FTV: John Mayall

 

     The music world lost an icon when the Godfather of British blues, John Mayall, recently passed away at the age of 90.  I can’t say that I knew that much about him, but in his lifetime (November 29, 1933 – July 22, 2024) he saw a lot of musicians pass through his bands.  Listening to many of his disciples name check Mayall certainly made me aware of who he was, so I guess this makes me more of a second generation fan.

     Mayall was already twenty when I was born in 1953.  By then, school boy John had lived through World War II and was sent to Korea that year as part of his national service in the British Army.  He avoided active combat as the Korean War had ended just before he arrived.  His father Murray was a guitarist and upon John’s return from Korea, the elder Mayall gave him an autographed copy of Big Bill Broonzy’s autobiography.  John’s first serious foray into music came via The Powerhouse Four, a band he formed in 1958 while attending the Manchester College of Art.

     The year 1962 found Mayall playing in the band called the Blues Syndicate.  A supporting gig with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated at the Bodega Club in Manchester made a big impact on John’s musical path.  At the time, Blues Inc included bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.  Korner became Mayall’s musical mentor, encouraged him to move to London, and introduced him to the club circuit there.  Korner provided valuable contacts in the London scene that would help John immensely as he worked to establish himself as another cornerstone of the British blues scene.

     Mayall forged a slightly different path right from the get-go.  He was more than just a multi-instrumentalist performer – he was also the band leader and the boss.  Unlike most upcoming bands, he did not employ a manager.  He told Classic Rock Magazine’s David Sinclair, “I’ve kept away from managers.  If you can get yourself together with the business end of gigs and your career, why part with a percentage of your earnings which you could make better use of?  I’m the manager.”  Mayall did employ a booking agent named Rik Gunnell to set up his first American tour in 1968 and Gunnell was amazed.  His client returned to London with $2,000 (about $15,000 in today’s money) stuffed into his boots.  Mayall explained further:  “At this point in the history of touring bands, I was unique in that I would actually come home with a profit.  This was literally unheard of given our modest tour income and the high cost of living in America.”

     How did John Mayall become such a blues nut?  It started with the Bill Broonzy book his father gave him.  He told Sinclair, “When I started playing professionally, in 1963, I was already thirty years old, so I’d had a lifetime of listening to American blues music from the age of ten onwards.  It wasn’t just Chicago blues, it was all blues, all American blues, that I was exposed to.  So it all became part of my musical education.”  Once he hooked up with Korner as his mentor, he took a lot of cues form Alexis on how to conduct himself as a bandleader.  As a bandleader, he stuck to his musical concept while performing and recording a steady diet of what he loved.  In the process, he became the equivalent of an evangelical preacher of the blues idiom.  As for the impact of his music and his choice of musicians to work with, he remained humbled about his role:  “I’m just a man who loves his music and knows what’s out there to listen to.”  Mayall’s familiarity with ‘his music’ made putting together his outstanding bands a simple process.

     As I mentioned earlier, I became aware of John Mayall from playing albums by the A-list of guitarists who have passed through his band.  The first to really raise his own profile before setting out on his own musical journey was Eric Clapton.  Mayall first heard him playing on the B-side Got To Hurry which Clapton had recorded with The Yardbirds in 1965:  “When I heard Eric playing on Got To Hurry, I couldn’t believe it.  It blew me away.  I just had to have him.  It was like an instant soul connection.  I called him up and offered him a job.”  The timing was right.  Clapton felt The Yardbirds intentional swing toward more mainstream pop meant they were selling out and he was looking to escape.  Eric and John met  at Mayall’s house and Clapton signed on (according to Mayall) for a 20 pounds per week wage.

     In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton remembered the starting wage as 35 pounds per week, but noted it was a set wage.  “It was a set wage no matter how much you worked,” Clapton recalled.

“A not untypical night might involve traveling up to Sheffield to do an evening gig at eight o’clock, then heading off to Manchester to play the all-nighter, followed by driving back to London and being dropped off at Charing Cross station at six in the morning.”  Brutal, yes, but it had a family feel about it.  When Clapton joined The Blues Breakers, he moved in with Mayall and thereby gained access to John’s extensive record collection:  “I did all my musical research there and he was such an expert on Chicago blues.  I learned all that I have to draw on today in terms of technique and the desire to play the music that I love to play.”

     Drummer Mick Fleetwood echoed Clapton’s remarks upon Mayall’s death.  Fleetwood said, “It was like losing a father figure.”  Guitarist Walter Trout said, “He is and always will be my musical mentor.  I loved him like a father and always will.”  All of that respect and love aside, many of the guitarists who performed in The Blues Breakers got their blues Visas stamped and moved along down the road.  Clapton’s tenure lasted through one album (John Mayall and the Bluesbeakers with Eric Clapton – 1966) that included bassist John McVie and drummer Hughie Flint.  The album is popularly known as ‘The Beano Album’ because the band photo on the cover shows Eric reading a copy of the popular paper of the same name.  Upon Clapton’s departure, guitarist Peter Green and drummer Ansley Dubar joined up for the A Hard Road album (1967).  Green also moved into a flat below Mayall’s and absorbed the lessons he would bring to his next band, Fleetwood Mac.  Green was not only a lead guitarist, but he was a singer and songwriter.  Mayall encouraged him to write songs and suggested a good starting point:  “borrow a line from one of his favorite blues songs and bend it into a new shape that was his own,” according to Sinclair.

     John Mayall was an accomplished player (keyboard and harmonica) and a capable rhythm guitar player.  Letting his guitarists step out and shine may have pushed their bandleader to the background some, but that was how he rolled.  No one dimensional talent was Mayall, as he painted the cover for his second studio album, A Hard Road.  The next Blues Breakers album (Crusade also released in 1967) brought another shift in band membership.  Mick Taylor (all of 18 years-of-age) took up the guitar slot while the drum throne would be occupied by Keef Hartley.  Mayall managed to release yet a third album in 1967 (The Blues Alone) in which he did it all.  He wrote and sang all of the songs and played all the instrumental parts except the drums.

     Across his career, Mayall’s Blues Breakers recorded an astonishing 35 studio albums, 34 live albums, 24 compilation records, four extended players (EPs), 44 singles and four video albums.  His 38th album was released in 2022 (The Sun Shining Down) under his own name.  How did he do it?  He told Sinclair, “It’s very easy to make a record.  For me it’s a very quick affair.  You just go into the studio in the day and you do it.  That’s it.  There’s no problem with it.  You want to capture the feelings of the songs without belaboring them, and that’s the way it has always been for me.”  It is amazing he had time to record albums at all.  Mayall’s bands were always gigging somewhere and finding the time to record no doubt helped establish his ‘get it done’ attitude toward the process.  The numbers don’t lie – John Mayall was a busy man.

     Sinclair had been hired to write a biography of Mayall for his record label in 2006.  He said Mayall set the tone right away by letting him know he did not want to rehash the past.  “Go look it up,” John told him.  Their last interview in November of 2022 was a more jovial conversation.  Mayall told Sinclair he couldn’t remember much about the 60s and that he planned to go on touring, “as long as there is an audience out there.”  John had forgotten that he had already stopped and his secretary quietly reaffirmed to the author that ‘health and memory issues had already taken him off the road.”  After a lifetime in the trenches, no one can blame Mayall from still feeling the call of the road mentally even if he isn’t out there physically.

      Beginning with Eric Clapton’s involvement with the Beano album, Mayall’s Blues Breakers featured many guitarists who would springboard from that band into their own careers, either solo or with other bands.  In his tribute included with CMR’s retrospective on Mayall, Mick Fleetwood noted, “He was a guiding light to so many of us young English players.  To have been in the Blues Breakers led Peter Green, John McVie, and myself to form Fleetwood Mac back in 1967.”  One can not argue with Fleetwood but it should be noted that the Blues Breakers have also featured a good number of American guitarists including Walter Trout, Coco Montoya, and Mayall’s last touring guitarist, Carolyn Wonderland.

     Other artists weighed in on the legends passing in CRM:  George Thorogood, “He will be missed.  Long live his music in our hearts and minds.”  David Coverdale, “Another giant has passed.”  Mick Jagger, ”So sad to hear of John Mayall’s passing.  He was a great pioneer of British blues and had a wonderful eye for talented young musicians, including Mich Taylor – who he recommended to me after Brian Jones died – ushering in a new era for the Stones.” Geezer Butler, “John’s album with Eric Clapton as the Blues Breakers inspired tons of British bands.  Safe to say without that album there probably wouldn’t be a Black Sabbath and definitely not a Polka Tulk Blues Band (an earlier band that morphed into Black Sabbath).”

     Clapton was effusive in his praise of Mayall saying, “John was my mentor, and, as a surrogate father, he taught me all I really know.  He gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear, without limit.  And all I gave him in return was how much fun it was to drink and womanize when he was already a family man.  I wished to make amends for that, and I did that while he was alive.  I shall miss him, but I hope to see him on the other side.”  Walter Trout recalled seeing his mentor on Mayall’s 90th birthday in November of 2023:  “I had no idea it would be one of the last times I’d see him.  As usual, he was funny, generous, and kind.”

     During his first tours of America, Mayall fell in love with the country, in particular the West Coast and Los Angeles.  In May of 1968, he disbanded the Blues Breakers and returned to California.  During what would become an experimental stage of his career, he hung out with Frank Zappa and various members of Canned Heat.  The results are well documented in the 1968 album Blues From Laurel Canyon (where he made his home in 1969).  Mayall’s next group was a mostly acoustic quartet with whom he released two albums; The Turning Point (1969) and Empty Rooms (1970).  He then regrouped with an all-American lineup featuring guitarist Harvey Mandel and bass player Larry Taylor (both from Canned Heat).  Still a drummerless operation, they put out his second 1970 album, USA Union.  He frequently changed band members (nothing new to Mayall’s way of doing business) and musical directions with albums like Jazz Blues Fusion (1972), Notice to Appear (in collaboration with Allen Toussaint in 1976).  Unfortunately, his life hit a snag in 1979 when a brush fire cost him his home and his treasure trove of master recordings and personal effects.

     A temporary renewal of the Blues Breakers with a line-up featuring Mick Taylor and John McVie in 1982 revived Mayall’s interest to restart the band/brand in 1984.  With guitarists Walter Trout and Coco Montoya on board with drummer Joe Yuele, he found he was still held in high esteem by fans and musicians alike.  Other than guitarist Buddy Whittington taking over in 1993, this version of the Blues Breakers remained constant until 2007.  Considering the five year ‘glory years’ period that saw Clapton, Green, and Taylor enter the revolving door of guitarists in the 1960s, this was an unprecedented period of stability for John Mayall.

     Highlights of this period were many.  In 2003, Mayall celebrated his 70th birthday with a UNICEF benefit concert at the 4,500 seat King’s Dock in Liverpool.  It marked his first appearance with Eric Clapton in the 38 years since the Beano album was released.  In the liner notes for both the DVD and double CD of this event, John wrote, “For so many years I have dreamed of something like this event being possible.”  The BBC capped the year with an hour long documentary entitled The Godfather of British Blues.  The 2005 Queen’s Birthday Honors award Mayal with an OBE Medal (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) at Buckingham Palace.

     The Blues Breakers were finally taken out of service in 2007.   Mayall said he felt it was time to retire the ‘brand’ to give himself more opportunities to work with other artists.  It did not seem to matter to the faithful – long before he retired the Breakers for the last time, the lines between  blues, British blues, John Mayall, and Blues Breakers had blurred to the point of being irrelevant.  John Mayall was all of these things and more so labeling his music became unnecessary.

     Even as Mayall’s life wound down, Sinclair felt, “In his mind’s eye, he was indeed still out there somewhere on the blues highway readying himself for the next gig: ‘And it’s a hard road until I die’.”  R.I.P. John Mayall.

 

Top Piece Video:  John Mayall and Coco Montoya make an appearance on David Letterman’s show in 1990.