Career

The Idea of “Right Time, Right Place”

“Not true! That would be true if you only played one show for your entire life. Then, the mathematical construct would make sense that you have to be in the right time at the right place. Forget about right time right place – it doesn’t exist! You create your place and you create your time through what you’re doing. It’s not about getting your foot in the door or meeting a person and them giving you an opportunity. Doesn’t exist. Does. Not. Exist. Nobody is going to sign you at a record company anymore – they’re not in the business of building an artist from scratch anymore. You got to bring them what you already have."

Instead, John Mayer encouraged students at Berklee to focus on their craft and to prepare themselves for their career without concern for depending on others for a lucky break. Mayer concluded that this first myth is “dismissive of what you can actually do. It’s dismissive of your actual talent.”

JM: And it's wild and I think for me the only judge of whether I'm making it or not is: are my ideas safe in the sense that they will be made if I want to make them. That's what we're talking about. It's like, can I have job security so that if I have an idea I can still make it? I wouldn't want to be fighting for the opportunity to make music and alongside fighting to make great music.

JM: I think it took 15 years for people to understand me and the thing that had to take place was 15 years of decisions had to sort of come to light so you could see that really what it is, is this inability to sit still. It's actually just pure curiosity. That's what you and I DM about, that's what we talk about, it's pure curiosity.  

DD: Absolutely. 

JM: And I think if you're just making one record you can't see the picture, if you’re making two records you can't see the picture, but then you go off and do this other thing you want to do that you're curious about which is the power blues trio which is me and Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino. I remember that, that was a war with the record company.

JM: This is what changed in my life, is I used to try to be a star, thinking that was my job or that was my role, and I was horrible at it.

DD: You're playing the fucking guy. 

JM: Well you should try. God knows if it lands in your lap give it a run. 

DD: Oh yeah, you got to. I did shit loads of drugs—you’re just riding! 

JM: And for me dude it was never going to be drugs. It was never going to be a DUI. It was never going to be me wrapping my tree around a car [sic]. Had it been, would have been maybe an easier next few years for me. 

DD: Well people can understand that too. 

JM: Because there's protocol for that. 

DD: People are like, guy’s a rock star, he crashed his car, got on coke.

JM: You thank the cop that arrested you, you thank people for helping you get help, and it's on a calendar. You're back in two months. You’re a changed man, you know. But that was never gonna happen to me. I was always going to pick the more abstract way to do it. Cause nobody was gonna tell me what to do.

And the problem is when you're right about eighty percent, nobody can tell you about the other twenty, because you've been right most of the time. So other people go “I don't think you should swear so much on stage.” You go “fuck you!” Now when I swear it feels terrible.

“The best thing about my career is when I realized I didn’t care as much about being famous as I’d told myself — the actual best thing is that I get stickers on my suitcase, metaphorically, of places I’ve played. Stamps on my passport. I have this saying I said to Dave Chappelle one time, and we still bring it up — ‘In the Empire State Building, you don’t have a view of the Empire State Building.’ Living in myself, I don’t get a view of myself — but where I do get a view is participating as one small speck of dust in the airflow of another world, or another time. That to me is unparalleled, man: Where I’ve been is way cooler than who I am.”