John Mayall was a British blues musician and his influential band, the Bluesbreakers. Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and many other superstars have passed away. He was 90 years old.
A statement on Mayall’s Instagram page announced that he died on Tuesday at his home in California. “The health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally brought peace to one of the world’s greatest road warriors,” the post read.
He is credited with developing the British, urban Chicago-style rhythm and blues that played a key role in the blues revival of the late 1960s. The Bluesbreakers included future members of Cream, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, John McVie, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, who played in the blues for five years. The Rolling Stones; Harvey Mandel and Larry Taylor of Canned Heat, and John Mark and Jon Almond, who later formed the Mark Almond Band.
Mayall maintained in interviews that he was not a talent scout, but rather played out of a love of the music he first heard on his father’s 78s.
“I’m a band leader, and I know what I want to play with my band and who are going to be my good friends,” Mayall said in an interview with the Southern Vermont Review. “It’s definitely a family. It’s a really small one.”
It’s a small but enduring one. Although Mayall never approached the fame of some of his more famous alumni, he was still performing into his late 80s. Chicago BluesHe was a little upset that he wasn’t acknowledged, but he wasn’t shy about it.
“I don’t have a hit record, I don’t have a Grammy, Rolling Stone has never written about me,” he told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2013. “I’m still an underground performer.”
Known for his blues harmonica and keyboard playing, Mayall was nominated for a Grammy for “Wake Up Call,” which featured guest artists Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Mick Taylor and Albert Collins. He received a second Grammy nomination in 2022 for his album “The Sun Is Shining Down.” He was also formally awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in the UK in 2005.
He was elected in 2024. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame His 1966 album Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton is considered one of the greatest British blues albums ever made.
Mayall was once asked whether he continued playing to meet demand or just to show he could still play.
“Well, luckily there is a demand, but it’s not because of either of those things, it’s just because I love music,” he said in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio. “I just get together with these guys and practice.”
Mayall was born on 29 November 1933 in Macclesfield, near Manchester in central England.
With the air of a hapless bluesman, Mayall once said: “The only reason I was born in Macclesfield was because my dad was a drinker and it was his favourite pub.”
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 with his left hand and one with his right hand “so that I wouldn’t get confused.”
Although the piano was his primary instrument, he also played guitar and harmonica and sang in his distinctive, strained voice. Assisted by drummer Keef Hartley, Mayall played all other instruments on the 1967 album Blues Alone.
Mayall is often called the “father of British blues”, and when he moved to London in 1962 his aim was to immerse himself in the nascent blues scene led by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Eric Burdon They too were fascinated by the sound.
The Bluesbreakers were based on a fluid community of musicians moving between various bands, and Mayall’s biggest prey was Clapton, who quit the band. The Yardbirds In 1965, dissatisfied with the commercial direction of the Yardbirds, he joined the Bluesbreakers.
Mayall and Clapton shared a passion for Chicago blues, and the guitarist later recalled that Mayall had “the most incredible record collection I’d ever seen.”
Mayall tolerated Clapton’s whims: he disappeared a few months after joining the band, reappeared later that year with newcomer Peter Green at his side, and then left Bruce and the band altogether in 1966 to form Cream, a band that became a huge commercial success and left Mayall far behind.
Interviewed for a BBC documentary about Mayall in 2003, Clapton confessed, “To some extent I used his hospitality, his band and his reputation to launch my career.”
“I think he’s a fantastic musician and I just admire his indomitable spirit,” Clapton added.
Mayall encouraged Clapton to sing and urged Green to develop his songwriting abilities.
Mick Taylor, who succeeded Green as a bluesbreaker in the late 1960s, appreciated the wide latitude Mayall allowed his soloists.
“You have complete freedom to do whatever you want,” Taylor said in a 1979 interview with writer Yasu Obrecht. “You can fail as much as you want.”
Mayall’s 1968 album, Blues from Laurel Canyon, signalled a permanent move to America and a change of direction: he had broken up the Bluesbreakers and was working with two guitars and a drummer.
The following year, he released perhaps his most successful album, The Turning Point, with an unconventional four-piece acoustic band that also included Marc and Almond, and the song from that album, Room to Move, became a frequent crowd favourite in Mayall’s later career.
Although Mayall was in a personal slump during the 1970s, he continued to tour, playing over 100 shows a year.
“I played most of my shows through the ’70s drunk,” Mayall told Down Beat’s Dan Ouellet in a 1990 interview, which resulted in a failed attempt to jump from a balcony into a swimming pool, which left Mayall with a shattered heel and a limp.
“That was one of the things that made me stop drinking,” Mayall said.
In 1982, he reformed the Bluesbreakers, inviting Taylor and McVie, but two years later the line-up was replaced again. In 2008, Mayall announced he was retiring the Bluesbreakers name for good, and in 2013 he fronted the John Mayall Band.
Mayall and his second wife, Maggie, divorced in 2011 after 30 years of marriage. The couple had two sons.
