Versatile rock star Laurence Juber unchains ‘Guitar with Wings’ coffee table memoir

Paul McCartney and Wings six-string wizard Laurence Juber and co-author Marshall Terrill break down the contents of “Guitar with Wings” in an exclusive interview. Here Juber confidently arrives at RAK Studios near Regent’s Park in central London for his first Wings session on May 5, 1978. Recorded on that day was “Same Time, Next Year,” rejected by director Robert Mulligan as the theme song of the 1978 romantic comedy-drama starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn and kept in the archives until 1990 when “Put It There” from McCartney’s underrated “Flowers in the Dirt” album required a B-side. Image Credit: “Guitar with Wings: A Photographic Memoir” / Courtesy of Dalton Watson Fine Books

Laurence Juber, the lone surviving lead guitarist in Paul McCartney and Wings, grants an exclusive conversation below scrutinizing his stunning debut memoir, the photographically-enhanced Guitar with Wings.

Inspired by the earliest wave of Beatlemania that swept Britain in 1963, Juber developed a passion for the guitar and the ambition to make playing it his livelihood. Becoming one of London’s top studio guitarists, his noodling was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond caper The Spy Who Loved Me, as well as recordings by the Alan Parsons Project, Sarah Brightman, Rosemary Clooney, and Colin Blunstone of the Zombies, among many others.

In March 1978, Juber was on the precipice of one of the lowest points of his life when his father Norman died suddenly of heart failure. Still grief-stricken one month later, McCartney serendipitously plucked Juber from the studio world, asking him to play lead guitar in what was to become the final incarnation of McCartney’s post-Beatles group. “That was quite a rebound that the universe handed me,” admits Juber.

Juber recorded and toured with Wings for three predominantly halcyon years, during which time they accumulated the chart-topping “Coming Up” live single, won a Best Rock Instrumental Performance Grammy for “Rockestra Theme,” and claimed the mantle as Billboard’s third most successful act of the 1970s behind Elton John and the Bee Gees.

After Wings was unable to fully recover from McCartney’s controversial marijuana bust on the eve of a lucrative 11-city Japanese tour, the guitarist sought a fresh start in Los Angeles and raised two girls with Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz’s daughter Hope. Since then, the two-time Grammy winner has become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand studio players, being heard on soundtracks to such diverse movies as Dirty Dancing, Good Will Hunting, and Pocahontas.

Nicknamed “L.J.,” he has also gained worldwide recognition as a virtuoso concert performer, recording artist, composer, and arranger. He has distributed 24 albums, including LJ Plays the Beatles, which was voted one of Acoustic Guitar magazine’s all-time Top Ten. His stylistic approach fuses folk, jazz, blues, pop and classical, creating a…