The title is lifted from a 1963 Hank Mobley album called No Room for Squares, and the change is telling. Twenty-three-year-old John Mayer is far too unassuming to share Mobley's ultrahip exclusiveness. Indeed, Room for Squares, Mayer's major-label debut (he put out a solo acoustic album, Inside Wants Out, on his own in 1999), is instantly likable and accessible. But it's no less smart and affecting for that. These thirteen songs are a travelogue of discovery - of love, identity and purpose.
They may chronicle what Mayer wryly terms a "quarter-life crisis," but they trade on energy rather than angst, wonder instead of pain. The arrangements, which are reminiscent of the deft pop of Elvis Costello and the Police, are built around Mayer's guitar but make free use of a rhythm section and keyboards. His singing, meanwhile, recalls David Gray and Dave Matthews (with whom he shares producer John Alagia). On "Why Georgia," which like so many songs on Room for Squares lifts into a melodic chorus you won't soon forget, Mayer asks, "I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still-verdictless life/Am I living it right?" He needn't worry. On the strength of this irresistible album, the verdict on Mayer is already in.
Welcome to j-mayer.blogspot.com !!!
Loves Jesus and America too
Shes a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too
It’s a long day living in reseda
There’s a freeway runnin’ through the yard
And I’m a bad boy ’cause I don’t even miss her
I’m a bad boy for breakin her heart
And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’
- john mayer lyrics on www.lyrics-celebrities.anekatips.com -
All the vampires walkin’ through the valley
Move west down ventura boulevard
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts
And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’
Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m
Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m
I wanna glide down over mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin’
Gonna leave this world for a while
And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’ Read More...
Rumor has it that Jennifer Aniston and beau John Mayer have split--again. The couple, who spent Christmas apart, are also spending New Years with their own friends.
Jenn and John first split back in August and apparently Jenn asked John to get back together for PR purposes while she did her promo rounds for 'Marley & Me'
Whatever her plan was, it worked because her movie broke box office records for a movie opening on Christmas day.
"Aniston toted Mayer around through all her promotional gigs to deter interviewers from focusing on her single status," reported Page Six.
Earlier this week Aniston was spotted at Los Cabos, Mexico airport with friends Courteney Cox and Laura Dern. The BFF's are planning on spending New Years Eve together. So expect to see photos of Aniston in a tiny bikini hit the net by next week.
Aniston was voted the third most overexposed celebrity of 2008 due to her on-again off-again relationship with Mayer. Wonder who her fake boyfriend will be in 2009? Who do you think should get the title?
It's really over, you made your stand
You got me crying, as was your plan
But when my loneliness is through, I'm gonna find another you
You take your sweaters
You take your time
You might have your reasons but you will never have my rhymes
I'm gonna sing my way away from blue
I'm gonna find another you
When I was your lover
No one else would do
If I'm forced to find another, I hope she looks like you
Yeah and she's nicer too
So go on baby
Make your little get away
My pride will keep me company
And you just gave yours all away
Now I'm gonna dress myself for two
Once for me and once for someone new
I'm gonna do somethings you wouldn't let me do
Oh I'm gonna find another you
Too many shadows in my room
Too many hours in this midnight
Too many corners in my mind
So much to do to set my heart right
Oh it's taking so long i could be wrong, i could be ready
Oh but if i take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unsteady
I am in repair, i am in repair
Stood on the corner for a while
To wait for the wind to blow down on me
Hoping it takes with it my old ways
And brings some brand new look upon me
Oh it's taking so long i could be wrong, i could be ready
Oh but if i take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unsteady
I am in repair, i am in repair
And now i'm walking in a park
All of the birds they dance below me
Maybe when things turn green again
It will be good to say you know me
Oh it's taking so long i could be wrong, i could be ready
Oh but if i take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unready
Oh i'm never really ready, i'm never really ready
I'm in repair, i'm not together but i'm getting there
I'm in repair, i'm not together but i'm getting there
When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe
Wondering was she really here?
Is she standing in my room?
No she's not, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone....
When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The giving up is the hardest part
She takes you in with your crying eyes
Then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering could you stay my love?
Will you wake up by my side?
No she can't, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone....
Oooooooooohhhhhhhhh
Now do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand
Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
Baby won't you get them if i did?
No you won't, 'cause you're gone, gone, gone, gone, gone....
When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
Anger he smiles towering in shiny metallic purple armor
Queen Jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground
Blue are the life-giving waters taken for granted
They quietly understand
The once happy turquoise armies lay opposite ready
But wonder why the fight is on
But they're all bold as love
Yeah, they're all bold as love
They're all bold as love
Just ask the axis
My red is so confident that he flashes
Trophies of war and ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring
But very unsteady for the first go around
My yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact I'm trying to say it's frightened like me
And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from
Giving my life to a rainbow like you
I'm bold, bold as love
Yeah I'm bold, bold as love
I'm bold, bold as love
Just ask the axis
Yeah he knows, he knows everything
I'm bold, bold as love
It's not a silly little moment,
It's not the storm before the calm.
This is the deep and dying breath of
This love that we've been working on.
Can't seem to hold you like I want to
So I can feel you in my arms.
Nobody's gonna come and save you,
We pulled too many false alarms.
We're going down,
And you can see it too.
We're going down,
And you know that we're doomed.
My dear,
We're slow dancing in a burning room.
I was the one you always dreamed of,
You were the one I tried to draw.
How dare you say it's nothing to me?
Baby, you're the only light I ever saw.
I'll make the most of all the sadness,
You'll be a bitch because you can.
You try to hit me just to hurt me
So you leave me feeling dirty
Because you can't understand.
We're going down,
And you can see it too.
We're going down,
And you know that we're doomed.
My dear,
We're slow dancing in a burning room.
Go cry about it - why don't you?
Go cry about it - why don't you?
Go cry about it - why don't you?
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room,
Burning room,
Burning room,
Burning room,
Burning room.
Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we oughta know by now?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
Don't you think we shoulda learned somehow?
No I'm not color blind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind but...
I just can't sleep on this tonight
Stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly won't someone stop this train
Don't know how else to say it, don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own
Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't but honestly won't someone stop this train
So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn 68, you'll renegotiate
Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
Don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we'll never stop this train
See once in a while when it's good
It'll feel like it should
And they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
'til you cry when you're driving away in the dark.
Singing stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can't take this speed it's moving in
I know I can't
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train
(think I got 'em now)
Some of us, We're hardly ever here
The rest of us, we're born to disappear
How do I stop myself from
Being just a number
How will I hold my head
To keep from going under
Down to the wire
I wanted water but
But I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me,testing me
How did they find me here
What do they want from me
All of these vultures hiding
Right outside my door
I hear them whisperin
They're tryin to ride it out
Cause they've never gone this long
Without a kill before
Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me, testing me
Wheels up
I got to leave this evening
Can't seem to shake these vultures
Off of my trail
Power is made, by power being taken
So I keep on running
To protect my situation
Down to the wire
I wanted water but
I'll walk through the fire
If this is what it takes
To take me even higher
Then I'll come through
Like I do
When the world keeps
Testing me, testing me
Oooooooooooo
Oooooooooooo
Oooooooooooo
Oooooooooooo
Whatcha gonna do about it
Whatcha gonna do about it
I hate to see you cry
Lying there in that position
There's things you need to hear
So turn off your tears
And listen
Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good
You know, it's nothing new
Bad news never had good timing
But, then your circle of friends
Will defend the silver lining
Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good
Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
Fear is a friend who's misunderstood
But I know the heart of life is good
I know it's good
Gravity is working against me
And gravity wants to bring me down
Oh I'll never know what makes this man
With all the love that his heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away
Oh Gravity is working against me
And gravity wants to bring me down
Oh twice as much aint twice as good
And can't sustain like a one half could
It's wanting more
That's gonna send me to my knees
[repeat]
Oh gravity, stay the hell away from me
And gravity has taken better men than me (Now how can that be?)
Just keep me where the light is
Just keep me where the light is
Keep you all where the light is
Just keep us where the light is
Ohh.. where the light is! [repeat]
Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing there mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time
Everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Everyone believes
And they're not going easily
Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching under water
You never can hit who you're trying for
Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon
For the war that's raging on inside
Everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Everyone believes
And no ones going quietly
We're never gonna win the world
We're never gonna stop the war
We're never gonna beat this
If belief is what we're fighting for
What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand
Belief can
Belief can
What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand
Belief can
Belief can
No I'm not the man I used to be lately
See you met me at an interesting time
If my past is any sign of your future
You should be warned before I let you inside
Hold on to whatever you find baby
Hold on to whatever will get you through
Hold on to whatever you find baby
I don't trust myself with loving you
I will beg my way into your garden
I will break my way out when it rains
Just to get back to the place where I started
So I can want you back all over again
Hold on to whatever you find baby
Hold on to whatever will get you through
Hold on to whatever you find baby
I don't trust myself with loving you
Who do you love?
Girl I see through, through your love
Who do you love me or the thought of me? me or the thought of me?
Hold on to whatever you find baby
Hold on to whatever will get you through
Hold on to whatever you find baby
I don't trust myself with loving you
Hold on to whatever you find baby
Hold on to whatever gets you through through
Hold on to whatever you find baby
I don't trust myself with loving you
I don't trust myself with loving you
I don't trust myself with loving you
I don't trust myself with loving you
Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could
Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
It's hard to beat the system
When we're standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would have never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want
That's why we're waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
It's not that we don't care,
We just know that the fight ain't fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
And we're still waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change
People have the right to fly
And will when it gets compromised
Their hearts say "Move along"
Their minds say "Gotcha heart"
Let's move it along
Let's move it along
And airports
See it all the time
Where someone's last goodbye
Blends in with someone's sigh
Cause someone's coming home
In hand a single rose
And that's the way this wheel keeps working now
That's the way this wheel keeps working now
And I won't be the last
No I won't be the last,
To love her
And you can't build a house of leaves
And live like it's an evergreen
It's just a season thing
It's just this thing that seasons do
And that's the way this wheel keeps working now
That's the way this wheel keeps working now
And you won't be the first
No you won't be the first
To love me
You can find me, if you ever want again
I'll be around the bend
I'll be around the bend
I'll be around,
I'll be around
And if you never stop when you wave goodbye
You just might find if you give it time
You will wave hello again
You just might wave hello again
And that's the way this wheel keeps working now
That's the way this wheel keeps working now
You can't love too much, one part of it (repeat then fade)
I believe that my life's gonna see
The love I give
Return to me
I believe that my life's gonna see
The love I give
Return to me
I believe that my life's gonna see
The love I give
Return to me [repeat 1x]
Do not waste this evening, baby I'm begging you
Your big imagination's playing its tricks on you
If you think my up and leaving's something I'm gonna do
Feel my chest when I look at you...
Baby you, you've got my only heart
Yeah, you've got my only heart
Yeah, you've got my only, only, heart
So hard to be so far out living our separate lives
You phone was really broken - I tried your number twice
And if you need confirmation, baby I understand
It's alright if you want me to tell you...
You, you've got my only heart
Yeah, you've got my only heart
Yeah, you've got my only, only, heart
And you love like your hand's on the horn, baby
I adore you but there's a hole in the cup that should hold your love
(hold my love)
If you let me leave
I swear, I never will
Remember now you...
You've got my only heart
Yeah, you got my only heart
Yeah, you've got my only
Only heart
I know a girl
She puts the color inside of my world
But she's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
And I've done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me
Fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too
Oh, you see that skin?
It's the same she's been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she's left
Cleaning up the mess he made
So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too
Boys, you can break
You'll find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without the warmth from
A womans good, good heart
On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too [x3]
And I don't know where you went when you left me but
Says here in the water you must be gone by now
I can tell somehow
One hand on the trigger of a telephone
Wondering when the call comes
Where you say it's alright
You got your heart right
Maybe I'll sleep inside my coat and
Wait on the porch 'til you come back home
Oh, right
I can't find a flight
We share the sadness
Split screen sadness
Two wrongs make it all alright tonight
ALl you need is love is a lie cause
We had love but we still said goodbye
Now we're tired, battered fighters
And it stings when it's nobody's fault
Cause there's nothing to blame at the drop of your name
It's only the air you took and the breath you left
Maybe I'll sleep inside my coat and
Wait on the porch 'til you come back home
Oh, right
I can't find a flight
So I'll check the weather wherever you are
Cause I wanna know if you can see the stars tonight
It might be my only right
We share the sadness
Split screen sadness
I called
Because
I just
Need to feel you on the line
Don't hang up this time
And I know it was me who called it over but
I still wish you'd fought me 'til your dying day
Don't let me get away
Cause I can't wait to figure out what's wrong with me
So I can say this is the way that I used to be
There's no substitute for time
Or for the sadness
Split screen sadness
We share the sadness
I think I'm gonna stay home
Have myself a home life
Sitting in the slow-mo
And listening to the daylight
I am not a nomad
I am not a rocket man
I was born a house cat
By the slight of my mother's hand
I think I'm gonna stay home
I want to live in the center of a circle
I want to live on the side of a square
I used to be in my M-Z now
You'll never find me cause my name isn't there
Home life
Been holding out for a home life
My whole life
I want to see the end game
I want to learn her last name
Finish on a Friday
And sit in traffic on the highway
See, I refuse to believe
That my life's gonna be
Just some string of incompletes
Never to lead me to anything remotely close to home life
Been holding out for a home life
My whole life
I can tell you this much
I will marry just once
And if it doesn't work out
Give her half of my stuff
It's fine with me
We said eternity
And I will go to my grave
With the life that I gave
Not just some melody line
On a radio wave
It dissipates
And soon evaporates
But home life doesn't change
I want to live in the center of a circle
I want to live on the side of a square
I'd love to walk to where we can both talk but
I've got to leave you cause my ride is here
Home life
You keep the home life
You take the home life
I'll come back for the home life
I promise
Still is the life
Of your room
When you're not inside
And all of your things
Tell the sweetest story line
Your tears on these sheets
And your footsteps are down the hall
Tell me what I did
I can't find where the moment went wrong at all
You can be mad in the morning
I'll take back what I said
Just don't leave me alone here
It's cold, baby
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
What will this fix
You know you're not a quick forgive
And I won't sleep through this
I survive on the breath
You are finished with
You can be mad in the morning
I'll take back what I said
Just don't leave me alone here
It's cold baby
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come on come back to bed
Come back to bed...
[guitar solo]
You can be mad in the morning
Or the afternoon instead
But don't leave me
98 and 6 degrees of separation
From you baby
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Don't hold your love over my head
Don't hold your love over my head
Don't hold your love over my head
Don't hold your love one more time around baby
Don't hold your love over my head
Don't hold your love over my head yeah
Don't hold your love over my head
Don't hold your love over my head
Come on come back to bed
I'm so alive
I'm so enlightened
I can barely survive
A night in my mind
I've got a plan
I'm gonna find out just how boring I am
And have a good time
Cause ever since I tried
Trying not to find
Every little meaning in my life
It's been fine
I've been cool
With my new golden rule
Numb is the new deep
Done with the old me
And talk is the same cheap it's been
Is there a God?
Why is he waiting?
Don't you think of it odd
When he knows my address?
And look at the stars
Don't they remind you of just how feeble we are?
Well it used to, I guess
Cause ever since I tried
Trying not to find
Every little meaning in my life
It's been fine
I've been cool
With my new golden rule
Numb is the new deep
Done with the old me
And talk is the same cheap
It's been
I'm a new man
I wear a new cologne and
You wouldn't know me if your eyes were closed
I know what you'll say
'This won't last longer than the rest of the day'
But you're wrong this time
You're wrong
Numb is the new deep
Done with the old me
I'm over the analyzing
Tonight
Stop trying to figure it out
(you try to figure, you try to figure it out)
It will only bring you down
You know, I used to be the back
porch poet with my book of rhymes
Always open knowing all the time I'm problably
Never gonna find the perfect rhyme
For 'heavier things'
I'm not alone, I wish I was.
Cause then I'd know, I was down because
I couldn't find, a friend around
To love me like, they do right now.
They do right now.
I'm dizzy from the shopping malls
I searched for joy, but I bought it all
It doesn't help the hunger pains
and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
something's missing
And I don't know what it is
At all
When autumn comes, it doesnt ask.
It just walks in, where it left you last.
And you never know, when it starts
Until there's fog inside the glass around your summer heart:
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
something's missing
And I don't know what it is
At all
I can't be sure that this state of mind, is not of my own design
I wish there was an over the counter test, for loneliness.
For loneliness like this.
Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
Something's missing
And I don't know what it is
No I don't know what it is
Something's different
And i don't know what it is
No I don't know what it is
Friends -check- Money -check-
A well slept -check- Opposite sex -check- Guitar -check- Microphone -check- Messages waiting for me, when i come home
-check-
How come everything I think I need, always comes with batteries
What do you think it means
How come everything I think I need, always comes with batteries
What do you think it means
This is a call to the color-blind
This is an IOU
I'm stranded behind a horizon line
Tied up in something true
Yes, I'm grounded
Got my wings clipped
I'm surrounded (by)
All this pavement
Guess I'll circle
While I'm waiting
For my fuse to dry
Someday I'll fly
Someday I'll soar
Someday I'll be so damn much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for
Why is it not my time?
What is there more to learn?
Shed this skin I've been tripping in
Never to quite return
Yes, I'm grounded
Got my wings clipped
I'm surrounded (by)
All this pavement
Guess I'll circle
While I'm waiting
For my fuse to dry
Someday I'll fly
Someday I'll soar
Someday I'll be so damn much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for
Cause I'm bigger than my body now
Maybe I'll tangle in the power lines
And it might be over in a second's time
But I'll gladly go down in a flame
If the flame's what it takes to remember my name
Yes, I'm grounded
Got my wings clipped
I'm surrounded (by)
All this pavement
Guess I'll circle
While I'm waiting
For my fuse to dry
For my fuse to dry
Someday I'll fly
Someday I'll soar
Someday I'll be so damn much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body
I'm bigger than my body
I'm bigger than my body now
I worry, I weigh three times my body
I worry, I throw my fear around
But this morning, there's a calm I can't explain
The rock candy's melted, only diamonds now remain
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
By the time I recognize this moment
This moment will be gone
But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on
Well all I got's
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
And I will wait to find
If this will last forever
And I will wait to find
If this will last forever
And I will pay no mind
When it won't and it won't because it can't
It just can't
It's not supposed to
Was there a second of time that I looked around?
Did I sail through or drop my anchor down
Was anything enough to kiss the ground?
And say I'm here now and she's here now
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh
So much wasted in the afternoon
So much sacred in the month of June
How bout you
And I will wait to find
If this will last forever
And I will wait to find
That it won't and it won't
Because it won't
And I will waste no time
Worried 'bout no rainy weather
And I will waste no time
Remaining in our lives together
Six numbers
One more to dial
Before I'm before you
I tried to call
Been busy all night
Gave up waiting at daylight
Excuse me mrs. busybody
Could you pencil me in when you can?
Though we both know
That the worst part about it
Is i would be free when you wanted me
If you wanted me
Oh, I am the man on the side
Hoping you'll make up your mind
I am the one who will swallow his pride
Life as the man on the side
One of the many
But one of the few
To stand back and wait for you
Excuse me mrs. busybody
Could you pencil me in when you can?
Though we both know that the worst part about it
Is I would be free when you wanted me
If you wanted me
If you wanted me
Oh, I am the man on the side
Hoping you'll make up your mind
I am the one who will swallow his pride
Life as the man on the side
Life as the man on the side
I fell in love with a dream that I built of you
Playing the part of the queen
Taking my own advice
I'm giving up tonight
Good luck to you and the king
Excuse me mrs. busybody
Could you pencil me in?
Though we both know that the worst part about it
Is I would be free when you wanted me
If you wanted me
If you wanted me
I am the man on the side
Hoping you'll make up your mind
I am the one who will swallow his pride
Life as the man
You know life as the man
Living life as the man on the side
"Belief"
Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing there mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time
Everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Everyone believes
And they're not going easily
Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching under water
You never can hit who you're trying for
Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon
For the war that's raging on inside
Everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Everyone believes
And no ones going quietly
We're never gonna win the world
We're never gonna stop the war
We're never gonna beat this
If belief is what we're fighting for
What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand
Belief can
Belief can
What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand
Belief can
Belief can
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John Mayer has won multiple Grammys, and this concert showcases his multiple musical sides. Make that three. The first set of this concert at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles features him alone onstage in an acoustic set for a pop-folk sequence; the second set features the John Mayer Trio (Mayer, bassist Pino Palladino, and drummer Steve Jordan) in a mostly blues sequence with a touch of R&B and funk; while the third set finds Mayer joined onstage by his full band, playing easy listening pop-rock with (again) an occasional touch of funk. Of the 22 songs performed here, Mayer had a hand in writing 17 of them, with the remaining songs being covers, including ones of Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty, B.B. King, and Otis Redding. Intercut among the concert footage are behind-the-scenes segments and a split-up interview footage of Mayer talking up a storm while he drives, his doggie in the passenger seat.
You get the feeling that this guy is as restless as his pooch. Part of him wants to play to the tune of success, and another part of him wants to do his own musical thing. Since I can only play the radio, I have no advice to give musicians. But I will say this: though he throws himself into every single song, he seems to have the most fun doing his blues thing with the trio. The cheesy songs ("Your Body is a Wonderland" earned him a Grammy, and "Daughters" has become a wedding standard) have paid the bills, but Mayer has played the blues with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and B.B. King, and I'm betting that there's a bluesman inside him just waiting to shed completely his pop-rock image.
That's going to be tough, because one scan of the audience tells you that he's a favorite with women, who really seem to respond to the sentimental songs he writes about relationships . . . and females. Whether it was his idea or a someone at his record label's, he even seems to write for women. After singing all those sappy songs, no wonder he feels the need to sing the blues. There was a hint of it in his Grammy-winning album, "Continuum," and so I would guess that Mayer will continue to move in that direction.
What this concert shows is how accomplished and how passionate Mayer is about his music. Whether he's playing acoustic or electric, his guitar-work is stellar, with quick-fingered rolls and up-the-neck playing that never falters. When he's alone onstage, it sounds as if there are two guitars, because he plays the guitar the way people play piano-with two distinctly different movements, made possible by his quickness. His fingers seem to glide effortlessly, as does his voice, which slips easily from a raspy blues voice to a smooth falsetto and back again. He's just a sensitive and soulful guy, which is why the ladies love him. I think I saw only a dozen guys in the audience, and they were probably dragged there by their girlfriends and wives. But if these guys were smart, they were taking notes. When women respond to someone this totally, it's tempting to try to figure out how he does it. And guess what? It's not physical. Some performers gyrate, some performers prance, some performers play to the crowd . . . but not this guy. He stands in one spot-in this case, on an oriental rug onstage-and taps his left foot to the beat of the music. The closest he came to playing physically to the crowd was pointing at them toward the end of one of those heaping portions of cheese. Mostly, it's the soulful thing and the lyrics that rope them in. And we've known this since Frankie Valli and the Bee Gees: real men can sing falsetto, and if those guys can hold the high notes, it's really music to their female audience's ears.
Some concert producers aim for a "you are there" feeling, which is almost impossible to capture. Others opt for quick cuts and a mix of intense close-ups and body parts to make it seem more active than it might be in person. The producers of "Where the Light Is" opted for a 360 treatment. Not only do we see Mayer from the crowd's perspective, but we also see him from behind as he's playing, with the crowd in the distance, and we get so close to him onstage that we can even read the scrolling teleprompter at his feet. There are occasional, interesting shots from above, too-some of which are pullbacks, and others of which are gentle 360s. We also get the view from the middle seats, with the camera panning shadow-heads in the foreground as we glimpse an animated Mayer in between them. Though there's constant variety and movement, the camera work never seems over-caffeinated. It adds as much interest to the concert as the lighting, which is mostly a darkened stage lit by a few selective spots. A few colored lights come out for the third set, but otherwise it's a pretty bare-bones treatment that shines the light on Mr. Mayer without gimmickry. If there were smoke or mirrors at this concert, it was in the women's purses.
But the one thing guys didn't have to take note of was Mayer's ad libs. His attempts at humor weren't very good, which is probably why he mostly played. The car interview footage substituted for most of the concert banter . . . and that's another story. Only fans will appreciate the interview material. People new to Mayer and his music looking for insight won't find much of interest. It's all about him, and his "feelings," which again makes me think of his audience. Every time he started to talk about himself, I got up to check the time, grab a beer, rearrange my sock drawer--anything I could think of. But I don't imagine the women were doing such things.
I actually found the behind-the-scenes footage more interesting. These guys were awfully low-key as they went through the corridors and stairwells to get to or leave the stage-kind of like lunch-box carrying blue-collar types. There was very little conversation, and one supposes Mayer likes it that way. He's pretty low-key onstage, too, wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans for the first and third sets, and decking out in Beatles-era white shirts and ties and jackets with his trio.
Here's the song list:
Neon (acoustic)
Stop This Train (acoustic)
In Your Atmosphere (cheesy acoustic)
Daughters (more cheesy acoustic, with a singing audience backup)
Free Fallin' (sensitive soulful acoustic)
Everyday I Have the Blues (trio)
Wait Until Tomorrow (trio)
Who Did You Think I Was (trio)
Come When I Call (trio, with Mayer doing his B.B. King impersonation)
Good Love is on the Way (trio, edging into the world of Grand Funk)
Out of My Mind (trio)
Vultures (trio)
Bold as Love (trio)
Waiting on the World to Change (full band, return to light pop-rock)
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room (full band, with sighing female audience)
Why Georgia (full band, with women wondering, Why Jessica?)
The Heart of Life (full band, with cheese)
I Don't Need No Doctor (full band)
Gravity (full band)
I Don't Trust Myself (full band, and me neither)
Belief (full band; does anyone have a Bic lighter?)
I'm Gonna Find Another You (full band, his walk-off closer. Encore? Nope. Adulation? He knows it's there, and doesn't need to fish for it.)
The encore is really Mayer sitting on a Mulholland Drive hilltop playing his guitar, plugged into a speaker. It's the way the film opened, with him playing in daylight, and it closes with Mayer playing at twilight. Clever concept, and it probably works better than an encore.
This concert will be a must-have for fans, and it looks so good in Blu-ray that it might even prompt a few to go out and buy a player, finally. Non-Mayer fans also will warm to this concert, because the cheesy songs are palatable if you focus on this guy's amazing guitar work and vocals. He's a musical force, able to shift gears effortlessly.
Video:
I don't have to tell anyone how tricky concert lighting is, and how often we get errant lasers streaking across the screen or halos because of the stage lighting. But the video for "Where the Light Is" is really clean and precise-looking. Given the darkened stage for most of the evening, I can't imagine that the DVD would come close to capturing the detail in shadows that this 1080p print offers (VC-1 codec, BD50). Colors are vivid too, despite the harsh spots, and there's only the slightest bit of grain in some of the candid sequences. Shot in Super 35mm and presented in 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the concert stuff is pretty flawless in terms of cinematography and video quality.
Audio:
There are two audio options: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and PCM 2.0, both in English and both 96kHz/24 bit. It's a coin toss, as far as I'm concerned, but I preferred Mayer's voice on the PCM because it sounded a little fuller. There were a few weird moments on the PCM track, though, as when Mayer sideman David Ryan Harris is shown on-camera playing his guitar solo and we get the sound coming out of the left main speaker. There are a few more disjointed moments like that because of the channeling. The 5.1 TrueHD channeled the instruments more naturally, but Mayer's voice was slightly . . . "muffled" is too strong of a word, but I might call it "restrained." I preferred the PCM, and those head-snapping moments of strange channeling were too few to really bother me.
Extras:
Okay, call me a curmudgeon, but when I watch a concert DVD/BD I want a booklet that has lyrics and credits. Instead, we get a six-page booklet that's all photos, with the front inside cover a repeat of the song line-up from the back cover, and the back inside cover all of the credits . . . in like 4 point type. This booklet is all style, and no substance. That's kind of what the other features are like, too. Sony has really embraced the BD-Live concept, but they (and everyone else) are still trying to figure out what to do with it. Well, I'm no expert, but with an Internet connection I'd guess that fans would want access to Mayer's appearance schedule, and (ideally) a Q&A where they might get lucky and have their question answered by Mayer himself. Or maybe there'd be concert footage from a different gig, or a really cool practice session, or footage of Mayer on vacation or something. Instead, the only BD-Live feature is a "Belief" backstage performance that requires 57MB of memory to download (and a Profile 2.0 player to deliver). The only other bonus feature, aside from a "Slow Dancing on Mulholland Drive" extended clip of Mayer playing and talking, requires a Profile 1.1 player, as it involves a "bonusview" picture-in-picture experience with a camera cam attached to Jordan and Palladino.
Bottom Line:
I don't have to tell John Mayer fans that this is a great concert, but I can add that it's a great overall Blu-ray presentation. This guy can play, and this guy can sing, and this Blu-ray captures it all.
How do you feel about the whole Guitar Hero-game phenomenon?
I don't ever want to be the kind of guy who rails against whatever progress has taken place. But Guitar Hero was devised to bring the guitar-playing experience to the masses without them having to put anything into it. And having done both, there's nothing like really playing guitar. I mean, what would you rather drive, a Ferrari or one of those amusement-park cars on a track?
What about how easy it is for kids to get into music and produce music now?
The fact that you could record a song tonight greatly dements the creative process.
The fact that if you wanted to right now, you and your friends could get together, do a photo shoot. Within 20 minutes you could have a band name, a photo shoot, a Website, a logo. The first time I ever got a four-track recorder I didn't write a song. I did like as many-part harmony to "Star Spangled Banner" vocally as I could do, because you just want to experience the technology. So I think that's part of it too. I'm trying to be compassionate about it and not say oh, these fuckin' kids, you know? But it is.
What would the 16-year-old John Mayer say if he saw what you do now onstage and where you are?
Man, I'd say I like the blues stuff. I like your Blues stuff, me. 'Cause it is going for a sophistication. I'm not leaving my mark on the way that I soloed, you know? I'm gonna leave my mark on sort of the combination of lead playing, rhythm playing, vocal. I'm just trying to build one solid sound out of these elements of singing, songwriting, chord changes, lead playing, rhythm, melody, harmony, all these things that really are trying to get funneled into one sound. And like that one sound — I feel like that's my mark.
[From Issue 1054 — June 12, 2008]
What drew you to the blues as a suburban teenager?
It's so fundamental in me that I have to imagine that it was just born into me. You either want to hear those notes bend or you don't. When I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan, the grammar of it made perfect sense to me, and I just instantly wanted to do that. He was my portal to Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Albert Collins, Freddie King, Buddy Guy. And I'm still on the same unbroken course as I was when I was 13.
What does the guitar mean to you now?
For me, it's my flotation device, because I now exist in this celebrity sort of world. But I don't feel like anybody's been able to truly knock me off my legs, because I have a trade. You can't just walk onstage and start playing guitar 'cause you thought it looked neat. With guitar, you get out what you put in, and it's the ultimate shield for other people trying to fuckin' take away your heart and soul. It's a completely exposed craft. There is no facade.
Do you worry that your pop hits overshadow your playing?
I understand how people would say, "I don't think he's pure at heart. I don't want him getting anywhere near the same kind of circle as Buddy Guy." So it's a really weird sort of incestuous situation for me, because if I wasn't me, I'd stand in front of me and say, "Prove it to me for the next 15 years, and maybe I'll think about accepting you." Because everything else you can buy, man. But guitar is the stuff that takes your life to figure out.
What are some of your favorite guitar moments?
One of my favorite guitar solos in the world is from Metallica's "Hero of the Day." Clapton's got a bunch of songs where he's really playing blues but he's playing it over these chordal changes, like "Old Love" and "Wonderful Tonight." It's not really about the solo — when I hear Prince at the end of "Let's Go Crazy," I get it. But for me, it's more about the way the harmony and the melodic movement of the chords support the guitar-playing. People respond to chords. I mean, Jimi Hendrix was a songwriter.
What goes through your head when you're deep into a guitar solo?
You just get out of the way of yourself, and I've got a big self for me to get out of the way of. I've had a few nights where I got so close to leaving the ground that I didn't know where it was going and kind of got freaked out — close to feeling like my wheels were gonna come off. For me, it's like finding the zipper on the back of my body and just coming out of it.
You're in constant pursuit of the perfect guitar tone. How would you describe it?
There's so many clichés about this, which I hate, like "molten glass." But I want it to sound like a voice. That's all. And you want that voice to speak back to you in a tone you don't expect — so it doesn't sound exactly like you. You want to listen to what it's saying back to you.
How did you first hear Stevie Ray Vaughan? And why did he make such a big impression on you?
In 1991, a neighbor gave me a cassette of [1983's] Texas Flood. What hit me was the tone, the texture. It was rich, deep and round. It was wet, fluid, like mercury. I remember saying, "I don't know how you describe it, but that's the sound I want."
Stevie also began this amazing genealogical hunt for me: Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Otis Rush and Lightnin' Hopkins. I wrote Buddy Guy fan mail when I was sixteen: "Dear Mr. Guy, I love your records. I'm going to play with you someday." Buddy used to play at Toad's Place [in New Haven, Connecticut]. I wasn't old enough to get in. I'd call the guys there: "I'm a huge Buddy Guy fan. Please let me in. I won't drink." They never let me in.
When you're onstage with Buddy Guy, he treats you like an equal. Do you feel like one?
I'm not an equal. But I feel like I can hold my own. And hold your own doesn't mean coming out the winner. When I play with B.B., I play as few notes as possible. I'm there to satisfy his sound. The first time I played with B.B., he kept going, "Play another solo." I don't think he was being generous — I think he didn't want it to be a cutting contest. As I played with him more, he'd turn his volume knob up. That's when I said, "Wow, B.B.'s really letting me in."
How would you describe your guitar style?
I don't play so much like Stevie Ray Vaughan anymore. I realized my signature is not soloing. It is in the chord voicings, the inversions. In "Wheels," on Heavier Things, the lead line is chords.
That explains why you once said "Axis: Bold as Love" is your favorite Hendrix album. It's his most concise, song-based record.
The songs on Axis are an extension of beautiful guitar playing. You can almost hear Hendrix looking at the guitar as he plays [makes the sound of a long, shivering note], going, "I wonder what that does?" There is an element of discovery. Are You Experienced? is like a rough draft. Axis sounds like the colors on the cover.
Do you have an identifiable tone or color?
I'm going for the biggest, fluffiest, tubbiest sound. I want my guitar to sound like Sting's voice — thick, on the bottom. I want to figure out my own phrasing, my own vocabulary. Eric Clapton is so influential that people go, "Is that Clapton or someone doing Clapton?" I would like to get to the point where someone says, "I can tell that's John Mayer."
Why didn't you play more solos on your first two albums?
I landed in Atlanta in 1998 and wanted to be in a band — play electric guitar and sing. I couldn't find anybody. And the electric guitar doesn't sound great alone. So I wrote Room for Squares on an acoustic guitar. Compositionally, there was no room for me to sprawl. And Heavier Things was my Axis: Bold as Love intention.
But I came off the road after Heavier Things and went, "Why am I still not happy?" How could I have sold that many records and still misrepresented where I'm coming from? The Trio saved me. It was me putting up a roadblock and saying, "There is some shit I have to do, to get back on track."
The Trio album is mostly original songs. Did you write them with the band in mind?
Originally, we were just going to play covers. But I love composers who write for the format. Guitarists like John Scofield and Pat Metheny write for the personnel. So we wrote songs lightning-fast. "Good Love Is on the Way" was written out of wanting to have a song like "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" by Derek and the Dominos. "Out of My Mind" — I wanted a slow blues tune. You gotta be high to like that one — it's so slow.
You did some songwriting with Eric Clapton in London last year. What was it like?
One of the most pivotal weeks of my life. That man is bullshit-free. We had lunch, and he told me something that I think about every day: "You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play."
But look at who his heroes are. You're only as good as your heroes, and Eric is flawless at giving his bibliography, his footnotes. Eric embraces his lineage. And he said something to me — he let on that just as Muddy Waters took him in, he was taking me in, as a passing-on. That was absolutely huge.
The guitar has been the king of rock & roll instruments for more than half a century. What you are about to read are twenty reasons why the present and future of rock guitar are as exciting and explosive as its history. In attack, technique, lyrical ambition and experimental drive, these players are all descendants of the original heroes — including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and Jimmy Page — who transformed the electric guitar in the Sixties and Seventies. As John Frusciante says, "For me, the genuine guitar heroes had a lot to say musically and put themselves out there. They tried to take the instrument to new places."
But Frusciante, Derek Trucks, John Mayer and the other guitarists in these pages are all heroes and gods in their own, often extreme, right. They are also proof that, long after Chuck Berry minted the fundamental twang and addicting joy of rock & roll guitar on his 1955 debut single, "Maybellene," there remains much to discover and study in the unlimited alchemy you get from wood, six strings, electricity and the highly personal poetry of touch and strum. The distinguishing mark of rock's greatest guitarists is, Mayer insists, "they're all stuck on what they're seeking, not where they are."
This celebration differs from our 2003 survey, "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," in some ways. The guitarists here are, by the measure of rock's extended history, new. Most are under forty, and all have made their impact in the last two decades. Also, there is no ranking. Numbered lists can be fun; we still get blowback from last time about who should have been up, out, in or down. But nerve and originality are not easily quantifiable, and that goes for record sales too. Frusciante and Mayer are among the few multiplatinum sellers here. Yet everyone in these pages is a true star of the instrument.
In one central way, however, this tribute to the guitar and those who play it is exactly like the 2003 issue: You cannot turn a page without a reference or a deep bow of gratitude to Hendrix. Frusciante, Mayer and Trucks all speak of him with informed reverence, and Hendrix's cataclysmic influence appears repeatedly in the sound and vision of the other players. In the Rock & Roll Guitar Hall of Fame, Jimi Hendrix is, by every standard, Number One. Everyone else -- including the hundreds of great guitarists who will be cited in the blizzard of letters and e-mails sure to follow — is Number Two.
Ask John Mayer if he is a guitarist or a singer-songwriter, and he replies immediately: "Always a guitarist." As a kid, he goes on, "I had this vision — sitting by a window on a rainy afternoon, just playing guitar. I said to myself, 'If I have enough strings and electricity, I can play guitar forever. I don't need anything else.'" Today, Mayer, 29, is more famous as a singer-songwriter. His first two albums, 2001's Room for Squares and 2003's Heavier Things, have sold a combined 6 million copies, and his latest record, Continuum, is nominated for five Grammys, including Album of the Year. But as a teenager, Mayer — who was born in 1977 in Bridgeport, Connecticut — was so obsessed with Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan that, Mayer recalls, laughing, "in my mind, I was on my way to being the next Stevie Ray." Instead, Mayer is a pop star and a dynamic, accomplished guitarist with an electric-Chicago attack and melodic concision best heard on Try!, his 2005 live album with the John Mayer Trio. He is also a passionate apostle for the blues elders he loves so much, such as Buddy Guy, B.B. King and Eric Clapton. "I never practice," Mayer insists. "I'm always playing. I want to write songs people can just jam on."
In your Jimi Hendrix essay in our 2004 "Immortals" issue, you wrote, "Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix." Can you elaborate on that?
If I could play more like Hendrix, I would. I'd want to do it all the time. But who I am is an amalgam of pop and something rootsier. It's not a choice. As for Jimi Hendrix, all guitar players feel that way: "I'm not him."
When did you get your first guitar?
It was January 1991. I was thirteen. My father rented a Washburn acoustic guitar from a music store. I took it to the bathroom, closed the door and sat there, thinking, "How do I find out what's in here? What are you hiding?"
I'm attracted to what I don't know. Everyone else I knew said things like, "I watched him play, and it made me want to quit." I never wanted to put the guitar down. I watched guys who made me want to pick it up. That's when you have the disease: You get your ass kicked, and you say, "I'm going to figure out why I lost that fight."
Back in the hotel room — after some Glenfiddich, Caesar salad and vaporizing — Mayer and I are laughing about B.B. King's sex life. Mayer is serious enough about his blues scholarship to have read King's 1996 autobiography — though not serious enough to actually have finished it. "I got to, like, chapter three, and he'd bedded, like, 600 girls," he says, shaking his head. "It's like an erotic novel written from the point of view of an eighty-year-old: 'She was sweeter than molasses. I sampled her sweet molasses in January. We would go on up to the top of that maple tree. . . .'"
Mayer's own sexual adventures are less exotic. Six years ago, on one of his first tours, he decided it would be "fun" to sleep with some fans. "I slept with, like, three girls in a week," he remembers. "I thought that's what you did, but there was one girl, I don't remember anything about her, but I left my own body and looked down at myself and said, 'Nuh-uh. Not you.' I stayed up all night and didn't sleep." He never had sex with a fan again — though that doesn't rule out voyeurism. "Totally different. There's ways to have fun with people without ever worrying about violating somebody." Mayer has plenty of platonic female friends, but he finds himself seeing a lot less of them when they find boyfriends. "If your girlfriend knows me, she's really not allowed to see me," he says. "Guys assume that 'Wonderland' guy wants to take their girl." (Later that night, Mayer shares a list of rules on "How to be John Mayer's girlfriend." Jessica, you can clip this out: "One: You've got to be really careful with me on the phone. Distance makes the brain grow more maniacal. Two: Twenty-four-hour phone-sex assistance. If there's a cute girl in the front row, I'm gonna run offstage and call you. Three: You have to run every single fantasy you've ever had through me. You'll never cheat. You see a cute guy at the gym, I'll be him. Or we'll get him. I don't care.")
Mayer knows that he doesn't have the blues birthright of B.B. King or Buddy Guy. But he's had his version of hard times. When Mayer was seventeen years old, his heart started beating irregularly — an episode of arrhythmia that sent him to the hospital for a weekend. Until they found the right combination of medicines to fix the problem, his doctors were ready to stop his heart and restart it. "It was so frightening at the time to be seventeen and have heart monitors hooked up to you," says Mayer. "That was the moment the songwriter in me was born. I discovered a whole other side of me. I came home that night and started writing lyrics. I discovered it all at once: It was like opening up a lockbox, and inside was a depth that I didn't even know I had as a person, or a writer — incredible creativity and vision and neurosis, complete neurosis. They all go together in a package." Afterward, Mayer started having crippling anxiety attacks, which he's only conquered in the past two years — to this day, he keeps a Xanax in the small pocket of his jeans at all times as an insurance measure.
Very little of this turmoil is evident in Mayer's music, which shuns noise and aggression. "It's not a part of my personality," he says. "I was a mild kid, man. I don't yell. There's some people who don't like me, just because I represent a certain kind of normalcy that people see as a waste of a music gig." He laughs, gets up to pour more water for his scotch and keeps talking. "I roll with the same truth as to who I am as the hardest-core punk rocker or the worthiest rapper," he says. "I am as John Mayer as 50 Cent is 50 Cent or Eminem is Eminem. And I think that's why I am where I am: Know who you are and be who you are. All the way. All the way to the hilt."
Still, Mayer's reaction to Lenner's snub was telling. His mother and father — a former teacher and a principal, respectively — were painfully unsupportive of his musical ambitions when he was a teenager. "Here's some psychobabble," Mayer says, sighing. "I'm out to impress the mom and dad, all the time." When he was young, Mayer loved being singled out as the only good kid in a group of malefactors: "Like, 'Everybody sucks! But not you, John' or 'Everybody sucks — why can't you be like John?' I'd like to be the 'Why can't you be like John?' of the music industry."
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in an amphitheater in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, Mayer stands alone onstage, looking out at 23,000 empty seats. Strapping on a Fender Strat, one of more than 200 guitars he owns, he begins his sound check by picking out an uncharacteristically sloppy version of the opening riff from Eric Clapton's "Layla." Discussing his role models at the New York brunch, Mayer says, "It's 'What would Springsteen do?' calculated to my age. And 'What would Clapton do?' Although the answer to that question is 'drugs' at my age. So maybe it's 'What would Clapton do at age sixty-one?'"
Mayer spent a week with Clapton at his estate in the English countryside, where the two wrote a bunch of songs together — which they have no plans yet to release. (Mayer has had similar songwriting sessions with his pal Alicia Keys.) After seeing the kind of cash Clapton throws at cars and vintage watches, Mayer raised the stakes on his own spending — even buying a $134,000 Porsche Turbo S sight unseen, after his mentor told him it was a mandatory rock-star move. "I literally called the Porsche dealer in New York City from Clapton's living room," he recalls. "This thing goes so fast, the front almost comes off the ground." Mayer ended up selling the car, though, after seeing the paraplegics in the documentary Murderball. "I went, 'You know what? I don't need another thing in my life that's gonna possibly take me out.'" Needless to say, Clapton's influence also extends to Mayer's music — the groovy Continuum track "I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You" sounds like the greatest Eighties-era E.C. tune never recorded, complete with an "It's in the Way That You Use It"-style intro. And the rest of Continuum is packed with slow-hand, virtuoso-at-rest guitar leads.
Onstage in Burgettstown, Mayer churns out funky blues riffs on guitar after guitar, all of them Strats — a white one, a black one and his weathered old SRV signature model, bought with money he earned working at a gas station as a teenager. At first it seems like he's just noodling, as if the amphitheater is a giant Guitar Center. But then he calls for his techs to switch out one particular amplifier in his rig, and it becomes clear that he's laboriously working out tones for his set list. "Does this sound spiky to you?" he asks his sound engineer, Chad Franscoviak, of one Strat — which to the uninitiated ear sounds about as good as the other eight guitars he's been playing.
The process takes hours. The sardonic, bespectacled Franscoviak — who is also Mayer's roommate at his house in Los Angeles, where the pair live a scaled-down version of the Entourage lifestyle — says that the scene is a typical example of Mayer's perfectionism. "I think having seen that provides you with a lot of insight into the process of making the [new] record," says Franscoviak. "John hears something in his head, and he won't rest until he achieves it." Mayer's drive extends even to his gaming: Franscoviak doesn't remember ever beating his roomie at their current fave, Rockstar Games' ultrarealistic Table Tennis. "Before that it was Halo, and no one could beat him," Franscoviak says. "That's pretty much his MO if he finds an interest in something — it doesn't matter how incidental it is." Mayer wants to be the best at everything, to have the best of everything — whether it's guitar tones, sneakers, cars, watches, twenty-five-year-old scotch or even sidemen.
So it's not surprising when Mayer says, "Everyone begs me not to do stand-up. Everyone connected to my well-being and on my payroll says stand-up is terrible. When I say, 'I'm doing stand-up tonight,' they hear, 'I'm going to start heroin.'" On some level, Mayer agrees — but he's also sick of being forced to apologize for his unguarded comments. He leans close to my digital recorder and says, "Everybody right now in the world of entertainment is a pussy. A pussy," he says, drawing out the last word. "They're all so sensitive. What the fuck happened?"
Some of Mayer's fans may be asking the same question about their favorite sleepy-eyed balladeer. In 2004 he won two Grammys with the sentimental acoustic tune "Daughters" — his biggest hit since 2001's "Your Body Is a Wonderland." He had begged his label and management not to release "Daughters" — the only acoustic tune on his second album, Heavier Things — as a single, fearing that it would cement his image as a teeny-bopper-pleasing softy. "I saw that as career death," he says. His manager, Michael McDonald (no, not the Doobie Brother), remembers a "battle" over the song. Mayer lost.
Since then, he has spent just about all of his time trying to move away from sensitive. "It was, 'let me take a year and get myself on track,'" he says. "I've met people who didn't realize they were off target, and they looked up and they were forty — they had six failed records, but everyone told them they were great. And they're fucking miserable." To avoid that fate, Mayer unleashed his formidable Stevie Ray Vaughan-inspired electric-guitar chops in jams with Buddy Guy, Herbie Hancock, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Vaughan's old backing band, Double Trouble. He mocked his fans and himself in the unexpectedly hilarious VH1 comedy special John Mayer Has a TV Show — in which he informed a credulous group of teenage fans that all of his hits were ghostwritten by Richard Marx. And last year, he recorded a fiery blues-rock live album, Try!, with the John Mayer Trio, a group he formed with two of the industry's most elite session musicians, drummer Steve Jordan (who has played with Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen) and bassist Pino Palladino (who was the Who's choice to replace John Entwistle). "John Mayer Trio is the anti-'Daughters,' the anti-'Wonderland,'" Mayer says. Along the way, Mayer — who had been until age twenty-six the least punk-rock straight-edge dude on Earth — also started drinking scotch and smoking (or rather, vaporizing) pot.
The result of all this change is Mayer's third studio album, Continuum — which has a funky, slow-grooving, soul-man feel, polished to a Steely Dan-worthy sheen. For all of its falsetto-laden soulfulness, there's no obvious follow-up to Mayer's twin smashes on Continuum, and the disc was enough of a departure to prompt Don Lenner — the since-ousted head of Mayer's label, Columbia Records — to tell Mayer that he didn't hear a single. Mayer didn't take the news well. "I cried all day," he says in the Pittsburgh hotel room. "My chest was burning because it's like sending letters every day to someone you love, and you find out they threw 'em all out." He contemplated quitting the music business. "I started looking up design schools online, because I was ready to go to design school," says Mayer, who attended Berklee College of Music for two semesters before dropping out in 1998. But that same day, Mayer was finishing a Curtis Mayfield-inspired tune called "Waiting on the World to Change," which ended up as the album's first single. "I knew it was a hit," he says. "And by the end of the day, I'd gone back to 'Nah, fuck that, this is a great record.'"
As John Mayer ambles over to his marijuana vaporizer — a small wooden device that emits a UFO-like blue glow in his darkened Pittsburgh hotel room — he shares a passing thought: "I bought myself a Playgirl once," he says, taking a robust, smokeless hit of weed from a plastic tube.
"I just loved the feeling that there was a porno you really, really weren't supposed to have," Mayer adds. He laughs as he sprawls his six-foot-three body onto a couch, his brown eyes unfocused. It's around midnight, less than twenty-four hours before the first show of his co-headlining tour with Sheryl Crow, and he's dressed like an NBA player on a day off, in a hoodie and long shorts that precisely match his limited-edition Nikes. "If there's some shit I'm not supposed to have that's on the top rack, with the black bar over the bag, I want to know what's in there. I don't care what it is — furniture, spider monkeys." He adds that thanks to his one-time perusal of nude-dude centerfolds, he's sure that he's not gay. "Which is different than might not be gay," he says. "Not to say I wouldn't enjoy the energy of watching a guy and a girl have sex. I think I'd vomit out of pure arousal. Have you ever seen a guy and girl have sex in person?"
John Mayer can't stop talking. He knows it, too — he even wrote a song about the problem, "My Stupid Mouth," from his first album. "I'm a liability to my art," Mayer says over brunch in New York at a Mexican restaurant, four days before that night in Pittsburgh. "I'm at a point right now where the more I talk, the more I'm going to say something in the next twelve months that's going to damage my career." (It turns out he does keep quiet about one thing: A week after our last conversation, Us Weekly reports that Mayer has just begun dating Jessica Simpson, whom he met at Clive Davis' Grammy party last year. "John is an incredibly talented artist," Simpson told the magazine, in a non-denial.) Though his baby face is as unlined as his shiny-new white Stussy T-shirt, Mayer, 28, is groggy after a night of barhopping — during which he jumped onstage and indulged in his new hobby of stand-up comedy.
Here is one of John Mayer's jokes: "Everyone thinks Brad Pitt has it great because he married Angelina Jolie. I think he has it terrible, because when Angelina Jolie is giving you a blow job, what do you tip your head back and think of to help you finish? You have nothing left — just Jesus on a polar bear in the middle of the snow, saying, 'You greedy motherfucker, I've got nothing for you.'"
And another: "I'm not worried about how small my penis is — I'm worried about how dark it is. I have a Dominican penis. My penis hit six home runs last year; my penis wears shoes without socks." Performing in June at the Comedy Cellar in New York, Mayer did a David Chappelle-esque routine that imagined white people being allowed to use the n word — a blogger reported, out of context, that Mayer had used the offending word, and a brief media furor ensued.
John Mayer by the numbers: six feet four, twenty-five years old, 2.5 million albums sold, one Grammy. "I don't have the Grammy yet," Mayer says. "It will be here soon. I'm going to put a 40-gig hard drive in it, a fire-wire port and a little speaker. I'm turning it into an MP3 player."
It's "Your Body Is a Wonderland" -- the second single from his major-label debut, Room for Squares -- that won him the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, beating out his idol, Sting, and one of his early supporters, Elton John. Mayer is a motormouth from Connecticut who's been touring relentlessly for most of the past three years. With a live album and DVD, Any Given Thursday, just out, he's settling into new Manhattan digs to begin work on another record. "New York's a great equalizer for someone like myself," he says. "Coming off this Tilt-A-Whirl for the last two years -- there is no special treatment here. It's, 'Fuck you! Get in line with the rest of us!' It's New York City."
Rock and Roll Over, by Kiss. I traced that album cover many times. But the first LP I bought with my own money was Debbie Gibson's Out of the Blue. "Only in My Dreams," "Shake Your Love" -- she was writing and producing that shit in her garage! That's unrivaled even today.
Who is the greatest singer-songwriter of all time?
History tells me Bob Dylan. That's the answer I want to give you. Artists like Dylan and Robert Johnson are unequivocally great, but I listen to it under an archival light, like I'm going to a library. So, personally, it's gotta be Sting.
How would you answer the claim that post-Police, Sting sucks?
I can name just as many great Sting songs as Police songs. Just as many. He's great at being consistent. Even if it's not your cup of tea, it's stayed not your cup of tea in the same way it's not your cup of tea, while getting better at being not your cup of tea for the last fifteen years, ya know? Sting just makes sense to me. He's coming from a jazz place. It's got a rhythmic swing. It's brilliant stuff.
What's on your iPod?
I don't download music, but I do have an iPod. That's probably not the norm, but it's due to the fact that I can afford to go to Virgin Megastore and spend $300 on twenty CDs. I collect music. I think downloading has stolen more from the love of collecting music than it has from artists. I don't know how to download. I tried to find songs, but I never fucking can. It always says "connecting" or "waiting in line." You wait in line longer on any of these file-sharing things than at a Virgin.
When's the last time you went to Virgin? And what did you buy?
About a week ago. I took every Bonnie Raitt album out of there, and bought Hall and Oates' greatest-hits CD. That shit changed my life. Changed my life all over again.
If you could put together a dream concert, who'd be on the bill?
Do I close?
Sure. Who should open for you?
All right -- Mayerfest. I'd put Stevie Wonder on it, with the Roots backing him up. Then I'd put on the re-formed Police. I think they're getting back together.
What's your favorite Behind the Music?
Alice Cooper. On Behind the Music, the traditional decline of the artist happens about thirty-four minutes into the show. Do you know what caused Alice Cooper's decline? Alice drank too much beer. That's all! Not beer mixed with heroin. Alice Cooper, with the blood and guts and the gore onstage -- his only devil was beer. Just had too much barley. Too many hops.
What songs make you dance?
Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You" -- the louder it gets, the better it gets. And what I believe to be the best dance song of all time, Lionel Richie's "All Night Long," and in parentheses, "All Night." You can feel the warm summer night. You can hear the crickets calling and answering.
Who's the hottest female rocker?
Oh, my God, Gwen Stefani. I was late on the SS Stefani. I didn't make it to the dock in time. But now I'm on it big-time.
You're still too late.
That's OK. I'm on it. She's the perfect combination of bulldog and daisy. Absolutely amazing. She has a sweetness to her that never leaves, even when she's crawling around the stage like a spider. I don't even mean it in a "Boy, would I want to bang Gwen Stefani" way. But I sure would want to grab her ass.
What's the best lyric of all time?
Well, I think that the best song is Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over." But then there's the best line of all time, which isn't in that song. Bruce Springsteen wrote it, and it's the reason that he should have won Album of the Year. I love Norah [Jones], I think Norah is amazing. But in "My City of Ruins," where he sings, "There's tears on the pillow/Darling, where we slept/You took my heart/When you left" -- it's the greatest line ever.
You think?
If you don't respond to that, you are an android and you should be melted.
In 2001, John Mayer released Room for Squares, which has since sold more than 3 million copies. Then based in Atlanta, Mayer had recently left Boston's Berklee College of Music. His songs didn't have the fussiness that many of us associate with trained musicians, but there was something correct about them. The fast, epiphanic "No Such Thing," the afternoon valentine "Your Body Is a Wonderland" and the steering-wheel singalong "Why Georgia" all had a very precise mood and their own notion of cool. Neither punk nor prom king, Mayer was a tall kid from Connecticut, driving on the freeways, chasing slippery techno women, inhabiting a world of parents and slipcovers and holidays and gracious Southeastern metropolises; he was smart, inquisitive, articulate, a touch off in places. In post-9/11 America, he could have come straight out of a 1950s J.D. Salinger novel. Mayer's music was an unexotic oasis -- you could hum along to its agile melodies, getting headaches from nothing more devastating than his everyday corduroy conundrums.
With his follow-up, Heavier Things, Mayer offers an equally available yet more sophisticated album. Recorded in New York -- where he now lives -- and in Los Angeles with producer-engineer Jack Joseph Puig, Heavier Things marks no grand departure from Mayer's previous calm. Yet it does profit from a few key adjustments. The songs -- with the exception of the pop-funk "Only Heart," whose fast harmonies are almost as hook-mad as those in "No Such Thing" -- are sparser, no longer leaping for journalism-style detail and borderline-power-pop melodies. Most of these tracks proceed more subtly, with an emphasis on interior life.
In "Split Screen Sadness," a guy sits by the phone, arguing in his head with his girlfriend, wondering just what in hell will become of their relationship. As keyboard strings saw jarringly away in the background, the music bears down and Mayer delivers the poignant, descending five-note phrase, "I can't find a flight." In "Clarity," Mayer is unsure how long his current romance is going to stay in flower. In the final choruses, as jazz-trumpet player Roy Hargrove circles around with warm harmonies, Mayer abandons his closely chosen lyrics altogether, adopting a wordless falsetto.
These songs have no trouble lifting off when they want: "Someday I'll fly," Mayer sings in "Bigger Than My Body," propelling a chorus that's pure radio bliss. In the hilarious-pathetic "New Deep," a "new man" wears "new cologne" yet still feels blank, as amelodic verses skitter softly, alternating with a bigger, more boldly built chorus. Songs such as "Daughters" and "Come Back to Bed," which show off Mayer's Shetland-wool tenor, take more conventional blues-pop melodic shapes.
In one place, Mayer's new methods swirl into unusual majesty. The song is called "Home Life"; it has an Asian-accented coffeehouse groove in which the narrator makes some odd yet familiar admissions. He says he was "born a house cat." He likes geometry and architecture. He wants to know the name of his future wife. He says that if necessary, he will acquiesce -- but never more than once -- to divorce. He longs to sit in traffic. The song appears to be about wanting a house and a wife and kids, but that's not it. It's actually about Mayer's aversion to phoniness. It's about how, in his deceptively untroubled universe, corduroy can be just as dramatic as black leather.
