ALL CHANGE
The names of John Mayall’s guitarists may be indelibly engraved in the history of British blues, but now it appears he’d prefer to handle the job himself
Last April saw John Mayall again playing London’s Ronnie Scott’s club, a gig that must always awaken a few ghosts. Nearby Wardour Street was the home of the Marquee and Flamingo clubs where, half a century before, he played sweat-drenched allnighters, lugging his heavy Hammond organ in and out of the poky London clubs two or three times in a night.
It says much for John Mayall’s self belief and stamina that in 2017 he was still out there, diving around Ronnie Scott’s cramped stage, hammering out barrelhouse piano, then the next moment blowing a harmonica or riffing on his small-bodied Gibson ES125 guitar. But for John Mayall, the blues has always been a crusade. Still touring relentlessly at the age of 84, he’s showing no signs of slowing down.
Speaking later from his California home, he scoffs at the suggestion that for a man of his age, all things considered, he’s doing well. “Well I keep fit. The thing that zaps your energy most is when you have a day off, and you’re just sitting around in a hotel waiting to play. But when you have a gig every night, you’re always travelling, and the momentum rolls along. It’s much easier that way. The other advantage is that, if we do over a hundred shows a year, that’s only a third of any given year, so it gives you two thirds of the year at home – you can’t beat that. Then when you’re at home for a while, you can’t wait to get on the road again and do something different. So in a sense you have two different lives that are compatible with each other. It’s wonderful!”
John is currently touring as a three-piece, with long-term sidekicks bassist Greg Rzab, a veteran of the band since 2009, and drummer Jay Davenport. It’s the first time in his career that John hasn’t had a lead guitarist, and to some – given the long list of sparkling soloists that have shared stages with him over the years – the change will come as a surprise. The material’s the same, but his onstage musical persona now more resembles the raw, stripped-down aesthetics of veteran bluesmen such as J.B. Lenoir and Muddy Waters; the music he first heard as a young man. It’s easy to tell that John remains resolutely upbeat about his latest musical configuration.
“Well, we had a gig last year which Rocky (Athos) couldn’t make – thunderstorms prevented him from flying in from Dallas. I’d never performed anywhere without a guitarist in the band, but forced to play all the guitar, I found that I liked the flexibility; it was really stimulating. When I told Rocky of my decision, he was very understanding. He’ d been with me for seven years, and I hope that the exposure he’s received in the band will help his solo career,” John explained.
And it’s not as though John’s a rookie on the guitar – it always was his second instrument. The unique sound of his ninestring guitar, an instrument he’d ‘customised’, featured on many of his early recordings.
“I bought my nine-string guitar when I was in Japan and had been with the army in Korea; it was an acoustic/electric called a Welltone. My original idea was to convert it to a 12-string, but once I put the extra string on it, the neck began to buckle under the strain, so I began by just using the nine strings.” That was a very unusual idea. Were you hoping to come up with something that sounded like Big Joe Williams? “Not particularly. I used a regular 12-string tuning, but I was really just looking to get my own sound. I’d been seeing live American blues performers since the early 50s, when performers like Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy came over to the country. Then later there were the Lippmann/Rau blues festivals, and that was my first chance to see a lot of musicians that I’d only previously heard on record, and get the chance to meet them backstage.”
It was 1963 when Mayall left his Macclesfield tree house and travelled south to London. In Manchester, playing a gig with his band the Blues Syndicate, he’d met Alexis Korner. Then very much the figurehead of the burgeoning British blues scene, Korner encouraged him to relocate. It was a particularly opportune moment. The fervour for R&B in London, much of it sparked by Korner’s basement Ealing club, had already ended the reign of the trad jazz bands.
Mayall celebrated the hard-line Chicago blues; material of the earlier Delta emigres like Muddy Waters and Elmore James, which was dominated by standout guitar playing. And once stellar guitar slingers like Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor joined the Bluesbreakers, the tougher and rockier sounds of the younger west-side
Chicago players like Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and Chicago’s adopted Texas son, Freddie King, dominated the set list.
Soon after his arrival in London, John’s band backed a string of American bluesmen, including John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson and T Bone Walker. For most it was their first visit to the country, and the first time they’d had to use a British backing band. Did you find that intimidating? “Not really. T Bone was the first and he was such a nice, personable guy to work with. We didn’t have any rehearsal, just went straight out there and did the gigs. Of course we all knew his material, which made it a bit easier, but we idolised all those guys, and back then we never thought we’d get to meet them, let alone tour with them.
“John Lee Hooker was quite a learning curve for the band. He was so laid back compared to the slightly frenzied style we’d been accustomed to playing in… but he was always a very pleasant guy to be around, and we learnt a lot about using dynamics from backing him; for the first time we had to really use our ears and listen,” he laughs.
“But I think what most impressed me was the way all these blue players were so relaxed. In the British blues movement, it always felt that you had to play louder to get any impact, and then play louder still!”
The genealogy of the Bluesbreakers has been well documented, but suffice to say, as much as Mayall provided the launching pad for Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, ultimately it was his vision that prevailed throughout.
Hugely confident, Mayall has always appeared to have been unthreatened by the popularity of his soloists; often he’s used them as his trump cards. When graffiti declaring ‘Clapton Is God’ appeared on suburban Ealing walls, one can imagine him remaining totally unmoved. Those vintage ‘live’ recordings, Diary Of A Band and 1977’s Primal Solos, with their long extended jams, prove he’s revelled in flaunting his sidemen.
“Sure, I’ve always seen the improvisational aspect of blues as being the bedrock of the music,” he affirms. “You always start out with the loose structure of the song – everyone knows where it’s meant to be going – and then you just embellish it, improvise over that central idea. And I’ve always chosen the musicians I use because of what I know they can bring to the table. Then I can just sit back and enjoy hearing what they do,” he chuckles.
As much as John Mayall’s energy onstage puts many of his younger peers to shame – on present showing he seems set to rival BB King for performing longevity – a graph of the highs and lows in his career would look like a cross section of the Alps.
Echoing the title of his album with Peter Green, life for John has, at times, really been a hard road. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1969 and the hippie enclave that was Laurel Canyon, home to Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison amongst others, John suffered the devastating blow of his house burning down, taking with it not only all his musical instruments, but his irreplaceable archive of diaries and live recordings from those early days of the British blues scene.
Then despite the success of his acoustic album The Turning Point, which attained gold status, the popularity of progressive rock and punk during the 70s pushed John into a musical and personal decline. It wasn’t until the early 80s, aided by the incendiary guitar playing of Coco Montoya and Walter Trout, that his career enjoyed a new lease of life.
The friendly duels of the two guitarists were the stuff of legend, with Coco Montoya once suggesting that at times it was like a boxing match. “It always gives you a shot in the arm when you get to hear someone new; when Walter [Trout] and Coco [Montoya] were in the band, I would just sit back and enjoy hearing what they got up to!” John chuckles.
John Mayall has always been a mercurial character. It’s as though change is a necessary facet of his artistic vision. But many were surprised when in 2008 he retired the Bluesbreakers, and the hugely popular guitarist Buddy Whittington, who’d played with the band for 15 years, was made suddenly redundant. Do you feel there’s a point in the history of a band, when perhaps the musicians become flaccid and you have to shake things up? “Not at all. And I’ve often said that I regard Buddy as having been the greatest Bluesbreaker of them all – a fantastic player. But I felt we hadn’t really progressed, and we’d done so much work. I felt I could take a break, disband the Bluesbreakers as a name and take a vacation from it all. The way it
“In the British blues movement, it always felt you had to play louder to get any impact, and then play louder still!”
turned out was that within weeks of it shutting down, Eagle Records got on the phone clamouring for a new album, which is what kickstarted the band again.”
“The current lineup have been together for six years, and from that moment I haven’t looked back. In fact, I met Rocky Athos through Buddy, and I felt he was also a very fine and unusual player. Luckily he joined, and it’s been great from there on.” You’ve had so many players pass through your bands. Do you consider musicality first, or whether you’ll all get on together? “Social compatibility is the most important thing. You take it for granted that the people in your band can play, otherwise you wouldn’t have approached them. You’re on the road 24 hours a day, but only on stage for a couple of hours, so how you get on is of prime importance. Of course there’ve been plenty of hard times, but in general, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have appreciated the hard work I’ve put into running the band – certainly the musicians that I’ve worked with over the last two decades.”
His latest album Talk About That, recorded with Greg Rzab on bass, drummer Jay Davenport and Rocky Athos on guitar, is the usual mix of Mayall originals and carefully chosen reworkings of a few blues standards like Jimmy Rogers’ Going Away Baby, and Bettye Crutcher’s It’s Hard Going Up.
A surprise guest is Joe Walsh, who adds stellar slide licks to two tracks: The Devil Must Be Laughing and Cards On The Table. “We were recording at the House Of Blues studio in Encino,” recounts Mayall. “The day before we were due to record The Devil Must Be Laughing, the studio manager said that Joe wanted to come by, and maybe play on a couple of tracks – if I was keen for him to do so. He came in around noon that day, plugged in and did the song in one take, and he didn’t take much longer to lay down Cards On The Table.
“He didn’t hang around long,” John laughs. “We took a quick photograph and he was gone! But it was a heck of a kick for us to have Joe come in and record.” John Mayall’s latest album, Talk About That, is available on Forty Below Records www.johnmayall.com
“You’re on the road 24 hours a day, but only on stage for a couple of hours, so how you get on is of prime importance”