John Mayall, the multi-instrumentalist who became known as “The Godfather of British Blues” for launching the careers of numerous rock legends, died on Monday in his California home. He was 90.
Mayall’s death was confirmed in a statement on his official Facebook page, noting that “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.”
Throughout his 70-year career, Mayall served as a mentor to guitarists and musicians who would define rock’s golden era. Over the span of only four years, his band the Bluesbreakers featured Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor on guitar, one after the other, who each left to respectively form Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and join The Rolling Stones. His band became a proving ground for some of England’s finest blues musicians, including Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, Cream’s Jack Bruce, Free’s Andy Fraser, Frank Zappa drummer Aynsley Dunbar, and more.
John Mayall was born on November 29th, 1933 in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. The son of guitarist Murray Mayall who played in local pubs, John originally went to school to study art and became a graphic designer after serving the British army in the Korean War. He didn’t pursue a career as a full-time musician until he was 30 when he moved to London, though his graphic design skills served him well when he created his band’s album covers.
Throughout the early ’60s, Mayall roughed it in the early British rock n’ roll scene—playing tiny clubs to even tinier audiences. In 1965, Clapton left the influential Yardbirds to join Mayall’s band with whom he cut just one studio album: 1966’s foundational Blues Breakers. The LP was a watershed moment for British blues, cementing a style of thick, distorted guitars paired with songs by Robert Johnson, Freddie King, Otis Rush, Ray Charles, and more, a signature sound that would define the latter half of the decade. Clapton left the following year to form Cream with fellow Bluesbreaker Jack Bruce, replaced by Peter Green who would help Mayall follow up Blues Breaker with the equally significant A Hard Road in 1967. By the time Green left the next year and was replaced by Mick Taylor, Mayall and the Bluesbreakers had already attained an international reputation and began touring the U.S. and abroad. When Mick Taylor was scooped up by The Stones in 1969, Mayall was a household name among the emerging class of American guitarists.
“If you go into blues history,” Mayall told The Guardian in 2014, “you find bands formed around the bandleaders, trying to realise the sound they wanted. They put the band together to enact what they had in mind. The main man chose the musicians to create a specific sound – I had certain ideas and I needed to go out and find the right people to realise them. I was a bandleader in that traditional role, as well as a frontman. I used my ears to pick out what I thought would work, and I suppose that in the long term the careers of the people involved show that I managed to pick out some pretty special people.”
At the turn of the decade, Mayall moved to the Los Angeles area where he would remain for the rest of his life. This geographic change coincided with a change in style, as Mayall stocked his band with American musicians including members of Canned Heat and began to experiment outside the blues, recording acoustic and jazz compositions. Mayall never strayed too far from the blues, however, and in 1982 reconvened with former members of his ’60s group Mick Taylor, John McVie, and Colin Allen for a tour. In 1984 he reactivated the Bluesbreakers, touring with them well into the 21st century with an evolving roster of new talent and occasional appearances from famous alumni including Clapton.
Throughout seven decades, Mayall released over 70 albums recorded live and in the studio. His latest disc, The Sun is Shining Down, arrived in 2022. Back in April, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced that it would induct Mayall and fellow blues artists Alexis Korner and Big Mama Thornton by way of this year’s Musical Influence Award.
“[The blues] about – and it’s always been about – that raw honesty with which the blues express our experiences in life, something which all comes together in this music, in the words as well,” Mayall told The Guardian. “Something that is connected to us, common to our experiences. To be honest, though, I don’t think anyone really knows exactly what it is. I just can’t stop playing it.”
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