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Interview with
John Mayall
No slowing down
or looking back for this almost 83-year-old ‘Road Dog’ who thrives on
touring, recording and creating
By Jeff Johnson
Marlon Brando was 47 when he played Don Corleone in “The
Godfather.” The Godfather of British Blues will be 83 on Nov. 29, 2016
but John Mayall doesn’t play
about anything – especially his craft.
The singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/bandleader could have
settled comfortably into elder statesman status a decade ago, touring
and recording only occasionally and cashing in on boomer nostalgia.
After all, his greatest success came in the late 1960s, when he and his
star-making band, the Bluesbreakers, enjoyed their best commercial
triumphs.
But comfortable semi-retirement was an offer the Godfather had to
refuse. “We’re the ‘Road Dogs,’ ” he declared on the title track to his
2005 album for Eagle Records. And true to his word, rather than easing
up on his hectic schedule, he doubled down on his live appearances and
gave Eagle six new albums between 2001 and 2009. Label execs,
unaccustomed to working with artists as prolific as Mayall, just
couldn’t keep up with him. The Godfather proceeded to blow up his
long-running Bluesbreakers in 2008. Then he flew the Eagle coop after
one final album.
“I had a terrible time with Eagle, and they kept putting me off
when it came to making a new album,” he acknowledged during a recent
phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. “I just couldn’t get my
songs out there fast enough. But the record industry as a whole is going
through tough times and it probably won’t get any better.”
Mayall’s in a better place these days, despite being jet-legged at
this particular moment after flying home from a festival in Wausau, Wis.
He has a deal at producer Eric Corne’s Forty Below Records where he’s
encouraged to use the House of Blues Studio in Encino, Calif., whenever
he’s ready. He took Corne up on the offer three times so far, with
2014’s A Special Life, last year’s
Find a Way to Care and a new disc in the can that’s due out early
next year.
“It’s called Talk About That,
and I hope people will be talking about it,” he said. “There’s a guest
appearance by Joe Walsh, and there’s a lot blues going on. Joe is
friends with the people who run the House of Blues studio, and he told
the studio owner that he wanted to play on the album, so we brought him
in to play guitar on a couple of tracks. That was a bit of a no-brainer,
really. It’s mainly all my own compositions. There’s a lot more of my
writing, and I play a lot of keyboards. Keyboard has always been my main
instrument.”
The octogenarian has always been a whirling dervish onstage, with
his trademark nasally vocals and a penchant for jumping from one
instrument to another. “It’s a natural rotation,” he explained. “If I
play the first song on keyboards, then I’ll play the guitar on the next
song, followed by the harmonica, so they all sound different.”
As versatile as he is as a musician, Mayall is equally clever with
a pen. His compositions range from uplifting proclamations to cautionary
tales that reflect his strong social conscience. Perhaps his best-known
tune is “Room to Move,” his 1969 declaration of independence from a
clinging woman, with Mayall on vocals, harmonica and mouth percussion.
Along with the recent studio works, Forty Below recently released
two volumes of live material from 1967 Bluesbreakers shows that
feature future Fleetwood Mac founders Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and
Peter Green.
“I’ve known about (the recordings) for a long, long time, but Tom
Huissen, who owned the original tapes, thought they were so precious
that he didn’t want to part with them,” Mayall said. “Finally he decided
that they were of significant enough historical value that he should
share them. About 10 years ago I heard them for the first time and
thought they were terrific, and they are.”
Not usually one to dwell on the past, Mayall considers longevity to
be a musician’s best friend. Asked to rate
Find a Way to Care and A
Special Life against his most beloved early recordings, he said, “I
think they’re a lot better because there’s more experience showing.”
Mayall's current outfit is long on experience, if
lacking in the jaw-dropping virtuosity that marked early Bluesbreakers
incarnations. Until late August, it included guitarist Rocky Athas and
the Chicago rhythm section of Jay Davenport on drums and Greg Rzab on
bass. “We’ve been together as a band for seven going on eight years,” he
said. But a week after this interview, Mayall issued a statement
announcing that he'd be fronting a trio for upcoming tours, dropping
Athas but keeping the rhythm section. He said Athas was detained in
Dallas by recent flooding, and the gigs without a lead guitarist
inspired him to carry on as a threesome.
There’s a simple recipe for keeping a band together, Mayall
said. “We get along and we love playing together.”
And he downplays the notion that his band members come and go
frequently. “(Frequent turnover) is something of a misconception that
sticks in people’s minds because in the 1960s there was such a swift
turnover of guitarists. That hasn’t been the case more recently. My last
band lasted 15 years.”
Any list of Bluesbreakers six-string alumni starts with Eric
Clapton, who was given co-billing with Mayall when he left the Yardbirds
in 1965, before leaving to form Cream the following year. Other star
guitarists who did time with Mayall include Green, Mick Taylor, Harvey
Mandel, Jon Mark, Freddy Robinson, Walter Trout, Coco Montoya and Buddy
Whittington, who stuck around for 15 years until the 2008 disbandment.
The roster of former Bluesbreakers drummers, bassists and other
instrumentalists is also impressive.
Just don’t expect to see some Bluesbreakers reunion project any
time soon. Mayall won’t even entertain suggestions along those lines.
“That would be kind of silly,” he said dismissively. “Somewhere it kind
of crops up, but it’s completely ridiculous. They’ve all got their own
careers. The main people that would have the most appeal in any sort of
reunion are so far up the ladder fame wise that it wouldn’t ever
happen.”
John Mayall is scheduled to appear Sept. 30 at a sold out show at
City Winery, Chicago and Oct. 1 at Shank Hall in Milwaukee (www.shankhall.com).
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