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