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 In examining John Mayer's career, it's instructive to notice two very distinct aspects: the light-hearted singer/songwriter with the Dave Matthews-like voice and boyish charm who dates beautiful celebrities, designs and collects sneakers (by the hundreds), and intermittently writes and performs stand-up comedy — and the dazzling guitarist with the old soul of a bluesman who has exchanged licks with the elders and elevated his music to a place that some say make him one of the most relevant artists of his generation.
Mayer latched onto pop music and played some clarinet as a kid, but the McFly-does-Berry scene in Back To The Future got the 13-year-old Mayer's guitar mojo stirring; a Stevie Ray Vaughan cassette later got him hooked on the blues and consumed by the six-string. By the time he was 21 he'd spent a year at Boston's Berklee College of Music, moved to Atlanta and released his first EP.
Over the next nine years, Mayer released three studio CDs, each a multi-million-seller, and four live albums, earning him five Grammys and four #1 singles. "No Such Thing," "Daughters" and "Your Body Is A Wonderland" helped make Mayer's dreamy soft rock inescapable in the mid-'00s. And then he hung a sharp left, suddenly guesting on albums by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock and John Scofield, and in 2005 he released Try! John Mayer Trio Live In Concert (with drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Pino Palladino), trading in his pop charm for some serious blues and a grown-up sophistication.
His 2008 live offering, Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live In Los Angeles, effectively encapsulated Mayer's musical transformation as he moved effortlessly from melodic soft rock hits on through to powerful blues rock numbers.
Provenance: Fairfield, Connecticut
Latest Release: Continuum (2006)
© 2008 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
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