have to stop this for a second.
52:42
Speaker 1: So I had a conversation about you with Derrick Thompson,
52:47
Speaker 1: who's an author at the Atlantic who wrote a book
52:51
Speaker 1: called How Hits Are Made, and he looked at a
52:55
Speaker 1: lot of historical UM trends and hits and how tofferent
53:00
Speaker 1: things came about. It was really quite fascinating. And one
53:03
Speaker 1: of the things that he talked about was this industrial
53:06
Speaker 1: designer in the first half of the twentieth century whose
53:09
Speaker 1: name escapes me, but his philosophical insight was called Maya
53:14
Speaker 1: most advanced yet acceptable. And what this person did. He's
53:19
Speaker 1: the guy who literally designed the standard pencil sharpnry we
53:23
Speaker 1: all grew up with, and things like that. You couldn't
53:26
Speaker 1: take something too far out into the future because people
53:30
Speaker 1: would reject it. It had to be familiar. If you
53:34
Speaker 1: wanted to sell something different, he said, make it familiar.
53:37
Speaker 1: And if you want to sell something familiar, you had
53:39
Speaker 1: to make it a little different. And so so Derek
53:43
Speaker 1: describes how this works not only with industrial design, but
53:48
Speaker 1: movies and music and and so I bring you up
53:51
Speaker 1: as an example of you know, when you hear most
53:54
Speaker 1: beatle covers, it's either a note for note reproduction, in
53:58
Speaker 1: which case it's worthless, or it's so different that you
54:03
Speaker 1: don't even recognize it, with Joe Cocker being the exception, right.
54:09
Speaker 1: But he but that stood alone his version of of um,
54:14
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember which cover he did that actually
54:17
Speaker 1: worked on on on its own. But when I referenced
54:21
Speaker 1: your work, I said, the songs are immediately recognizable melodically
54:26
Speaker 1: as each individual Beatles song, and yet they're so different
54:32
Speaker 1: that they stand alone. And so it's that that picture,
54:35
Speaker 1: the two ven diagrams that overlap of Oh, this is
54:39
Speaker 1: something I totally recognize, but it's such a completely fresh
54:43
Speaker 1: and different version of it that it makes it really
54:46
Speaker 1: quite interesting. And he literally a whole book how hits
54:50
Speaker 1: are made. The Beatles music encapsulates that because it's especially
54:58
Speaker 1: something like She Loves You, where there are elements of
55:02
Speaker 1: tim Panale of Broadway, there are elements of blues, and
55:11
Speaker 1: there are elements of even folk, but put together in
55:17
Speaker 1: a way that is uniquely them, no doubt about that.
55:22
Speaker 1: So it's that absolutely, that's the thing is it's it's familiar. Well,
55:28
Speaker 1: that's their work was familiar yet, but I'm talking about
55:32
Speaker 1: my version. But but my ability to take that and
55:36
Speaker 1: then translate it to the guitar, which and I'm using
55:41
Speaker 1: my musicality, my musicianship to do that, then really you know,
55:48
Speaker 1: I've got a foundation to build on. And then the
55:50
Speaker 1: way that I approached the guitar in terms of working
55:54
Speaker 1: to make the melody sing, to make the base interesting,
55:58
Speaker 1: and you know, whether it's reproducing what's on the Beetle
56:00
Speaker 1: record or some interpretation of that is, it's just it works.
56:06
Speaker 1: It seems to work. You know, someone could sit down
56:09
Speaker 1: at a piano and play the song and there's who cares.
56:12
Speaker 1: There's nothing special there but your versions they're that familiar
56:18
Speaker 1: but different enough that apparently apparently I have a voice
56:21
Speaker 1: on your guitar, so I think that's part of it,
56:24
Speaker 1: to say the least. So you're asking about little wings,
56:28
Speaker 1: all right, before you start, I have to get this
56:30
Speaker 1: teat up. I'm gonna make you start that over again. Chris. You,
56:34
Speaker 1: by the way, you destroyed the room last night, but
56:36
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're aware of it. People were.
56:41
Speaker 1: So let's let's do a little a little little wing,
56:43
Speaker 1: A little little little little wing. Let me put my
56:47
Speaker 1: strap on now, agetting serious? Oh yeah, really serious. Pay
56:53
Speaker 1: attention to this because his arms on the chair. So
56:55
Speaker 1: it's all proof O amazing, Thank you, Lawrence. That that
1:01:39
Speaker 1: is just beyond words. We have been speaking with guitartist
1:01:43
Speaker 1: extraordinarire Lawrence Juber. If you enjoy this conversation. Well before
1:01:48
Speaker 1: I get to that, if you enjoy the music you heard,
1:01:52
Speaker 1: go to Lawrence Duber dot com. There are twenty four
1:01:56
Speaker 1: or five discs available. Is that about right? So I
1:02:00
Speaker 1: count if you're a Beatles fan, you have to get
1:02:04
Speaker 1: all three Beatles albums plus the Wings album, which I
1:02:08
Speaker 1: think the Wings Album reveals songs that I didn't like
1:02:11
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, and I have found a
1:02:13
Speaker 1: newfound uh, I've come upon a newfound respect for them
1:02:17
Speaker 1: having having you reveal different aspects of it. But if
1:02:21
Speaker 1: you are at all a guitar aficionado, a classical music fan,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: Lawrence's original compositions are really a beauty to behold. You
1:02:32
Speaker 1: you played um Guitar Noir last night, which is a
1:02:36
Speaker 1: lovely song. You played Um. I'm trying to remember pH
1:02:41
Speaker 1: not Telegraph Finger, fingerboard Road. His original work is just
1:02:48
Speaker 1: an exposition of uh guitar. I don't even want to
1:02:53
Speaker 1: say prodigy, just just outstanding. There's a reason musicians are
1:02:58
Speaker 1: big fans of his because because of because of his work,
1:03:02
Speaker 1: and and I find his his You know, when my
1:03:06
Speaker 1: my wife and I are in the car and we
1:03:07
Speaker 1: can't agree on what we want to hear we pop
1:03:10
Speaker 1: in one of your discs and everybody's happy. Um So,
1:03:13
Speaker 1: if you enjoyed the music, go to Laune Stupid dot
1:03:15
Speaker 1: com and you could see both his tour dates and
1:03:18
Speaker 1: all the CDs he has for sale. If you enjoy
1:03:21
Speaker 1: this conversation, be sure and look up an inch or
1:03:23
Speaker 1: down an inch on Apple iTunes and you can see
1:03:27
Speaker 1: or Bloomberg dot com or SoundCloud or overcast and you
1:03:30
Speaker 1: could see the other hundred and forty nine or so
1:03:33
Speaker 1: such conversations we've had. We love your comments, feedback and
1:03:37
Speaker 1: suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg
1:03:40
Speaker 1: dot net. I would be remiss if I did not
1:03:43
Speaker 1: thank Taylor Riggs, my producer, and Medina Parwana, my recording
1:03:48
Speaker 1: engineer slash audiologist, who takes my messy recordings and puts
1:03:55
Speaker 1: them all uh in in using her technical production expert
1:04:00
Speaker 1: piece makes it listenable to you. I'm Barry Ridults. You've
1:04:03
Speaker 1: been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.