I have decided, due to the risks of the pandemic and my advancing age, that it is time for me to hang up my road shoes. As a result I will be radically reducing my touring schedule and will be limiting my performances to local shows near my home in California, and the occasional concert further afield.
My epic road dog days however have come to an end. I want to thank my audience for all the wonderful decades of shows, your infectious enthusiasm for my music and for your support throughout my many musical incarnations.
It has been a privilege to have spent my life doing what I love and having you along for the ride with me through all of it. I may not be travelling to your location, but I do want to continue to share my love of the Blues with you. I have a new musical offering coming your way in the form of my album “The Sun is Shining Down,” which will be released by Forty Below Records on January 21st, featuring my long-time rhythm section of Greg Rzab and Jay Davenport as well as some exciting special guests. I’m proud of what we came up with and excited to share it with you. I look forward to seeing those of you who can attend my local shows, and I will miss all of you who cannot, but as always, keep loving the Blues! —John Mayall
A huge box set of his work was last January, released, the almost 88-year-old British bluesman reminisces about the thrill of discovering boogie-woogie piano and buying his first six-string in Japan
Excerpt from the Guardian, to read the full article click here.
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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