JOHN MAYALL,
1933-2024

John Mayall, the English musician and bandleader whose unquenchable thirst for the blues led to a career spanning eight decades, died Monday (7/22) at his longtime home in California at the age of 90.

Over the decades, Mayall—renowned as the Godfather of British Blues—released dozens of albums and kick-started the careers of dozens of young players, including Eric Clapton; Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, who went on to form Fleetwood Mac; and future Rolling Stone Mick Taylor.

“One of my favorite albums is Crusade, which featured Mick Taylor,” said Heartbreakers and Dirty Knobs guitarist Mike Campbell, who played on what would be Mayall’s final album, 2022’s The Sun Is Shining Down. “I also liked it because the keys were listed next to the songs, so it was easy to play along to.”

Mayall displayed a talent for mentoring gifted young musicians and bringing out the best in them. With a rugged individuality and distinctive voice and style, he continually experimented with and stretched the blues, exerting a major influence on rock.

Born in Cheshire, England, Mayall developed an early love for American jazz and blues, teaching himself to play the piano, guitar and harmonica. In the early 1960s, Mayall’s friend Alexis Korner convinced him to move to London, where he began putting together musicians to form his band The Bluesbreakers. When Clapton left The Yardbirds in 1965, Mayall quickly hired him, and the excitement and virtuosity of The Bluesbreakers’ live shows inspired the famous “Clapton Is God” graffiti on a wall in London. The band’s debut album, Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, soon became a best-selling classic and cemented Clapton’s reputation as one of the greatest guitarists ever.

After Clapton left the band to form Cream with bassist and fellow Bluesbreaker Jack Bruce, Mayall recruited Green as his replacement, and when Green later left with McVie and Fleetwood to form the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, Mayall brought in Taylor, who remained in the Bluesbreakers for about a year before joining The Stones.

Mayall relocated to Los Angeles in 1969 and continued leading bands and releasing albums throughout the 1970s, becoming renowned for his jazz/rock/blues innovations. He toured throughout North America and Europe, employing a string of ace guitarists from Walter Trout to Buddy Whittington to Carolyn Wonderland.

Among his best-known recordings are “Hideaway” (1966), A Hard Road (1967), “Snowy Wood” and Crusade (1967), Bare Wires (1968), Blues From Laurel Canyon (1968), “Room To Move” and The Turning Point (1969), USA Union (1970), Back to the Roots (1971), Ten Years Are Gone (1973), Wake Up Call (1993), Stories (2002), 70th Birthday Concert (2003), In the Palace of the King (2007), Tough (2009) and Nobody Told Me (2019).

Mayall, who also collaborated with Joe Walsh, Steven Van Zandt, Alex Lifeson, Billy Gibbons, Otis Rush, Billy Preston and Marcus King, was made OBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 and inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2016.