In 1983, McCurry played lead guitar in the band Cool It Reba. He was lead guitarist in Cyndi Lauper's touring band in the early 1980s. He has also performed in other bands on concert tours, including Anita Baker's Rhythm of Love World Tour in 1994–1995, and John Waite's 1985 American tour. As a performer, all through his younger years, McCurry was visually distinctive because of his naturally bright red hair.
On the website allmusic.com, John McCurry is credited as composer on 119 music albums. His genres are described as pop/rock and classical, and his styles as vocal music and opera. He is credited with guitar on 67 albums, out of which ten specify electric guitar, nine specify acoustic guitar, and four specify bass guitar. He is credited with vocals on seven albums, lyricist on one, arranger on one, producer on one, and text on one. He also has one credit each for coral sitar, banjo and accordion. McCurry is listed as either main personnel, performer, primary artist, or guest artist on 10 albums.[3]
McCurry has also written songs for film and television. He has songwriting credits for soundtrack songs: 11 on film soundtracks, 2 on a TV film soundtrack and one in a television series soundtrack. He has a performer credit for one soundtrack song, and has "music department" credits as vocalist on one film, and for electric guitar on one TV series.[4]
In an interview on the website "Hey Jules",[5] about Julian Lennon's 1991 album "Help Yourself", Lennon commented about McCurry's musicianship and the songwriting process:
"John McCurry, as usual, did some great stuff with me on this I felt. We didn't actually have that much time together to write this time 'cause he was working on other projects. But we did manage to come up with "Help Yourself."
Lennon also said, about writing the album's title track, "Help Yourself":
"John McCurry and I sat around thinking, 'Well, where are we going to go with this?' and I'd already had part of the music there and then John came in and said, 'Alright, try this' and it was a back and forth thing and we didn't have any lyrics and John again had to, like everybody else I write with, had to disappear back to New York. And I sat around writing and he'd sort of mentioned a couple of ideas and it came together in about two days."
In a review of John Waite's album Rovers Return, about the track "Wild One", Brian McGowan commented that the spirit of the song was "defined in stark relief by John McCurry’s freewheeling, razor sharp axework".[6]
Various others albums that McCurry has played guitar on are:
