LONDON — John Mayall, the British blues musician whose influential band The Bluesbreakers was a training ground for Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and many other superstars, has died. He was 90.
A statement on Mayall’s Instagram page announced his death on Tuesday, saying the musician died on Monday at his home in California. “Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of the world’s greatest road fighters,” the post said.
He is credited with helping develop the English take on urban rhythm and Chicago-style blues, which played an important role in the blues revival of the late 1960s. The Bluesbreakers at various times included Eric Clapton and Bruce, later of Cream; Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac; Mick Taylor, who played with the Rolling Stones for five years; Canned Heat’s Harvey Mandel and Larry Taylor; and Jon Mark and John Almond, who later formed the Mark-Almond Band.
Mayall protested in interviews that he was not a talent scout, but played out of love for the music he had first heard on his father’s 78 rpm records.
“I’m a bandleader and I know what I want to play in my band – who can be good friends of mine,” Mayall said in an interview with the Southern Vermont Review. “It’s definitely a family. It’s actually just a small thing.’
A small but durable thing. Although Mayall never approached the fame of some of his illustrious alumni, he was still performing in his late 1980s, belting out his version of the Chicago blues. The lack of recognition bothered him a bit, and he wasn’t shy about saying so.
“I’ve never had a hit, I’ve never won a Grammy Award, and Rolling Stone has never done a piece on me,” he said in a 2013 interview with the Santa Barbara Independent. “I’m still an underground artist. .”
Known for his blues harmonica and keyboard playing, Mayall had a Grammy nomination for “Wake Up Call,” featuring guest artists Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Mick Taylor and Albert Collins. He received a second nomination in 2022 for his album ‘The Sun Is Shining Down’. He also gained official recognition in Britain with the award of an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2005.
He was selected for the Rock of 2024 & Roll Hall of Fame class and his 1966 album ‘Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton’ is considered one of the best British blues albums.
Mayall was once asked if he kept playing to meet a demand, or just to show he could still do it.
“Well, fortunately the demand is there. But it’s not really for either of those things, it’s just for the love of the music,” he said in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio. “I just get together with these guys and we have a workout.”
Mayall was born on November 29, 1933 in Macclesfield, near Manchester in central England.
Sounding a note of the hapless bluesman, Mayall once said: “The only reason I was born in Macclesfield was because my dad was a drinker, and that’s where his favorite pub was.”
His father also played guitar and banjo, and his boogie-woogie piano records captivated his teenage son.
Mayall said he learned to play the piano one hand at a time — one year on the left side, one year on the right, “so I wouldn’t get all caught up.”
The piano was his main instrument, although he also played guitar and harmonica, and sang with a distinctive, tense-sounding voice. Aided only by drummer Keef Hartley, Mayall played all the other instruments for his 1967 album, ‘Blues Alone’.
Mayall was often called the ‘father of British blues’, but when he moved to London in 1962 his aim was to soak up the emerging blues scene led by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Eric Burdon, among others, were attracted to the sound.
The Bluesbreakers drew from a fluid community of musicians who drifted in and out of different bands. Mayall’s biggest catch was Clapton, who had left the Yardbirds and joined the Bluesbreakers in 1965 because he was unhappy with the Yardbirds’ commercial direction.
Mayall and Clapton shared a passion for Chicago blues, and the guitarist later recalled that Mayall had “the most incredible collection of records I had ever seen.”
Mayall tolerated Clapton’s quirkiness: he disappeared a few months after joining the band, reappeared later that year, sidelining the newly arrived Peter Green, and left for good with Bruce in 1966 to form Cream, which until commercial success rocketed and left Mayall far away. behind.
Clapton, interviewed for a BBC documentary about Mayall in 2003, confessed that “to some extent I used his hospitality, his band and his reputation to launch my own career.”
“I think he’s a great musician. I just admire and respect his steadfastness,” Clapton added.
Mayall encouraged Clapton to sing and urged Green to develop his songwriting skills.
Mick Taylor, who succeeded Green as Bluesbreaker in the late 1960s, appreciated the wide latitude Mayall offered his soloists.
“You would have complete freedom to do whatever you wanted,” Taylor said in a 1979 interview with writer Jas Obrecht. “You could also make as many mistakes as you wanted.”
Mayall’s 1968 album “Blues from Laurel Canyon” marked a permanent move to the United States and a change in direction. He disbanded the Bluesbreakers and worked with two guitars and drums.
The following year he released ‘The Turning Point’, perhaps his most successful release, with an atypical four-piece acoustic line-up including Mark and Almond. “Room to Move”, a song from that album, was a frequent crowd favorite in Mayall’s later career.
In the 1970s, Mayall was at a personal low ebb, but he still toured, doing more than 100 shows a year.
“Throughout the ’70s I performed most of my shows drunk,” Mayall said in an interview with Dan Ouellette for Down Beat magazine in 1990. One consequence was an attempt to jump from a balcony into a swimming pool that wasn’t succeeded, causing one of the swimming pools to break. Mayall’s heels and left him limping.
“That was an incident that made me stop drinking,” Mayall said.
In 1982 he reformed the Bluesbreakers and recruited Taylor and McVie, but after two years the personnel changed again. In 2008, Mayall announced he would permanently retire the Bluesbreaker name, and in 2013 he led the John Mayall Band.
Mayall and his second wife, Maggie, divorced in 2011 after thirty years of marriage. They had two sons.
