ABC interview pt.2 AU, 2009.

John Mayer: I don't think humanity is gonna evolve in time or has evolved in time to catch up with this radical change socially. I have seen people walk up to me who their society is in complete disagreement with their humanity. People will come up to me and act like I came up to them. They will walk up to me and say "You know, I never do this, and I don't really care either way." and they're trembling. Or people who hold up a camera to try and take your picture and they're trembling. Or people who are both coming to a show and acting like they don't care, you know. Our behavior is in complete diametric opposition with our humanity right now.
Interviewer: I think there's that whole thing of cyborgs and avatars, and you can be a hero in cyber space and it's much easier to do that than to actually go out into the real world and relate as a human being.
John: Absolutely.
Interviewer: Because you can't compete with this airbrush perfection.
John: Well here's what I found out not long ago. I was at a party, in the middle of October I went to a party and a woman approached me. A sweet, young middle aged girl, and she walked up but I could tell there was a glint in her eye, that there was something a little sinister about to come out. And her tape recorder went on and she started asking me these questions that were just designed--there was no probable good outcome for me, they were designed to corner me.
Interviewer: Because your BS radar must be really well developed by now.
John: Yeah, it's really good. I'm really hard to pin down, I'm really hard to play, you know. And so I could just tell, and this woman had her arms folded but still had this little microphone out and she was saying "What do you think about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize? I think it was early." You know, sort of these really leading questions.
Interviewer: Yeah, can't you see these headlines!
John: Yeah, what I did was, really shut her down. Because what was happening was, who she was trying to be behaviorally did not match her humanity. So she couldn't have been as snarky on her blog as she was in person, so she was coming off sweaty. She was just sweaty, you know. And I sort of took her down, not her, but I sort of took her blog down as I would have on the internet, but I did it in person. So it was a real time, in person, tearing down of this persons blog. And when this person went back to write their blog which of course was back in the tone of Godzilla. Not the sweaty 20 something woman, the Godzilla of snark, it took on this thing that I had been really mean to her. Like I had really been mean to her, so I learned something right there.
Interviewer: You didn't play the game.
John: Yeah, you can write it, and when you're in the matrix or the hatrix as I call it, you can write anything you want. You can write "I hope you get hit with a bullet, with a cancer tipped bullet and you die instantly", you can write anything you want, but if you say it in person, the rules of humanity have no choice but to still apply. The rules of humanity apply. And when you go back into the matrix you can write whatever you wanna write--you know this woman who was talking to me at this party, I started to feel bad. I said "What if I was a little harsh on her?" And I went to the blog that she had printed the whole thing, and the blog was called "The Vulture."

ABC interview, AU, 2009.

John Mayer: My job is to play songs for people, my job is to transport people, my job is to give people 45 minutes on a record and two hours on stage of escapism. And I think for me to take the role of tutor, and trying to explain to people why they should feel sorry for me, or why they should have a little more sensitivity to the fact that I'm not just complaining because I'm a celebrity, this is actually a problem. I don't necessarily want to do that. Because I think in explaining that, whether you were successful at it or not, you've taken that ability to transport somebody away, you know what I mean?
Interviewer: It's not just escapism is it, I think you also have a desire to reinforce our essential humanity and brotherhood.
John: Which you can do with music without having to explain outside of music why somebody--you know somebody could come up to me and go ''Dude, why not just let them have the picture?' Now, I have two choices. I could sit them down and talk to them, and 5 minutes later their head would be on backwards, they would go 'I had no idea.' But the question is, do you really want somebody to carry that load? Isn't it sort of completely antithetical to what you go and see an artist for? To take on his load, you know. That's why I say to people 'It's awesome, it's fine, don't worry about it.' There might be information that I could give people that would exonerate me as being a douchebag as people call me, but I think overall, it's a really bad idea. Because you will in having done that, removed this relationship that's essential in somebody saying 'Just play me a song, and let me just disappear into it.'
Interviewer: Yeah, I don't want you to dump on me, but I love it when you celebrate your humanness and I love it when you celebrate your vulnerability.
John: Oh no no, that's fine, I just mean talking about--trying to explain the vitriolic media, I don't think that should be my narrative. So I'd rather deal with that on my own time, and if it is terrible, then I'll deal with that. But I think to interject that into the stream of communication I have with people with a guitar around my back, and a record coming out, I think if the music is good enough, you can erase all that stuff. And let me deal with the stuff that might be not as fun as I wish it was, but then you at least maintain that ability to communicate with a fan. I don't want anybody worrying about me. I don't want a fan going like 'I had no idea.' That's terrible, and they don't realize that their head is hung low and they're walking away from me and they've realized that I have just taken away everything from them that they believed in.

Excerpt from Berklee Clinic 2011 pt.4

“Practice hard, practice longer than anyone else. Train your brain to focus for large clips of time. See how many paragraphs you can read of an article before you turn the page. When was the last time I heard a whole record? When was the last time I wrote a whole song? And you start to realize that your brain— my mind was narrowing in terms of the bandwidth of what it accepts as a chunk of information, and that’s the scary part. That’s where rules are rules. So as soon as I plugged that up and I went ‘I’m not gonna ask myself anymore what are some good tweets I can throw up’. Everything goes into the record. I didn’t bring my laptop to the studio, I got a new phone number, the phone never rings. I have no friends, everyone knows I’m in the studio. I go in the studio and then I stay there until I look up and then I walk out. I’ll be there for eight, ten hours, take two breaks to eat, three breaks to pee and then I don’t look up. And I wouldn’t have done the last time, and I didn’t do that on the last record, and that’s why my last record is not my favorite record. But you write where you’re coming from, and you write and make the record in the life that you have, and I realized I’m tweeting, I’m blogging, I’m looking around for other things that are advantageous to nothing. To having golf claps on Twitter, you know. I’m not putting Twitter down, Twitter is great to use once you have a thing to tweet about, you know. So, everyone go home and ask yourself ‘What is my unit of focus? Is it ten minutes, twenty minutes?’ ‘Cause I got my unit of focus now to be hours.” - JM

Excerpt from Berklee Clinic 2011 pt.3

“There’s a difference between being honest and just exposing things. You know, a lot of people go ‘I’m just being honest’ No, you’re just —there’s no honesty in just spilling things out. The honesty in a song, I believe that you have diplomatic immunity inside a song. If you wrote a song, you’re behind that song. I’m not gonna let the media affect how I write my music, but I go in and out of that. I go in and out of caring. The only way I could not care enough to write this record about my life is to shut all of it off. I’m not reading what people think, I don’t think it exists, I haven’t read a thing in like 6 months and my life is still pretty damn great so uhm, WINNING! I had a discussion with my manager, because there’s some stuff on the record that’s definitely going to raise some—it’s gonna intrigue people. But it’s how I feel. But think about this, if the media was the way it was, were in 1965, then everybody would go, like if Bob Dylan broke up with Joan Baez or something, it’d be like ‘Dylan-Baez split!’ And then all of a sudden “It Ain’t Me Babe” would be a big sensational media thing, but it’s not. Because number one, it’s a song, and if it’s a well written song people will be too busy thinking about their own damn life, if you do it right. If you don’t do it right, it’ll be like ‘Who’s that about?’ I won’t name any names but some people aren’t very good at it. And uh—I don’t care, I thought I could say what I wanted to. Because if you’re honest about something you go ‘This is my fault too.’ So when I go ‘Well, I’m not some trouble maker and I never meant her harm, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t make it hard to carry on’. That’s honesty, that’s true honesty. Spilling things that anybody can just sort through, I don’t choose to—I don’t think I’ve done it, I’ve certainly accidentally done that outside of songs, but that’s another reason that I took all of that other stuff out. So if I have something I wanna say, I don’t blog it anymore, I just put it into songs. The songs got richer, because it’s like covering up holes in a hose so the water pressure gets stronger.” -JM

Excerpt from Berklee Clinic 2011 pt.2

“Here are the myths; Right time/right place. Who believes in right time and right place? ‘You gotta be in the right time at the right place.’ Not true. Here’s why it’s not true. That would be true if you only played one show for your entire life, then the mathematical construct would make sense, and you’d have to be in the right time at the right place. Forget about right time/right place, it doesn’t exist. You create your place and you create your time through what you’re doing. It’s not about getting your foot in the door, or meeting a person and them giving you an opportunity. It doesn’t exist. Right time/right place, debunked! I just don’t believe in it, and I don’t want you to believe it because it’s dismissive of what you could actually do. It’s dismissive of your real talent. You create that destiny of what you’re doing. The other one is ‘So few people make it!’ Have you ever heard this one? It’s like the NBA! I had a conversation with my dad last week, and he was trying to justify his fear of growing up that I was in trouble, some deep seeded trouble because I wanted to be a musician. And he said that you gotta have a fallback plan, also a myth! Also a myth. You can’t have a fallback plan. Anybody who tells you to have a fallback plan, are people who had a fallback plan, didn’t follow their dreams and don’t want you too either. That’s the bottom line. ‘No, no, come on, you’re an exception.’ An exception to what rule? You can buy a guitar anytime you want. Exception to what? And they say this thing, my dad said this thing, love the guy, but I had to set him straight. He said to me ‘Well, it’s like the NBA, so few people get in and so many people want to.’ And I said ‘Dad, did you have a child I don’t know about who tried to get into the NBA, and this is worrying you?’ It’s not true. First of all, in the NBA you have a certain amount of people that bench. In the music industry, if you’re good, come on in. There’s no ‘We have enough’. In fact, they say we don’t have enough. So they don’t say that we got a Rihanna and we don’t need another one, they say ‘We want 5 more Rihannas!’. So it’s the exact opposite of the NBA. Debunked!” - JM

Excerpt from Berklee Clinic 2011 pt.1

“It is so weird out there, it is so weird in the world right now, that love and hate are all over the place, and most of it is not even love or hate, you know. I just want you to prepare yourselves, it you’re really gonna make it in terms of being in public. Temper your body and your mind to withstand large gusts of energy from people whether it’s positive energy or negative energy. It is just so much, it’s so much for anyone to take, and people are snapping left or right, man. Snapping left and right, because it’s just so much energy to take. If you track my career, here’s what happened; I learned how to play the guitar, wrote a bunch of songs, went and played them, put out some records, dated a couple women, put out some more records, dated a couple of more women. Tell me where it gets weird?! And now I’m on my fifth record. How is that grounds for becoming fodder for negativity? Well, it has nothing to do with me really. People who want to continue to sell ad space on the websites are gonna continue to be negative because being negative produces more money. It’s just an industry, it’s a cottage industry. Most of my mistakes in my career were made because I believed bad energy was real, and I can tell you that it is not real. It’s not happening. Not even is it not even real, and something to ignore, it’s not happening.” - JM

Joyride Over Open Sea.

‘Fold me up, take me out, I’m portable. Fold me up, seal me up, I’m submersible. All my friends, yeah. Are all with me, on a joyride over open sea. See, I used to have a blog. I used to write just to my fans. But every motherfucker in the universe was copying and pasting my shit, and now my fans don’t understand. It’s nice to be thought of, but it’s better to be loved. I’d rather stand around in a room full of people taking my picture making me feel slightly uncomfortable if I’m sure that I’m the one thing they’re still sure of. Fold me up, take me out, I’m portable, yeah. My fans, I’m not talking about the public at large. The public at large is cool, whatever, they can comment, they can say whatever they want; ‘Whatever, this guy is a douchebag, he’s fugly’. It doesn’t really matter, but my fans!

My fans, who know that I think of them everytime I decide to go out to some cheese dick club. But it’s my right to go to a cheese dick club, and I defend it! They know that before it’s time to leave, and I’m settling up the tip and I know that the cameras are outside, I think of them first and I say ‘What can I do? What’s that one thing I can do to a camera so that only me and my fans understand?’ And the rest of the public at large, which really doesn’t matter to me that much, unless they happen to someday become fans, and then that’s cool. My fans understand that when they see me coming outside of a club doing some speech on some bullshit about nothing of the top of my head, they know that’s me. I want you to know that’s my wink to you guys!

I’m never really all that messed up. And I wanna tell you one more thing before I go into this song so you know truly understand what I’m trying to tell you. Because I became such fodder all of a sudden for pop culture, the one thing I have to do at the face of it, is to be as weird as possible. Because weirdness is a wall that I can hide behind, and have a really good time. Because you can’t let them get your heart. You can’t let them all get your heart! So you gotta be a little wacky, and a little weird and throw them off guard. But I want you to know that as fans, not the public at large, fans; I think of you all the time. And I’m so blessed that I still got you on my side.’ - Johnny, intro to “Why Georgia”, MCC1.

‘I wanna tell you that I think about you every night. I mean this. I think about you every night when the house gets quiet, and the workday is done, and it’s down to me and a guitar, and my brain and my heart and my experiences. I think about you every night. And all I think about is proving the world wrong and you right! I think about living up to the standard that I might have somehow set for myself. And I don’t think it’s an impossible standard, I think it’s very possible. I think you just stay vulnerable. The stakes get higher, but you just stay as vulnerable— let the stakes look weird, let everything else look weird. But I wanna stay vulnerable and I think about you every night I pick up a guitar. And I play and I sing things I’m not quite sure of yet, because all I wanna do is give you twelve more songs. 12 more ideas. 12 more melodies. I wanna see you all again, and I know the only real ticket to seeing you all again is to live up to the standard of being a musician, and putting everything you have into your music. And I want you to know I might take a day off tomorrow, but after that, I really want you to know this, I couldn’t be more honest and serious and open and true right now. Pacific standard time, if you look at your clock and it’s between the hours of 11.PM and 5.AM I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. Until the moment you hold this record in your hands, I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. Will you do that for me? It’s true. And if you can’t sleep because you’re counting down the hours till the next thing you gotta do or the next day, just know that I’m awake, in a little tiny room with my Blackberry off, working on the next tour, the next trip around the world, the next time that I can see you. Because I don’t want wanna see you again until I can give you 12 more songs, because I know from the bottom of my heart I can give you 12 of the best songs I’ve ever written in my life for you. Just know that this is me. When you see my name printed, that’s just some random letters that spelled my name. This is me. I love you, I thank you, and I send this last part of this song out to you.’ - John Mayer, “Gravity” speech, MCC2.

‘We never seen nobody run this far. You’ve never seen nobody go this far. I’m half of his heart. And if half of my heart brought me to a guitar, then half of my heart must do. And if half of my heart made me a pop star, half of my heart brought me to you. And imagine what the other half of my heart can do. Haha, and imagine what the other half of my heart can do. And you’re out there, and you’re currently working on your heart like it’s on some sort of garage, like mechanics garage lift, and underneath your heart goes ‘pffgrdgdrf’. And then the no good looking people come up to you and say ‘Hey, let’s give it a go’ and you say ‘Hell fucking no!’. They’re draining the oil. Changing the filters. Cleaning off the grease on that once pink piece, it’s now just covered in dark lies and let downs. If you got your heart back up on that lift, and you say OK, I’m gonna use my deductive reasoning, what didn’t work out about the past? What was good about the past, keep it. What was bad about the past, burn it. What was good about the past, learn it. What was bad about the past, burn it. Now you’re already once again, tall, fluffy, brand new tissue here. Yeah, there’s nobody who wants to call you. And that’s cool, even though it hurts a little bit. Because even the people we don’t want to call, make us feel better when they call. We like to say ‘Don’t ever call me again! But keep trying’. Because it’s nice to be the one to say ‘No, I gotta go. Didn’t you hear me the first one hundred times? It’s all alfa omega.’ So if you believe that you finally might have a plot this time, like you finally went through your last major ass kicking, and you think that this might be the time, you may be on the outset of the right thing if the right person comes along. You may actually be, cosmically, mentally, psychologically prepared for true love, then sing to the skies! (John Mayer, Virginia Beach, 2010)

‘When I’m up on stage, I love playing. I mean, every night before I get up there, I  don’t know how I’ve done this for so long, ‘Cause every night before I go on stage I think to myself ‘This is the night where I’m just gonna flip out and walk’. And then I get on stage and it’s cool and everyone kinda holds me down, you know? The audience kinda—that’s the great thing about relating to your audience, is that if I’ve had one of those days where I’m like ‘God, I’m just, I don’t have anything down right now’. I can look out on the crowd and while I’m singing ‘Am I living it right?’ There’s someone else singing back to me ‘Am I living it right?’ And I’m like ‘Good, we’re all a little messed up. Cool’. - Johnny, 2007.

‘Come on, keep me where the light is. Let me tell you something; it’s not how long you go thinking you’ve been perfect all your life, ‘cause you ain’t that. It’s all about how you do with yourself when you learn that you’re not. Nobody bats a thousand in the game. Nothing about that has to do with the reason we’re playing. It’s not about how long you go without falling. It’s how you stop yourself and pick yourself up along the way. Don’t know what it is about us people, we start to fall a little bit, they try to make the most of it and fall all the way. What the hell is that about? So you’re flying high, there’s no reason why, sometime’s you just gotta down. Time’s going tough for you, that’s the time you come on through. You stop the bleeding, get on up and keep on walking through. Looking up at the sky saying ‘keep me where the light is’. Come on, keep you where the light is. Congratulations, you’re not perfect, but I hope you can keep you where the light is…’ - John Mayer, San Diego, 2006.

‘I wrote this song sitting on the floor somewhere in Georgia. I was playing around on my guitar and I just—this song is about when you’re right in the middle—like getting older is like getting on a boat and leaving the harbor, you know. As you get older you can still see the harbor behind you, and you’re like ‘Cool, I see where I am, cool, I know where I am. I was there and now I’m here’. But at a certain age it’s just all water everywhere ‘cause you haven’t reached your destination and you’re still so far away where you left. And I just remember feeling stranded, writing this song and wanting to go back in time, to 1983… - John Mayer, before playing 83, Washington, 2007.

I don’t ever wanna know what I can have.

‘I think people are really good at gaining things, at getting things. And really—I might aswell frame it like me. I’m really good at wanting things. ‘Let’s go get it, I wanna get it, I wanna get it’ and I’m really bad at keeping it. I’m really bad at maintaining it. And for my life, looking at it like an arc, I got really successful really quickly and now, I mean—I’ve got it so good all the time that there’s no reason for me to even leave the house. I should just stay home, ‘cause if I leave the house chances are—I just have a tenfold better chance at messing something up. You know what I mean? So how do you live your life and have fun without giving too much back, you know? ‘Cause, to use a gambling reference, it’s like I already hit it, let’s go up to your room. But I have to still stay at the table. So, I gotta sit there and be like ‘Not gonna do that, not gonna do that’. I don’t ever wanna go to rehab. That would just—I don’t. I don’t wanna go to rehab, I wanna be like ‘Jeez, that’s a lot of drinking for me, I’m gonna stop that for a year’. You know? Like, how do you not hit the wall? How do you not base your life based on what you can have? I don’t ever wanna know what I can have, I just wanna work off of what I want and then go like, try to get to the next level and no one complaints. But I don’t want anyone to tell me the extent of what I could have. I think that’s kinda how people go insane, you know.’ — John Mayer, 2007

‘Don’t let me live to be a loveless man, who can never understand when he sees an outstretched hand to the promised land. Don’t let me suffer. Don’t let me live, don’t let me live to be, to be a loveless man. Let a man be lost, for once in his lifetime. To sit in his own mind. And stare at the skyline. And live out his whole life, all in a nights time. Let a man be lost. And keep me where the light is, I’m just about to find it. Just about to find it.’ - John Mayer, Toronto, 2010.

‘Here’s the thing now. When life gets good, you can’t stop the game and walk away and say ‘Hey, I made it!’ ‘Cause when life gets good, you gotta sit there, at the table and keep playing the game you’re playing. Things are gonna get good, and things are gonna get bad again. And you’re gonna hold my hand, you’ll be alright again. When it gets good again, when the nose of the plane rights itself from the nosedive, you’re gonna say ‘Hey, I’m still alive!’ And this is now my beautiful life, and this is now my beautiful house. No, I won’t, don’t you give up. Don’t you give up. No, no. I won’t give up, no I won’t run. Don’t you ever stop for anyone.’ - John Mayer, (Cincinnati, 2010.)

©SK