John Mayall dead: Influential British blues pioneer was 90
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 Tuesday, saying the musician died 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 this world’s greatest road warriors,” the post said.
He is credited with helping develop the English take on urban, Chicago-style rhythm and blues that played an important role in the blues revival of the late 1960s. At various times, the Bluesbreakers included Eric Clapton and guitarist Jack Bruce, later of Cream; Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac; Mick Taylor, who played five years with the Rolling Stones; Harvey Mandel and Larry Taylor of Canned Heat; and Jon Mark and John Almond, who went on to form the Mark-Almond Band.
Mayall protested in interviews that he was not a talent scout, but played for the love of the music he had first heard on his father's 78-rpm records.
"I'm a band leader 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 a small kind of thing really."
A small but enduring thing. Though Mayall never approached the fame of some of his illustrious alumni, he was still performing in his late 80s, pounding out his version of Chicago blues. The lack of recognition rankled a bit, and he wasn't shy about saying so.
"I've never had a hit record, I never won a Grammy Award, and Rolling Stone has never done a piece about me," he said in an interview with the Santa Barbara Independent in 2013. "I'm still an underground performer."
Known for his blues harmonica and keyboard playing, Mayall had a Grammy nomination, for "Wake Up Call" which featured 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 won 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 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class and his 1966 album “Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton,” is considered one of the best British blues albums.
Mayall once was asked if he kept playing to meet a demand, or simply to show he could still do it.
“Well, the demand is there, fortunately. But it’s really for neither of those two 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.”
In a 1995 interview with the Sun-Times, Mayall reflected on his music: "I've never been a person who could copy things. I've never learned to read or write music, so it's an original process. The best blues musicians are the ones who sing and play about things in their own lives. I wouldn't wish to copy anyone else's style. I learned that early on, listening to Big Bill Broonzy or Leadbelly. They always had their own distinct styles."
Mayall was born on Nov. 29, 1933 in Macclesfield, near Manchester in central England.
Sounding a note of the hard-luck bluesman, Mayall once said, “The only reason I was born in Macclesfield was because my father was a drinker, and that’s where his favorite pub was.”
His father also played guitar and banjo, and his records of boogie-woogie piano captivated his teenage son.
Mayall said he learned to play the piano one hand at a time — a year on the left hand, a year on the right, “so I wouldn’t get all tangled up.”
The piano was his main instrument, though he also performed on guitar and harmonica, as well as singing in a distinctive, strained-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 nascent blues scene led by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Eric Burdon were among others drawn to the sound.
The Bluesbreakers drew on a fluid community of musicians who drifted in and out of various bands. Mayall’s biggest catch was Clapton, who had quit the Yardbirds and joined he 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 remembered that Mayall had “the most incredible collection of records I had ever seen.”
Mayall tolerated Clapton’s waywardness: He disappeared a few months after joining the band, then reappeared later the same year, sidelining the newly arrived Peter Green, then left for good in 1966 with Bruce to form Cream, which rocketed to commercial success, leaving Mayall far behind.
Clapton, interviewed for a BBC documentary on Mayall in 2003, confessed that “to a certain extent I have used his hospitality, used his band and his reputation to launch my own career,”
“I think he is a great musician. I just admire and respect his steadfastness,” Clapton added.
Mayall encouraged Clapton to sing and urged Green to develop his song-writing abilities.
Mick Taylor, who succeeded Green as a Bluesbreaker in the late 1960s, valued the wide latitude which Mayall allowed his soloists.
“You’d have complete freedom to do whatever you wanted,” Taylor said in a 1979 interview with writer Jas Obrecht. “You could make as many mistakes as you wanted, too.”
Mayall’s 1968 album “Blues from Laurel Canyon” signaled 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,” arguably his most successful release, with an atypical four-man acoustic lineup including Mark and Almond. “Room to Move,” a song from that album, was a frequent audience favorite in Mayall’s later career.
The 1970s found Mayall at low ebb personally, but still touring and 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 missed — shattering one of Mayall’s heels and leaving him with a limp.
“That was one incident that got me to stop drinking,” Mayall said.
In 1982, he reformed the Bluesbreakers, recruiting Taylor and McVie, but after two years the personnel changed again. In 2008, Mayall announced that he was permanently retiring the Bluesbreaker name, and in 2013 he was leading the John Mayall Band.
Mayall and his second wife, Maggie, divorced in 2011 after 30 years of marriage. They had two sons.