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John Mayall
BLUES MAN
After 40 years, give or take a few, as one of the best blues players to come out of England, John Mayall has earned the much overused accolade "living legend." Talk with him and it becomes apparent that he doesn't buy into the hype. Mayall takes
touring in strideBy John Berger
Special to the Star-BulletinMayall continues to be a major figure in the international blues scene and he could easily be "too busy" to grant interviews. He's talked to the press thousands of times. What more is there to say?
Quite a bit, actually, and the sixtysomething Mayall answers even routine questions about his tour schedule graciously.
"It's the best of both worlds," he says of playing "about 120" nights a year and spending the rest of the year at his Southern California home.
"The way I feel I pretty much got it nailed being busy constantly creating and constantly enjoying communicating through music, so I hope it will continue for many years to come."
ON STAGE
What: John Mayall Hawaii Tour, with Little Charlie & the Nightcats opening on Maui, Oahu and the Big Island; The Blue Shadows featuring Ken Emerson and Michael Ruff and the Eastside Blues Band opening on Kauai.
When and where:
Mayall likes to schedule his tour dates back-to-back and that's how his 2001 Hawaii schedule is set up this week. Mayall opens with a show on Maui tonight, plays the Hawaiian Hut tomorrow, the Big Island on Saturday and Kauai on Sunday.
He's thrilled Honolulu blues fans in the past
with his performances at the Honolulu Zoo and Pink's Garage. He returns this time with some of the same musicians to feature the music off his current album, "Padlock on the Blues."
Mayall's wife, Maggie, was his co-producer and co-wrote one of the songs with him.
"We're very proud of it," Mayall says of the album. John Lee Hooker and Coco Montoya were among the guests who sat in with Mayall and the Bluesbreakers during the sessions. (Hooker and Mayall first worked together when Mayall's first band, Powerhouse Four, was backing Hooker on tour in England 40 years ago; Montoya's mini-set was one of the highlights of Mayall's 1991 performance here.)
Mayall sees nothing unusual about his role in inspiring generations of English and American musicians.
"You hear everything that's going on around you and they become influences whether you know it or not. You roll into things as you go along but it's not something that you sit down and analyze. You absorb the parts that fit what you want to say."
Mayall has been absorbing and contributing to the process in several contexts. He sings, plays guitar and keyboards, writes, produces, and has a rare willingness to nurture and encourage other artists.Mayall and his original Bluesbreakers became the core of an emergent English blues scene that found young English musicians falling in love with traditional African-American blues and giving the music and the original artists a respect often lacking in the States at the time. Among the other bands that came out of the English blues scene were the Animals, the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. Among the musicians who worked with Mayall as members of the Bluesbreakers were Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor and John McVie.
One of the great ironies of the "English Invasion" of the American pop charts in the mid-'60s was that much of the English bands' material consisted of classic American country, R&B, and blues tunes that had been forgotten by the American pop audience in 1964.
Mayall sees that trans-Atlantic musical exchange as another example of musical evolution.
"You just don't really set out to look for things. They're just there."
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