Michael Jackson

SS: Another fabulous was the Michael Jackson Memorial Concert Thank you. You did "Human Nature."

[Shows video clip of memorial performance]

SS: Why just instrumental?

JM: Because I am not good enough to sing that song. It's not even in my range, but I don't have a restriction on range as a guitar player. I have a huge restriction in range as a singer. So I just figured if you could side step, to the point where you're not even singing, but you could sing on the guitar. That might be the only way I could succeed at it.

MT: The Michael Jackson memorial gig [Mayer played an instrumental version of Human Nature at the show] - were you going to sing?

JM: No. They put a microphone up on stage before I got up, then when I got up I didn't sing. But I was never going to sing.

I think they put the microphone up, like, Well if you want to say something… But I didn't want to say anything. In a situation like that, I have nothing to say - what am I going to say?"

MT: A big deal getting asked to do that…

JM: Comparable to nothing else.

JM: I think about singers a lot when I play solos like that. 

DD: Is that right? 

JM: I think about Michael Jackson a lot when I play the guitar. You see that video of Michael Jackson and Prince at some new year's gig and Prince shows up high as a kite, knocks over the lamppost. 

DD: Yeah yeah yeah! They’re doing a battle?  

JM: Yeah, it’s James Brown. And James Brown says “Michael Jackson's here. Let's see Michael Jackson.” And Michael Jackson gets up and all of a sudden they go into like this sort of It's a Man's World groove, this halftime thing. And Michael Jackson all he says is [sings] and he starts going into now a double-time James Brown thing. And it's one of the greatest things I ever heard. I ever heard in my life. Oh, the other thing I think about is at the end of [sings "The Lady in My Life"] — that's on Off the Wall? At the end he's like [singing “I love you girl, I love you girl, I love you, I love you”]. I'm like, “that is a great riff on a guitar.” I don't like playing guitar parts on the guitar anymore. I like, sort of like, “what would you sing?” And then play that sort of — 

But yeah man, those records. If you put on Thriller and you pretend that it was your record and you had a say in the mix, what a lesson because you’d change everything about it. Listen to Thriller and pretend it's your record and you can make mix notes you would have changed everything about that record. But that's the lesson is that that mix is everything is up front.