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.
Welcome to j-mayer.blogspot.com !!!
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.
