“It went totally sour. After we did the album thing, it was like, ‘This isn’t happening’”: Why Nile Rodgers and John Mayer’s collaboration was derailed – because of a Rolling Stones album

Nile Rodgers has opened up on his ill-fated collaboration with John Mayer, which failed to get off the ground after the pair exchanged their favorite albums with one another.

Rodgers’ collaborative credits reads like a who’s who of the upper echelons of the music world. Over the years, the funk guitar maestro has worked with everyone from David Bowie and Sister Sledge, all the way to Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Dianna Ross, Mick Jagger and many more.

Rodgers has never worked with Mayer, though – but that’s not for a lack of trying. As he tells Vulture in a new interview, Rodgers once set his sights on a collaboration with Mayer, but it fell apart before it picked up any steam.

As Rodgers explains, he was interested in getting to know artists “through their taste in art” by exchanging albums. It was a practice he learned from working with David Bowie on Let’s Dance, during which the pair spent time in libraries, exploring “different artistic concepts”.

Bowie and Mayer proved to be two completely different prospects, though, and Rodgers’ idea of album-swapping ended up doing more harm than good.

“I actually tried this once with John Mayer, and it went totally sour,” Rodgers admits. “He turned me onto his favorite record, which was Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes. I thought it was cool, but I gave him the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, which I think is the most underrated rock-and-roll album of all time.

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“It didn’t work with John. It’s weird, too, because John might be one of the smartest people that’s ever walked this Earth. Those first two days we got along like brothers, but then after we did the album thing, it was like, ‘This isn’t happening.’”

Mayer clearly wasn’t a fan of Their Satanic Majesties Request – but, then again, neither were the Stones themselves. In fact, as Keith Richards once admitted, they didn’t even want to make it.

“None of us wanted to make [the record],” he wrote in his memoir (via Guitar Player). “But it was time for another Stones album, and Sgt. Pepper was coming out, so we thought basically we were doing a put-on.”

The Stones’ daring foray into the world of psychedelic music isn’t short of critics, and it seems Mayer was one of them – so much so that the thought of working on music inspired by it was enough to put him off a potential collaboration with Rodgers.

And who can blame him – especially if he was religiously spinning Yellow at the time…