Maisie

Song facts

“Maisie” is a song written by Laurence Juber during his time with Wings in 1978. It has been initially recorded during the Back To The Egg sessions, with the then-current Wings line-up, including Paul McCartney on bass. “Maisie” has been issue on Standard Time, Laurence Juber’s first solo album released in 1982.

From billboard.com:

Standard Time‘s marquee track is “Maisie,” a twangy instrumental that Juber composed during the initial Back To The Egg sessions during July of 1978 on McCartney’s farm in Scotland. The album version features McCartney on bass, as well as Wings cohorts Denny Laine and Steve Holley. “I had been sitting outside and started writing this Chet Atkins-style piece, kind of finger-picking, maybe a little bit of Ry Cooder ’cause I’d been listening to a lot of him at the time,” Juber recalls. “A couple days later Paul said, ‘Hey, do you have any tunes,’ so we recorded (‘Maisie’). Of course it wasn’t really the kind of thing Back To The Egg was oriented towards so it didn’t make the cut, but I’ve always been proud of that particular piece of music and it’s very cool to have Paul McCartney playing bass and Denny Laine playing some harmonica and Steve Holley on drums.”

From “Have guitar, will travel: Maverick Wings axeman Laurence Juber steps out“, interview of Laurence Juber by Jeremy Roberts:

“Maisie” was my songwriting contribution to the album. It was really my first finger-style guitar piece. It was recorded with Paul, Steve Holley [drums], and Denny Laine [rhythm guitarist] — he’s playing harmonica on the track — so it’s essentially a Wings song.

There was a really cool version that we had done up in Scotland as part of the Back to the Egg sessions. At that point it wasn’t in the running for the album. It could have been but it just didn’t fit where Paul was going conceptually. Then it sat on the shelf until I included it on a collection of material which I put out under the name of Standard Time. It comes up on the bootlegs of outtakes from Back to the Egg. That was really my first fingerstyle piece. I had added a little bit to it by the time I rerecorded it. It’s interesting to go back and revisit that stuff. I’m probably going to put that back into my performances soon — because it’s a fun one. That was the beginning of my composition process.

Laurence Juber – 2012 interview for Something Else!

Last updated on January 29, 2020

Videos