2024-07-26 12:44:31
British blues musician John Mayall has died at the age of 90. He experienced his most famous period in the second half of the 1960s, when Eric Clapton played guitar in his band. The announcement of Mayall’s death appeared on his Instagram account.
“John Mayall has given us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain,” the post reads. The musician died on Monday at his home in California.
In addition to Eric Clapton, Mayall’s band The Bluesbreakers also featured other famous musicians. It was, for example, Mick Fleetwood or Mick Taylor, who later worked in the Rolling Stones.
According to the AP, John Mayall has disagreed in interviews with claims that he is a scout for music talent. He emphasized that he plays for the love of the blues. “I am the head of the band and I know what I want to play with it, who can become my good friend,” he said in an interview. The fact that some of the musicians who went through his group were more famous than him bothered him a little, and he wasn’t shy about talking about it. “I’ve never had a hit, I’ve never won a Grammy, and Rolling Stone magazine has never written an article about me,” he told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2013. “I’m still an underground artist,” he added.
Mayall was born in 1933 in North West England. Already in his childhood, he fell under the spell of the blues and learned to play the guitar, piano and harmonica. After returning from compulsory basic military service, where he spent three years in Korea, he found employment as an industrial designer in Manchester, a talent he later used to design his own record covers.
He started jamming on the guitar with local bands, but that wasn’t enough for him for long. In 1963, he finally decided on a musical career and headed to London, where he was taken on by the guru of the local scene, guitarist Alexis Korner.
Following his advice, Mayall formed his mostly four-piece band, the Bluesbreakers. He worked with her until 1968.
“It was more of a loose association of accompanying musicians, with each formation lasting no longer than seven or eight months,” wrote music critic Josef Vlček. But according to him, “what Mayall recorded between 1965 and 1975 belongs to the golden fund of rock history and should be known by everyone who is interested in the story of the great cultural phenomenon of the 20th century”.
Mayall, who was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2005, also performed quite often in the Czech Republic. His Bluesbreakers played their first concert in the former Czechoslovakia three years ago in November 1989 as part of the Bratislava Lyra festival.
“He first played in Bratislava like a miracle, a gem back in the pre-November days,” recalled music journalist Vojtěch Lindaur. According to him, it was remarkable that the white bluesman always had a strong listening base in the country, “from the clamor for his records at the old Prague stock exchanges to the present day, when the ranks of his local fans, who are now few and far between, have been supplemented by music connoisseurs several generations younger.” .
John Mayall’s last performance, planned in Brno for April 2022 as part of the farewell Farewell Tour, was ultimately prevented by illness.
Video: John Mayall na festivalu v Montreux
So Many Roads as performed by John Mayall with his The Bluesbreakers and guitarist Gary Moore at the 2008 Montreux Festival. | Video: Montreux Jazz Festival