Scotsman Obituaries: John Mayall, influential British blues musician

Mayall never exactly set the singles charts alight, but his band the Bluesbreakers produced some of the most gifted and celebrated blues, rock and pop musicians of the 20th century.

Guitarist Mick Taylor went on to become a Rolling Stone, Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie formed Fleetwood Mac, while Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton formed Cream, with Clapton later becoming the most notable of the lot with a solo career as singer and guitarist.

Clapton was in his teens and on the point of abandoning his hopes of a career in music when Mayall recruited him. “He was my mentor, and as a surrogate father too, he taught me all I really know and gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear or without limit,” said Clapton. “I learned all that I really have to go on today in terms of technique, and desire to play the kind of music I love to play.”

Mayall was dubbed “the Godfather of British blues” and back in the 1960s he was very much the boss. Clapton once recalled that they would travel to and from gigs in a van that had a bed in the back where Mayall could settle down for a sleep while the rest of the band sat on rather less comfortable bench seats.

But while Mayall never quite achieved the level of fame and fortune that Clapton enjoyed he was proud of his proteges and earned sufficient to buy a house in Laurel Canyon, in the Hollywood Hills, after initially staying with Frank Zappa as a houseguest. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s it was the favoured neighbourhood for rock stars and Mayall’s regular drinking buddies included Keith Moon and Joe Cocker.

It was a world away from Macclesfield, where John Brumwell Mayall was born in 1933. His father was an office worker who played guitar in local bands and had a large collection of jazz and blues records, which sparked Mayall’s initial interest in music. He taught himself how to play guitar, piano and harmonica.

He went to art school in Manchester and joined the art department of a local store. National Service in Korea with the Royal Engineers brought Mayall into direct contact with African-American servicemen and gave him the chance to listen to US Armed Forces radio. He drew on his Korean experience for the song One Life to Live – “I got lucky, they sent me home; But some good friends never left the zone.”

He worked as a graphic designer, moved to London and in 1963 he formed the band John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and began getting regular gigs at the Marquee Club. He was already 30 by that point, geriatric compared with some of the rising stars of the British music scene.

The line-up of the Bluesbreakers was pretty fluid. McVie was there at the start, Clapton joined in 1965 from The Yardbirds, Clapton deliberately moving in the direction of the blues while The Yardbirds evolved into Led Zeppelin.

Mayall’s first album was a live set snappily entitled John Mayall Plays John Mayall. It was followed by Blues Breakers, credited to “John Mayall with Eric Clapton”, with McVie and Hughie Flint completing the line-up. It was generally known as The Beano Album because the band picture on the cover includes Clapton reading The Beano.

There were a few original songs, but most of the tracks were blues standards, including Ray Charles’s What’d I Say, with Clapton’s virtuoso guitar playing very much to the fore. It reached No 6 in the UK charts and has figured in Rolling Stone magazine’s lists of the top albums of all time.

It was the first of a series of UK hit albums in the 1960s and 1970s. By the end of the 1960s Mayall was beginning to establish a fanbase in the US as well, though Clapton had left the Bluesbreakers in 1966 to form Cream with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. He was replaced by Peter Green and then Mick Taylor.

Mayall’s first marriage fell victim to a workaholic touring schedule and at the end of the 1960s Mayall moved to the US, maintaining that he had grown up on American culture and felt more in tune with life there.

He was lucky to survive a devastating canyon fire in 1979 that destroyed his house, including his extensive diaries and his collection of antiques and vintage pornography. California would remain his home for the rest of his life.

Mayall was an archetypal 20th century figure, with his long hair, long face, beard and shaved upper lip, a near-legendary figure within the business, but he continued performing and recording well into the 21st century. There were multiple reunions and he recorded more than 50 albums in total.

He was married twice, divorced twice. He is survived by six children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

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