Introduction and History of PRS Collaboration
PRS: John your first phone call to PRS has become internet lore. I have people here in the room that heard about that story and one of the reasons they came to work for PRS was because of that internet lore, and I have my version of the story but why don't you tell your version of the story.
JM: Okay, I think that I had just sort of cemented going out with Dead & Co. and I was looking at the history of post-Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead incarnations and what the other guitar players were doing for gear, and I couldn't quite figure out what what would be authentic to me—like what would I play in a way that would still keep my identity and be true to me—and I thought it's kind of a PRS thing, you know? Like what would the modern day sort of alembic be—you know—it's kind of a PRS. And so I remember getting on the phone with you — I was in the studio—I got on the phone with you and I think one of the first things you said to me was “I've been looking for you." It was something like that like: “I've been looking—funny you should call because I've been looking for you.” Does that comport?
PRS: The way I tell the story is that you had made this decision and announced it, and then you called PRS and the person on the phone didn't believe it was you and you had to hold up a picture of you and say “it really is me.”
JM: Oh, no that's right—
PRS: Is that what happened exactly, John?
JM: I think that happened, yeah that happened. Yeah I didn't remember till now but that absolutely happened. I do that from time to time.
PRS: And we found out right after that happened that Steve Vai had called and ordered an arm and they charged him for it because they didn't know who he was—oh god I felt horrible.
JM: I got to tell you I don't think that people in the position of Steve Vai and myself really take that personally, I mean—
PRS: But you know we pride ourselves in trying to take care of our artists, anyway so then—the way I tell the story—is that you needed a tool to do a job and you showed up several times to look at all the neck shapes, all the scale links, every different pickup we made, you tried everything in every position—you started to rearrange the legos until we started to hone it in and make prototypes. And what you needed was a tool to do that job and the first time I walked on the stage and you had that those two tops and those two 410 cabinets and that guitar, and it sounded exactly like you needed it to to get that whole ball rolling. I was—oh my god John thanks for giving us the nod and the chance to do it because I never had the chance with him.
JM: Yeah well yeah, and thank you for helping me kind of carry a thing forward without—I just didn't want to be holding a guitar that looked exactly like it, you know the one Jerry was playing. You know, I mean, that's been the whole puzzle is how do you pay respect to it without standing too squarely inside of the silhouette of the thing. And the really fun part of that for both of us was figuring out well what makes that sound what are the variables that contribute to that sound sounding like that: scale length, [...]
Pickups, Tones, Guitarists
PRS: You don't know this—I called Jimmy Herring and we both went: “middle pickup."
JM: Middle pickup, that's right. In fact, on the middle pickup, when I played Wolf the only pickup that was really working was the middle pickup. And when I say working, I don't mean working for me, I mean like operational. So the neck pickup—how to shorten it—I think it was only one wire was because, you know, obviously nobody wants to sort of touch it and the bridge pickup was I think a little kind—of what you call well it was a little bright—you call it ice picky. And the middle pickup—now I'm not a middle guy. My entire life has been about taking out the mids and you actually turned me on to musical mid-range. And I had never experienced.
To me—and I think a lot of guitar players—mid-range is kind of like this scientific kind of spike in a thing that you're supposed to need. Because I guess it like helps everything else around it move forward, and you turned me on to the idea of mid-range being a musical thing. And now with Dead & Co, at least, I spend most of my time on the middle pickup. And now I'm, you know, recording guitar on records where I could give me the middle pickup right because the middle—and help me with this on a scientific level because I'm not an engineer on this level—the middle pickup is like the truest pickup, is it not?
PRS: I think the bass pickup and the treble pickup are the truest pickup, but I'm not a middle pickup guy either. But what I do know is most people think of mid-range as [sings “aww”], and to me I want it be [sings “aaa”], so to me I want “aa” and not “aww."
JM: Right! That's a brilliant observation about mid-range. Now here—so I was a Strat guy, I'm still a Strat guy—I've played Strats on records all the time and to me more than any other guitar there are names and—tell me if this happens because I'm not from the humbucker world—but in the Strat world [...]
PRS: [muffled] I’m going to convert you, I’m going to convert you.
JM: Okay so help me out, this is where it's gonna happen. The pickup selectors on a Strat have like names of guitar players like thumb tacked into them. You go to the bridge and you're like there's those four guys, and you go to the fourth position you go there's those four guys. And if you go to the second position you go there's those two guys and you go to the bridge and you go like well there's a whole bunch of people, but the middle you're not like “well there's that guy”, no because there's something so true about the middle pickup it doesn't sound like anything other than a guitar, right?
PRS: That's true when I heard the first Magic Silver Sky middle pickup I thought it had a beautiful kind of vocal bark to it. I don't even know how to describe what I heard. I was like I hate this pickup, wait a minute, I like this one. I came from the Richie Blackmore school where he threw it away.
JM: Right and so who are the people—okay if you plug in a guitar with humbuckers and you go to the neck position and you start playing who are the names that come to mind when you play those?
PRS: Well the most recent name would be Slash because all those solos he played were on the bass pickup, but for me it sounds like every old record—Cream record, every old blues record, every BB King, all that stuff—that bass pickup was just magic and I've seen you pull up either a 594 or an SG or this or that and go, Listen to this tone and listen to that tone. You actually experience the same names when you're on that bass pickup.
JM: I guess you're right. But there are some names that are missing because I can't connect the dots because I don't know what they were playing and—it's funny, in some way the music you listen to is tied in both directions to the guitars that are being played in those music. So somehow or another falling in love with a certain guitar takes you to those guitar players. And I could also say growing up this might be—I mean, well come on let's have some sick fun, let's have an edgy discussion—you can also say that there is, on a behavioral science level, there are different demeanors of people. I've noticed between humbucker players and single coil players they're like—because they were into different bands which were from different cultures and they were different attitudes and different guitars, they're almost like different behaviors. Have you ever noticed this?
PRS: Yes and it's really hard to get a bass pickup a single coil bass pickup to sound extraordinary if there's too many people in the band. You've got to have less people in the band.
JM: You said to get a single coil […]
PRS: Bass pickup solo to sound beautiful the band's got to leave you a lot of room.
JM: Hence Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Jimi Hendrix experience.
PRS: Right.
JM: Wow.
PRS: Your band that I saw left you so much space in the middle that you could hear every note that you play. Those guys never walked on you.
JM: Right. If they did! No, I'm kidding.
PRS: Timeout that's a bandleader comment.
JM: Kidding.
PRS: Yeah so let's change this subject, although I did send you a new bass pickup for one of your guitars, you should have got it the other day.
JM: I have not seen it yet but I cannot wait. For people watching this is not like you and I going like “oh my god, hey Paul it's good to see you, how have you been?” Like we would be on the phone at this hour. Yeah, we talk all the time.
PRS: Yeah when I send you something new and you don't call me back I'm like “oh what did I do wrong?!” you know?
JM: No no—the phone rings all day and I go, “I just haven't played it yet.”
Dead & Company
PRS: Yeah I know I got it.
So let's just change another story, okay so from a macro umbrella level—I know something about this but I think people be fascinated to hear it. John you were known as a singer songwriter but I'm not sure you ever saw yourself that way, I think you saw yourself as a guitar player. And when you joined the Dead that completely converted. Did you feel that happen worldwide? Did you feel everybody look at you as more as a guitar player than a singer songwriter? Did you—knew that shift was gonna happen and I know that you were holding Jerry in your head while you were playing because you told me you were. What about that shift do you remember?
JM: That's a great question.
PRS: I had other guitar players come up—really famous guitar players—and go, "Whoa what's going on in that camp?"
JM: I looked at it like—um, okay. Because of who I am—all the little, I mean you can almost say like people are like frequency, you know, they have spikes and they have dips—because of those spikes and dips as to who I am I can only play a certain kind of music to suit my singing songwriting.
PRS: Right.
JM: So I have little—maybe I've got a big paint bucket of one thing or another—but I only use a little bit for here I can't use that color because it doesn't work here, my vocal range is what it is and my theoretical mental range is what it is, and I'm always into the authenticity of that.
PRS: Right.
JM: Like if I could join—I always thought—if I could join a band and I wasn't limited by the scope of who I am in terms of being a singer-songwriter, there's a hundred other records I could make. If I weren't beholden to who I am as a singer songwriter. And when that got lifted then for me all I remember was being like, oh I can use the full range of guitar playing.
PRS: Right.
JM: You are who you are, and I see this all the time now with people who are trying to like be a little literal in copying what I do and like “how do I get that like?” Well I've got thumbs that are giant, right? And I played in a way that this became an advantage. But someone else has something anatomical or physiological or mental or creative that gives them that edge. So I'm a little confined by it as I get older but that's only because I've been so lucky to sort of have this thing that I'm able to do kind of go so wide and far. But I was running, I mean, you know you get to a certain level where you just have to keep making this music that you believe coming from yourself and that is a limited thing, but it's not all the music I could make so when I was able to get into Dead & Company I was like, oh I get to sort of have full range of all the colors of paints.
PRS: So the first time I saw the show from the board I went out to the guy who was incredibly good mixer up front
JM: Yeah, Derek is great.
PRS: He was great and he was the only sound man I ever saw stand on the stage for at least a half an hour to listen to each of the amps to make sure that what he had up front was the same as on the stage. I've seen Wind do that, it's the only other person I've seen do that. Anyway, they gave you so much room. You would start into a solo, if it lasted three minutes that have been okay, had it lasted 12 they had been okay. You had so much room John.
JM: It will never occur that way again that's why I appreciate every single show. I mean you know you hear people sort of lamenting that they didn't make the most of a thing while it was occurring? That has never happened here. I have been aware since the inception of this band that I should be—I wish I had six more eyes on my head to see it all. I wish I had four more brains to remember it all. And so every time I'm involved in it I'm just sucking it up. Taking it in, taking it in. Because there will never be another experience where I will have that ability to fly in someone else's airspace.
That airspace was created by some people many years ago in a way that is unforgettable, will never be forgotten. And I get to fly in this air, in these air currents right, and that's one of the hardest things to do is to compose music that you can play over in a way that's exciting to you and the audience. It's like flying these aerials in these air currents that have already been invented so that all you have to do is just fly in them and try to do the best you can there.
PRS: I don't think anybody really understands how much that music swings and how much bop is involved in it as well, but that's a whole other conversation.
JM: Oh, it's a whole other.
PRS: So you finish this sentence all right: John Mayer loves watches, sneakers, fashion, guitars, music, songwriting, blank, blank, blank, [...]
JM: Um, funny ideas. John Mayer loves ideas. The good ideas. I don't care what they are. I love ideas. I love, “Oh here's a funny idea, here's a cool idea for this, here's a cool idea for that.” I just love ideas and that's all I am is ideas.
Guitar Colors, Famous Guitar Rigs, Q&A
PRS: Do you want a tobacco sunburst Silver Sky?
JM: No, I don't want a tobacco sunburst.
PRS: What colors are historical that you want?
JM: That's a great question. I love the surf colors. I love sonic blue, surf green, coral pink, shoreline gold. I love those. You know when we were digging into Silver Sky, part of it for me was like, what's coming with it into the future and what's not. And what are things that people just keep doing because, well that's the way we've done it.
PRS: That's—hold on a second, hold on a second. We're going to repeat that answer.
JM: You can't let anyone know Paul has a dog.
PRS: It's me. [Barks]
JM: You know I've said it before, in an interview I think, but what I like to do or what I like to do and I want to keep doing it is go okay what are the things that a company is beholden to because that's the way they've always done it. What are the things I can take from it and go, Well here are the things I love about the guitar and I want to move it forward. And I've said before that there's nothing else in the world that is sunburst anymore. Sunburst you would see a chest of drawers that were sunburst, you would see an old zenith stand-alone stand-up radio that was sunburst. So I look at it and I go if I want to go futuristic—not futuristic but modern—well where else is there a sunburst thing? And you can also say the same thing for tortoise shell—but you do see tortoise shells, sunglasses glasses. You still see combs. You know, there are tortoise shell things the idea of there being something sunburst still just because that's what we've been seeing [...]
Right so guitars mirrored the paint colors and finishes of the day—right we all know that they were using paint colors that DuPont was making for the automotive industry. Well where else are there cool paint colors? Well what about the laptop I'm on right now—space gray—well I relate to that more than I relate to something that's sunburst. What about Resla colors, what about—you know I'm starting to see car colors that are using this sort of like inserting gray into colors. Have you been seeing this—you'll be on the road and you'll see—because you're a color expert, people don't understand you're a color expert— you'll see like a Jeep or something and it'll have that blue but then like 30 gray into it now. So everything has this slightly earthy tone to it you know what I mean?
PRS: Yeah and here's another one piece of it: I think sunbursts were invented on guitars to cover up glue joints with the binding and to cover up stain problems, and to cover up sanding scratches on the side of the guitar. And I think it all started to cover stuff up which is another thing
JM: That's interesting. Well you make a sunburst.
PRS: Oh god we sell so many sunbursts. Yeah we got a new thing John where they're taking our—and I can't even really talk about it—but they're staining bursts with a rag and they're not doing it with a spray gun, and they just figured out a way to combine it. It's the most beautiful thing it's just bad we should send him a picture of that it's unbelievable what I saw the other day.
JM: For the record the Super Eagle is technically a burst.
PRS: Yeah, right.
JM: But it is a super super—it's not a three-tone black orange yellow
PRS: It’s a microburst. So John you got a question for me?
JM: I do have a question for you. What guitarist's rig would you most like to go back in time and play through?
PRS: Can I name two?
JM: Of course.
PRS: Hendrix’s rig at Woodstock, when he played the "Star-Spangled Banner." All that beautiful, beautiful high mid-range that was going into a Freddie Mercury vocal mic. Those were all the mics on the stage were Freddie Mercury vocal mics.
JM: Wow.
PRS: That had a whole lot of high mid-range. I would have liked to have played through, you know [sings melody of "Star Spangled Banner"], I would love to experience the feedback. He had the cabinet at his feet and it was making the guitar feedback, but there was a lot of high end — but it was so beautiful.
JM: It truly was.
PRS: You have one of those amps, you have one of those white backed amps.
JM: I have a JTM 45 MK II.
PRS: And I opened the amp that he used that day, so that was interesting. The other one is I would have loved to play through the "Comfortably Numb" rig in the studio when Gilmour played that solo
JM: That's an amazing answer. I think every guitar player would want to know what that was like.
PRS: The story is it was a P90 Les Paul—it was not a Strat—that's the story. But I don't really care. Let me plug my guitar in and play through that you know—what it was really a bright tone and they doused it in echo and reverb. And because it was so much high-end it shined through. I would like to have known that formula, John.
JM: You know there is more bright tone being used on things that people misconstrue as being low end than anybody really knows.
PRS: And the other way around. Because Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn't that bright.
JM: No and BB King Live at the Regal is not even the bass pickup. Listen to him start that—that ain't the bass pickup, that's the treble pickup.
PRS: Yeah.
JM: He's on the treble pickup most of that record, but when someone picks up a guitar and goes “let's do a BB King thing”—to the neck pickup. Down goes the tone. And it's like, that wasn't the way that it was, you know?
PRS: So what rig do you want to play through, John?
JM: Oh I should have thought of an answer for my own question. I mean just historically I would want to play through Stevie Ray Vaughan's rig at like, El Macombo. You know there's that famous Live at the El Macombo from 1983.
PRS: Oh it would have felt like a cinder block hitting you in the back of the head, right? You know how loud it was, right?
JM: I would you know guitar players would secretly give up hearing for certain things
PRS: [Laughs]
JM: I would give up hearing for the rest of my life to understand exactly how much pressure was coming out. Can I ask you one more question?
PRS: You can ask me anything you want, you kidding John. That was just good fun.
JM: Okay good. Everyone loves being asked questions—uh, within parameters.
PRS: Not everyone.
JM: What is an idea you keep having for something that you want to make but that you keep going “no one's going to want it. I would sell four of them”, but that you keep going like “I do really want to kind of fire one up. I'd love to try this but I just don't think anyone's gonna want it.”
PRS: Oh boy, I don't know John. I don’t know. Carlos Santana and I worked on this project for a long time. We put about 25 tones in the guitar, that you could rotate through different people's pedal boards.
JM: Oh, wow.
PRS: And you would set the pedal board and then you would have all that circuitry on a DSP.
JM: Like a looper inside the guitar and you would choose […]
PRS: Whatever it is, right. And so I built him this big pedal board and it had bit commanders and all these wild sounds and pedals on him, and I put tape over the whole thing. So he couldn't see it, he just had switches to hit, and it sounded immense. And I wanted to put it in the guitar so somebody sitting in a store just goes “click click click click click.” I think it's a good idea—never gonna make it.
JM: Right. I love hearing about things that are good ideas that nobody's gonna want. It excites me tremendously. I have one more question for you. This is the spicy question. Finish this sentence: “hey guitar manufacturers, cool it with the blank.”
PRS: Bad guitars. Bad guitars. I hurt over this one. The frets being in the wrong place, the nuts being in the wrong place, buy a guitar it won't stay in tune, buy a guitar it won't play in tune, buy a guitar you can't get a recording tone out of it, buy a guitar it doesn't do its job, buy a guitar the kid gets frustrated and gives up guitar because the guitar wouldn't do its job. That hurts. And it happened to me once and I sent the guitar back to the manufacturer and said “this doesn't work, my nephew can't play it." I got a new one.
JM: [Laughs]
Amazing. That was a much better answer than I had a question, that's great.
PRS: I hate bad guitars because they could have fixed a few things. Look if the toaster don't work, it burns it on one side or the other, or it comes out and flips up onto the counter or one side of the toast is worse than the other that's because the people that made the toasters didn't care.
JM: Right.
PRS: I want the toaster to work, it's simple. The problem is guitars it's a little complicated. When I started my career I looked at the Teisco del Rey picture in the Sears catalog—they still had to make pickups, John. They still had to put tuning pegs on it, still had to put frets on it, still had to put a nut on it, still had to put a bridge, still had to make a pickguard, still had to spray it. My thought was, Why don't you do each one better and then you don't waste your time.
JM: You're in a minority of people who say as long as you're doing it why not make it great.
PRS: You do that in the studio John every day.
JM: I think that's why we're attracted to each other. I mean we probably could have had similar, to the same, success but had a lot more time to chill out and relax, but I don't think we're all that interested in anything if we're not able to control the quality of a thing. Like I don't go to bed at night going like “sure sold a lot of those.” I go to bed going “we got closer to the essence of what the idea is.” Especially with songs right now. Like I'll come home from the studio and I'll be miserable because it's what I call sawdust. Sawdust is when you're in the middle of an idea and you're not through the tunnel to where you're sure it works but you have to stop for the night because sleeping is important. And you go home with no music on in the car and you just go, I got nothing. I got nothing.
And then you wake up the next morning and you go, Let's go see what we got. And maybe that day or maybe the day after it finally screws together and you go “ah. It worked. It's a quality thing.” Knowing that you could have put the first thing out and it would have gotten eighty percent of the people—and that would have been fine, it wouldn't have changed your quality of life—but that you would have always had a nagging void in your chest for the rest of your life about it.
PRS: Well, yes.
JM: You and I are into plugging the nagging void of something not being right.
PRS: Thank you so much, John.
JM: Thank you, Paul. You are the most—you might be the most interesting man.
PRS: That's sweet.
JM: You are the most interesting man.
PRS: Well let's see how red I am, you make my brain hot.
JM: No it's great, it's great. Anytime you want to do this I'm here.
PRS: I want an espresso.
JM: Yeah I'm gonna make myself another one because I'm not happy unless I feel sick to my stomach. Thank you for the fun morning. Bye.