By Joe Coscarelli
For this Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section, I profiled John Mayer, the 39-year-old singer, songwriter and guitar virtuoso, who also happens to be a prodigious talker — for better or worse. In 2010, a run of ill-advised interviews changed the course of his career as both a musician and a celebrity.
“Only recently do I make decisions about putting a record or a video out that aren’t saddled with guilt,” he said this month in Los Angeles. “I feel like I have a) done the work and b) been out long enough so that people can believe I’ve done the work.” He added: “It took me five years to go, ‘O.K., come on, let’s go back to the party. You’re not going to make a fool of yourself.’”
As Mr. Mayer prepped for the release next month of his new album, “The Search for Everything,” which he hopes will be return to the pop mainstream, I trailed him between the recording studio and a shoot for a music video, a frenetic four days capped by an additional three-hour interview over dinner. Below are some additional edited excerpts from our hours of conversation. (You can read the full story here.)
On the lasting impact of those controversial interviews:
“Your No. 1 Google result is a certain thing, but you’ve got to do something bigger than that to knock it off of first place. For me, when I was at my most popular, I maligned myself. It’s a very interesting thing because if, when you mellow out in your life, it’s the wrong time ... I think a lot of people’s last impression of me is outdated.
“As I autopsy that part of my life, it turns out that I was under the impression that I was a bigger star than I was. I appreciate that there was a market correction. I actually really do. There was a market correction and I’m probably about as big as I should be.” [He quickly revised this statement.] “I’d like to be a little bigger.”
On wanting to settle down:
“My brother just had a baby. That’ll rattle you, man. I’m looking at these pictures of him giving her a bath when I’m lying in a hotel penthouse in Hollywood and it’s almost a cliché. The oxytocin flows freely in my brain when I see that stuff.
“[For me,] everything anatomically and chemically is healthy. It works. All the mechanisms are in place. It’s just the life that I have, which is fabulous — it’s just a bit more time on the International Space Station. Don’t ever let me give you the sense that I don’t love being on the International Space Station. It’s a pretty cool reason why you haven’t settled down — because you’re an astronaut. I’ve never hated it. Sometimes I get upset at the way that it is, but the real question is: Will the appearance of this job prevent what I’m absolutely entitled to psychologically? That’s the scary part.
“I’m still always going to be a kid from Fairfield, Conn. They don’t make rock stars in Fairfield, Conn. They don’t. They make good people who get a job, get married, they watch TV together, they start a life together and make other good people.”
On his love for online shopping:
“I live for FedEx tracking numbers. I have a FedEx tracking number that’s so hot right now I’ll be watching it all night like Norad tracking Santa Claus. It’s from Japan, it’s getting here tomorrow. But [my stuff] gets held up in customs a lot because it’s so much Japanese clothing that customs is like, ‘What store is this going to?’ Like, no, it’s a person. ‘It can’t be going to a person, this is too much commercial value.’”
On his most memorable hit:
“‘Your Body Is a Wonderland’ lives so much in its own atmosphere that it’s like it’s been handed to me by some other person. There was a time where I didn’t want to play it, where I took it very personally that people were making jokes about it. Now I go: ‘It’s kind of cool to have one.’ I don’t know if you’ve made it if you don’t have the one [thing] that the least initiated person can yell at you when they see you. Dave Chappelle has Rick James, you know?”
On choosing not to write political songs:
“We live in a time right now where the message will be judged against the messenger. There are times when I say to myself, ‘I don’t have the right to.’ Because I haven’t introduced myself to the world or placed myself as a mouthpiece in that way, I guess I shied away from it.”
On attending an Oscars party this year as a new man:
“I had the most incredible time there and I learned a lot about who I used to be, because I used to have my heart out in front of me to every person I met. It didn’t matter who you were. I didn’t have time to make a value judgment. Everybody would get to look at it and touch it and put their gum out on it. And I would leave sad because I would go in with this huge, heavy beating heart for somebody to come put their arms around me and think I was great. And they just wouldn’t because you don’t do that at a party.
“But I go through the therapy and I grow up and I dig out the things that were stuck in the fibers. [At the party,] I didn’t put my heart out to anybody that I didn’t know. I didn’t even bother going up to people that I didn’t know. The thing I told myself, which is so healthy — so please don’t tell me that I’m wrong — was: ‘She doesn’t care about me.’ It’s not my job to win them all over.”
On playing with members of the Grateful Dead in Dead & Company:
“You are not included in something if you are a solo artist. You cannot feel inclusion. You cannot feel being under a wing. I had never before been out of that role where you are in the saddle and everything is your call and all eyes are on you. Since I was a teenager! I was just there as a piece of their puzzle.”
On the dance number in his forthcoming music video for ‘Still Feel Like Your Man’:
“Here’s what’ll happen: Some people will write, ‘I can’t front, John Mayer’s got moves, though.’ And some people are going to write, ‘John Mayer looks hideously dumb dancing.’ Here’s my prediction: The people who say that I have moves aren’t fans of mine and the people who say that I was hideous and made a fool of myself are record-owning John Mayer fans. Because they just don’t see me that way.”