“But the one thing I look forward to the most as I re-enter this level of the music world is I really want to experience saying something that I can defend no matter what. Mayer said in the studio as he worked on final touches. How much of my mother has my mother left in me? How much of my love will be insane to some degree? And what about the feeling that I’m never good enough? Will it wash out in the water or is it always in the blood? Mayer singing big questions with no answers: “In the Blood,” the most fully formed, Tom Petty-esque track from “The Search for Everything,” is a sort of self-baptism, with Mr. Mayer’s soul, depths he is beyond game to probe and excavate. The itinerant lifestyle, though, is less fraught than whatever lurks in the fame-stained recesses of Mr. (“The feeling of inclusion that I have with this band - they saved my life,” he said.)
#JOHN MAYER WHERE THE LIGHT IS FULL CONCERT VIDEO PLUS#
There are very few people actually meeting up.”Īnother hurdle is that he will be on tour most of the year, headlining arenas in support of the album - he plays Madison Square Garden on April 5 - plus a jaunt with his side gig, Dead & Company, where he plays guitar alongside members of the Grateful Dead. Perry, he’s hardly been out at all, he insisted, though he does fiddle around on an exclusive dating app. “You can even break ‘bad boy’ into good bad boy and bad bad boy - I somehow managed to become a bad version of a bad boy.” “I’ve inherited a younger man’s reputation,” he said. Mayer is wary that his notoriety as a womanizer precedes him. Though he’s been in therapy to work on his “attachment style” and recently quit drinking (“I’m actually very thoughtfully entering cannabis life”), Mr. “There’s no sexuality there.” The relatively modest sales reflected that. In reality, after those turbulent moments he moved to Montana, grew out his hair and made two more major-label albums - “Born and Raised” and “Paradise Valley” - that were less “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and more Laurel Canyon. “Coming up after the break - boom - the downfall.” Now approaching 40, “I’m old enough to look back on my life and go: ‘That’s probably the photonegative shot in ‘Behind the Music,’” Mr.
“I basically realized I’m no good at that, so I’m going to drop that major.” Also: “What I did was probably semiconsciously just reboot it - control, alt, delete.” “It was an induced coma.” His career had “flatlined.” “It was cat and mouse,” he said, “and the mouse lost.” “My GPS was shattered, just shattered.”Īt 32 and obsessed with outsmarting the idea of a “clichéd rock star,” he explained, “I started to invent my own grenade.” (His big mouth.) He was “a Mack Truck without brakes.” Tabloid fame was “a human-growth hormone” and “extracurricular stuff” anyway, Mr. “What has to happen for a guy to believe that he’s totally well-adjusted and be that far out of touch?” he said. Mayer was vivid and virtuosic in his self-laceration. Recalling the consequences of those infamous magazine articles - in which he used the phrase “sexual napalm,” chronicled his onanism in horrific detail, referred to his male anatomy as David Duke and somehow separately used a racial epithet - Mr. Mayer, lucid and optimistic, finished his big-budget new album, “The Search for Everything,” and filmed a music video for what he hopes will be his next hit single, he seemed to especially relish reflecting on his 2010 undoing. Mayer said a half-hour into a monologue about why he left pop music’s A-list and how ready he is, emotionally and musically, to return.Īcross four hectic days this month, as Mr. “The elephant in the room is that we’re sort of talking about the double-headed dragon of the Rolling Stone interview and the Playboy interview,” Mr. That’s what got him into trouble in the first place. Mayer is also a master conversationalist prone to verbal solos, noodling in impressionistic bursts about his nature and career, weaving in therapy-speak, potential stand-up bits and a barrage of mixed metaphors as if he’s writing this story himself. In fact, once he gets going, he probably won’t stop, given the amount of time he has spent in private processing his recent self-imposed irrelevance - the “lean years,” as he calls them.Ī generational guitar talent and reliable soft-rock hitmaker with seven Grammys, Mr. LOS ANGELES - John Mayer can explain where he’s been.
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