I'm doing it again.
As many of you are well aware, I am completely enthralled (obsessed sounds so creepy) with all things John Mayer. Mainly his music, but also the person he is. I am fascinated by the way he carries himself and his outlook on the world. I don't believe someone can be a hero unless you know what they believe in, but even without knowing anything of his spiritual or religious beliefs, he is almost to that level.
The following article is from the Connecticut (who knew that second C was in there?) Post. I hope you'll all read it and inch that much closer to understanding my love for this man and the work he does.
______________________________________
John Mayer: 'Dude from Fairfield'
MICHAEL J. DALY Managing Editor
John Mayer never expected it to be like this.
His 6-foot-plus frame is draped across a brown leather couch backstage at the New England Dodge Music Center in Hartford last Saturday night, a few hours before taking the stage.
Tinges of weariness, sadness - maybe a little confusion - mute the colors of the room. And this is a young man usually irrepressible in his chatter, quick to smile, quick to needle.
At 30 years old, John Mayer is in the prime of his life and the prime of his career, and he knows it.
He should be on top of the world. But at moments during an hour long chat, it sometimes seems like the world's on top of him. "I'm going to be all right," he says. "The last few weeks have been tough and I have been sad," he adds, alluding to the end of a months-long relationship with actress Jennifer Aniston, though he never mentions her by name.
But he's not going to parse that situation, defend anything, criticize anyone.
In deference to Aniston he says, "There's another person involved here, and I just don't want to " His voice trails off.
John Mayer is clinging hard to the notion that he's still "a dude from Fairfield," a talented artist dude, to be sure, but still a regular guy. Making music is what's at the core of his being, not the celebrity thing.
As an artist and a person, he says, he wants to live life at ground level. Not many dudes from Fairfield, of course, have achieved the fame and fortune - the celebrity - that this five-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has.
The bad news is that celebrity is a fickle, even dangerous, mantle, attracting attention like lamb chops attract wolves. And, in Mayer's opinion, the gleam of the mantle also deflects attention from his music, from the regular person and artist he strives to be.
It's clear during the conversation that he's grappling with some questions about his future - and his present. On stage, he has the artist's experience, life in the spotlight, the chance to show his stuff, play his music. "It's all release and relief," he says.
But on the street, it's life in the strobe light, private moments turned public, every personal relationship presented to the world in snapshots that flash around the globe and become the very definition of a person. People "know" him by virtue of what they read in magazines like Us Weekly. As Mayer says in his video, "Where The Light Is," most people who meet him would have to spend an hour getting to un-know about him what they think they know.
Last month, Mayer asked Los Angeles City Hall to regulate the paparazzi, the horde of celebrity-stalking photographers that Mayer says in his life, at least, have risen from the level of an annoyance to the level of a safety issue, both for him and friends who are with him.
He recounted being followed home in L.A. at 2 a.m. one night by a car carrying paparazzi.
"I guess people figure the contract is that you make so much money, that covers everything," he says.
"Yes, I make a lot of money. Hey, I have a sweet gig. I work two hours a day. But the thing is you have to sit in this seat to understand," he explains, "but nobody else gets to sit in this exact seat."
"But I'm too young to get jaded," he says.
Mayer says he's determined to keep his life real and to fuel his creativity that way. "I'm just a dude from Fairfield. I want to experience the things I'm supposed to experience. I want to go to the movies. I want to walk down the street. If a regular person wants to take my picture, that's OK.
"But today it's all about the image. A person sticks a Blackberry in my face and snaps a photo. OK. Why not just say hello and shake hands? I don't mind talking with people, and if it gets out of control, I'd just say 'OK, gotta go. It's getting a little crazy.' "
In his heart he knows the average person won't see him as a regular guy.
"I know I'm going be a 'rock star' the rest of my life," he says. It wasn't a braggadocios statement. It was delivered with resignation to the fact that some people will never see the man underneath.
Mayer has homes in New York and Los Angeles - for now, at least. "I don't know, I think I might need to build a life somewhere other than L.A. or New York," he says.
Of Los Angeles, he says, "I've got some great, smart friends there, but the aggressiveness [of the paparazzi] is really out of control."
In New York, he says, he's more visible because it's a walking kind of place, but it's less of a problem.
"In New York," he says, "you feel like you share the day with others. You walk on the street, you get a coffee.
"And that's what I want, both as an artist and a person. I want to brush up against life and all the other people you share that day with," he says.
To write songs that the average person can relate to, "You have to keep your instincts true. I want to stay at ground level. I don't have a bodyguard. I don't have a personal assistant."
He allows himself a smile. "My life's so cluttered, I probably ought to have the assistant."
He sighs. "You know, I've only got so much brain energy I can spend on this. I'll tell you this: I'm going to be far less referenced [in the tabloids] in 2009.
"I'm thinking maybe five years from now I'm going to look back on this and see there was too much sugar and carbs in the diet and not enough protein." Mayer has matured physically as he's entered his 30s. His face is more angular, less soft and boyish, and more prominent now under a haircut that's just a shade longer than a buzz. A daily workout regimen has broadened his shoulders a bit, and muscled his arms and torso.
Of course this not smiling mood makes him look a little older, too.
He's proud of the traditional Japanese, full-sleeve tattoo that works its way in bars of wind and light and koi and peonies along his left arm.
He looks at it. "This is an art form in Japan and they're not real anxious to give them to non-Japanese. It took six trips in as many years - and all the Japanese I know - to find an artist willing to do it.
"I convinced him I wanted to wear it as way to respect his art," Mayer says. His relationships with a succession of beautiful, high-profile women have brought him vilification as a cad in the tabloids. The women that have entered his life are, well, part of life.
He's not talking about and I'm not asking about particulars when he says, "I'm not going to resist things that are supposed to happen."
Thirty-year-old rock stars, especially thoughtful, introspective, funny ones, tend to attract women. And someday, he says, he'll be ready for marriage.
It's clear that these weeks since the dissolution of his relationship with Aniston have not been good ones.
"Sometimes it sucks to be alive," he says.
Through the confluence of circumstances that led to this meeting, the lovely Mrs. Daly is with me. The meeting was finally arranged in an e-mail in June from Mayer while he was in Amsterdam.
The e-mail was vintage Mayer - funny, irreverent, personal and fraught with affection for his companion of the time.
It was definitely a better period in his life.
Though I had spoken of John Mayer a number of times, Mrs. Daly has never met him and so for the first 30 minutes this night, Mrs. Daly is in fact unlearning some of the things she thinks she knows from what she has read.
As we were approaching the arena, she was fretting over what questions she was going to ask.
"Whoa," I said, "you don't need any questions. We're going to talk and everything will be cool."
Mrs. Daly joined the conversation comfortably. The slightly melancholy tone, though, finally got to be too much for this mother of four, the oldest of whom was a classmate of John's at Fairfield High. Something rang her maternal bell.
"John," Mrs. Daly finally inquired, softly, "are you lonely?"
He paused a moment and locked her in a brooding gaze. "We're all lonely, I think."
Way to go, Mrs. Daly.
"Look" he continues, "I'm going to be fine. I'm going to find the happiness I want.
"I want to be in love and have someone love me. I want a nice home. I'm going to have kids and I'm going to be the father who's standing behind the bus when my son or daughter leaves for the first day of kindergarten. And, oh yeah, the tour has to end on this date, whatever, because I have to be there for the first day of school," he says.
He's in the very early stage of working on a new album. He was, in fact, working on it backstage when we met.
"I'll always be making music. Thank God," he says, "I have the music. And thank God for my fans."
After John Mayer excused himself to go talk with his family, I asked Mrs. Daly what she thought now.
"I wanted to go over there, give him a hug and pat him on the head and say `Everything's going to be all right, John.'" In a few hours John Mayer and his fans will come face to face and the mood will take a turn.
It's a little after 8 p.m., the late summer light fading, and people are filing into the Dodge. One Republic, Mayer's opening act, is playing.
Mayer is backstage, alone in the room designated as his office. It's his inviolate private quiet time before taking the stage.
The band is in a nearby room and when its door occasionally cracks open, the toodle of a sax or trumpet leaks into the hall.
At 8:40 p.m., Ken Helie (HEE-lee), Mayer's road manager since 2002, comes down the hall, knocks on Mayer's door and goes in.
A minute later he comes out, and right behind him is Mayer, dressed in black now, clear plastic earphones strung around his neck.
"All we can do is try," he says to no one in particular. He says it again, mantra-like, as he approaches the door. In the room with the band, Mayer says it again. "Try. All we can do is try."
"OK," Helie says, "All hands in."
Mayer, David Ryan Harris, Robbie McIntosh, Tim Bradshaw, Sean Hurley, JJ Johnson, Bob Reynolds and Brad Mason all lean in, their arms the spokes of a wheel, their hands its hub. They wait for their leader to speak.
"All right," Mayer says, and pauses.
And then, in a tiny falsetto he sings, "We are fam-uh-lee."
The band responds with a somewhat beefier falsetto of its own, "WE ARE FAM-UH-LEE!!!"
And off they go, Helie leading them through a door to the stage and into a kaleidoscopic explosion of lights and the wash of the roar 24,000 people are capable of creating.
And John Mayer is suddenly JOHN MAYER.
He sings, he charms, he plays the guitar like it's the last time he'll ever have the chance to hold one. He rocks. He croons. And the crooning on some of his hits, like "I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)" carries a little extra poignancy given the conversation of a few hours earlier.
In the wings sit his father, Richard; his mother, Margaret; his aunt, Ethel Williams; his brother Ben and fiance; a couple of cousins; and Pat Tremaglio, a friend from Fairfield high school days.
Richard Mayer is a retired educator. He's 80 years old, gone a bit hard of hearing and uses a cane for general stability. He got John his first guitar - but warned him to have a plan B. He could be sitting in great seats on the floor but, as he pointed out earlier, he'd have to stand all night. And that's how it is. People can't sit when John Mayer plays.
At the conclusion of a mournful guitar solo by his son at the end of "I Don't Trust Myself," Richard turns and whispers to the person next to him, "It's a far cry from Crosby," and laughs.
One of the most noticeable aspects of the performance is that John Mayer is not only rocking, singing, charming and crooning, he's smiling.
He's with 24,000 of his friends and he talks with them about being born in Bridgeport, about growing up in Fairfield, and about the Stratfield Mobil station at the corner of Stratfield and Fairfield Woods roads - aka the birthplace of the blues.
It's where I made the acquaintance of a sort of off-beat young guy working the cash register, oh, 12 or 13 years ago.
"I got pretty good at scratch-offs and coffee, and maybe it was the toxicity of the gas fumes that taught me the blues," he tells the crowd. Many of them might appreciate what he wrote in 1995 in his senior yearbook. This from a young man with a dream and determination: "My world wasn't in the classroom, but I learned some things in the past four years. I'll make you all very proud one day. Thanks to all my heroes on tape and cd. The greats may be gone but their greatness lives on. SRV 1954-1990. To the greats who are still here, I hope to play with you one day. To the people in my life - SGM, MA, AF and Mom, Dad, Carl, Ben, stay happy. `The blues don't change' Albert King."
When it comes to the set list spot designated "JM Solo" - anything he wants to do - this night he chooses "Stop This Train," a hauntingly beautiful, cinematic tune from his album "Continuum." It's a song about the rush of time, changing fortunes, the link between generations, and the passing of them.
"Don't know how else to say it," he sings, "Don't want to see my parents go."
It's a song he once told me he couldn't perform in public for fear of breaking down.
He's overcome that tendency and selected it for tonight's show because his parents are in attendance.
In another interlude, he tells the audience, "I'm going to be fine. Because I've had good training." He turns to the wing and waves, acknowledging his parents, and tells the crowd how pleased he is that his family is there.
After 13 tunes in two hours of full-bore electricity, the show was winding down.
(Here's how good this show was: Well after it ended, Mrs. Daly and I walked through the parking lot with drummer J.J. Johnson. We complimented him. He shook his head and said, "Man, we've been playing these songs every night, all summer. I just don't know what was in the air tonight. The energy was amazing.")
At the end of "Gravity" Mayer says goodnight, thanks the crowd and the stage goes dark. As the cleansing wash of the applause rolls through the shed, Mayer runs to the wing. He's pumped. His mother stands and he hugs her. "I love you," he says, and reminds her she could reach him any time on his cell.
He bends over in front of his seated Aunt Ethel. She uses oxygen as part of a medical condition. He puts his hands on her shoulders and leans in close.
"I know it's not easy for you to travel," he says. "I really appreciate that you came."
His father stands and they embrace fully. "Daddy," the singer says.
Then he hugs, slaps and high-fives the others in the little impromptu seating area.
These were the final goodbyes on the night of the 26th stop in a 32-stop tour that began July 2 in Milwaukee and ends today in West Palm Beach.
There would be three encores. And when they were over, John Mayer would leave the building immediately and head for Atlantic City.
Another stop in a life that's rushing forward.
And of all people, John Mayer's the one who knows there's just no stopping this train.
