Play Laurence Juber’s Solo Guitar Take on the Beatles’ “In My Life” 

Laurence Juber, a fingerstyle master and one-time lead guitarist for Paul McCartney and Wings, has recorded many Beatles songs arranged for solo acoustic guitar over the last 25 years—five albums’ worth, to be exact. But what makes his latest effort, A Day in My Life, so special is that he recorded it in one day last August in London’s Abbey Road Studio 2, where the Fab Four had created the bulk of their catalog decades before. “It was an intense experience playing the tunes where they were originally recorded” Juber says. 

On the album Juber revisits “In My Life,” which is one of the first Beatles songs he arranged, in the mid-1980s. While he is known for using DADGAD tuning, back then Juber played mainly in standard, and this arrangement is no exception. He stuck closely to the original song, capturing its feeling of nostalgia while making only one notable adjustment. “At the time, still so close to John’s passing, the original key of A felt too dark, so I settled on D,” he explains. 

To record “In My Life,” as well as the other songs on the album, Juber used an instrument specially tailored to his playing style—a one-off Martin Custom Shop OMC-21 with an alpine moon spruce top, Cuban mahogany back and sides, hide-glue construction, carbon fiber bridge plate, titanium truss rod, and thin nitrocellulose lacquer finish. He tuned the guitar slightly flat: 432Hz rather than 440. “It’s nothing mystical,” he explains. “Just a little less tension and perhaps smoother tone.”

The arrangement is fairly accessible. Learn it as you would any fingerstyle piece, adding a bit of emphasis to the melody notes and striving for a singing quality. It might help to keep the Beatles lyrics in mind as you are playing the piece. One section that might be challenging is the instrumental interlude (bars 23–28), where Juber re-creates the sped-up, Bach-inspired piano solo that producer George Martin played on the Beatles’ original studio recording. “It’s really the run at the end that is tricky,” Juber says. “Practice the pull-offs slowly and gradually speed it up; otherwise, simplify it.”

Due to copyright restrictions, we are unable to post notation or tablature for this musical work. If you have a digital or physical copy of the July/August 2024 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine, you will find the music on page 54.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.