According to the statement released by Mayall’s family on social media, the acclaimed artist died in his California residence on July 22nd, after retiring from touring due to persistent health issues. It did not include any information about the cause of death.
The statement began: “It is with heavy hearts that we bear the news that John Mayall passed away peacefully in his California home yesterday, July 22nd, 2024, surrounded by loving family. 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. John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain.”
It added: “John is survived by his six children, Gaz, Jason, Red, Ben, Zak and Samson, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He is also surrounded with love by his previous wives, Pamela and Maggie, his devoted secretary, Jane, and his close friends. We, the Mayall family, cannot thank his fans and long list of bandmembers enough for the support and love we were blessed to experience secondhand over the last six decades.”
My tree house
I lived in Acre Lane in Cheadle Hulme, Greater Manchester, and became a teenager on 29 November 1946. My parents had divorced and I lived with my mother and my grandfather. The house was a bit crowded, so I built a tree house in the garden, which basically became my room, my world. I built it with window frames and tarpaulin, but eventually it had a paraffin lamp, a bed and all my 78rpm records and such up there. It was about 25ft (7.6 metres) up an oak tree.
After becoming quite well known in the area, it started making the papers. A mention in the Manchester Evening News led to three pages in [the postwar British tabloid] Reveille. The Daily Graphic headlined their piece “The House That Jack Built – Up a Tree!” and called me Jack Mayall throughout, which was something of a letdown.
In 1970, I wrote the song Home in a Tree – on my album Memories – and all the incidents in the lyrics, throwing a sword at my friend and hitting him on the ear and such, are real incidents. My mates used to come round to hang out in the treehouse. Eventually, some of the parents started to worry what we were doing up there and put the skids on it, but I lived up there right until I got married.
There was a cinema in the village and I went regularly. There was a different programme twice a week, so you were exposed to all sots of movies. Margaret Lockwood films such as The Lady Vanishes were very popular. Later on, I got into Weird Tales – I bought some only last week – plus Mad magazine and Tales from the Crypt, but in the early years it was all the Dandy, the Beano and Knockout.
When I was 18, I was called into the army, in Japan, I bought my first six-string guitar. I think it was about £10. It wasn’t a known brand – just a regular hollow-body guitar – but it was the best quality you could get at that time. I took two strings off it to make it easier to play, so I was playing it as a four-string. Eventually, I had it engraved and converted it to a nine-string and I played it on a lot of my records in the 60s
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