John Mayer was weaned on the blues. The trifecta of Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King and Buddy Guy introduced him to blues guitar when he was a teenager, and blues has remained the essence of his style. But even so, Mayer admits he has never learned a blues solo – and has explained why maybe you shouldn’t bother either.
Speaking to Rick Rubin on the über producer’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Mayer recalled how he got started on the instrument, playing on a Washburn acoustic guitar that his parents rented from the local music store, speaking of his incredulity that they would get his brother – his younger brother, no less – an electric guitar before him (his dad said the electric sounded like “dreck”), and how he learned by playing along to records.
