Go Easy On Me

That song was written years ago when I was making the Born and Raised record. I never had my college years, so I fit my college years in between my fourth and my fifth record. What do I mean by "college years?" I would go sit at a bar and work my problems out. You forget that sometimes, you can work your problems out. At a bar. Alone. And I'd just be sitting there, drinking, working my problems out. And someone would come up and try to hurt my feelings just to do it. Cause at the time, I think there was something about me that was inviting people to try to hurt my feelings. I was a little cocky when I was younger. So people would see me at the bar, and they'd go "oh my fuckin'..." But they didn't know that I was hurting inside, and I would sit there, and I was just working that stuff out. And so that song is my going like this: [softly] "I don't know. I don't -- I don't know. I don't know." [Snarling voice] "So you're John Mayer." "Yeah." "Bet you think you're, like, cool." "Not right now."

And that whole song is me saying, like, [weakly] "please leave me alone. I just want to sit here in peace."

JM: And I would look up—this is where it intersects with Montana, ready?
 
I'd lay on my couch drunk having been berated by downtown women. Young women who saw me as the guy from the internet. 

DD: Yeah. Lower East Side?

JM: Yeah. And didn’t realize that I was a real person.

DD: Right. 

JM: And that I was really going through it, and they would rip me apart just rip me apart. 

DD: Just saying shit to you? 

JM: “Why are you drinking that? Like I know you're John Mayer, but—” Like just coming up to me and acting like I came up to them.  

DD: Like, “you ain’t shit!" 

JM: I always thought, “oh, you've never come up to a guy before.” This is what happened—and it's over for me now, right? Like, there's other names that people would want to talk to at a bar. I'm more just sort of off in my own little world. But I remember like, oh, your legs brought you here, but you think that I walked up to you. So there's a part of you that went, “I've got to engage.” And everybody's drinking, by the way. Everybody's drinking.

So I can't just go up to this guy and say I like your work because I've never done that before. Guys come up to me. So it was this twisted thing where people come up to me and start making fun of my drink or my hat or my hair—and they would roast me, they would just roast me.