Having worked with John Mayer on three studio albums over the course of nearly 10 years, Don Was is something of an authority when it comes to appraising and appreciating the guitar great’s musicality.
It is usually both Mayer’s irresistible guitar tones and unparalleled fretboard chops that receive most of the praise. But Was is uniquely positioned to appreciate other aspects of his musicianship – and, according to him, there are a few particular aspects of Mayer’s playing that could put him above a legendary Beatle.
“He's a great arranger,” Was says of Mayer’s under-appreciated talents. “The thing that separates John from everybody else that I've worked with, in terms of the process we go through, is I've never seen anyone with that many ideas for arrangements.
“He's never short of ideas. We know we have to do something in a section, and he'll find 10 different, really elegant ways of making that section work. And my job is never to tell him what to play. It's to help him sort through the wealth of information that he's laid down to choose the most effective.”
Arrangement is just part of it, though. Was also praises Mayer’s ability to create guitar sounds that are wholly unique to his own musical DNA, comparing it to Harrison’s own track record of doing the same while changing the face of music with the Beatles. In that regard, though, Mayer might just take the cake.
“His guitar tones are unparalleled,” Was continues of Mayer. “They're not just evocative, cool sounds, but they're thick and they're warm and they jump out of speakers – and I'm not sure how he does it.
“Yes, he's got the best gear you can have, but I've played his guitars and I don't sound like him. I think people might take that for granted. That's one of the first things I noticed when I listened to those records after not hearing them for a while.
“George Harrison was good at stuff like that, getting distinctive sounds that you only hear once on a certain song. That's a strength of John’s. It’s the same thing.
“I was loath to say John's better than George Harrison. It ain't gonna sit well with people, but he might be better than George Harrison.”
It’s a bold claim, but again, Was is perhaps uniquely positioned to make it. In the late 1980s during the sessions for Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, Was worked with Harrison, who visited the studio to lay down a slide guitar solo for the album’s title track.
In a soon-to-published interview with Guitar World, Was dives deeper into his partnership with Mayer, saying, “His relentless pursuit of excellence is one reason that he's one of the biggest and most respected artists on the planet.”
Elsewhere in that interview, Was also looked back on how he started working with the Rolling Stones – after a particularly frosty first encounter with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
