“I GREW UP A LONE WOLF IN MY BEDROOM PRACTISING MY GUITAR. ALL I EVER REALLY CRAVED WAS A COMMUNITY”

When John Mayer joined Dead & Company – featuring members of the original jam band, the Grateful Dead – he got a kick out of being a team player. And by honouring the legacy of the late Jerry Garcia, he found a new dimension to his playing.

Ellie Rogers

John Mayer’s discovery of the Grateful Dead happened by chance. In 2011, while listening to random suggestions on Pandora, he heard the Dead classic Althea, and with that he fell hard and fast. Taking a deep-dive into the band’s vast back catalogue, he became a committed ‘Deadhead’, leading to a remarkable chapter in his career.

The first evidence of the Dead’s influence on Mayer came with his 2012 album Born And Raised and 2013 follow-up Paradise Valley. Both albums marked incrementally intensifying departures from polished pop, with Mayer doing and playing exactly what he pleased. And both contained subtle but abundant Grateful Dead influences.

Queen Of California, the opening track from Born And Raised, was in tune with the folksy, acoustic numbers that abound on the Dead’s two albums from 1970, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead. In the second verse from Queen Of California, Mayer also made a reference to Neil Young’s After The Goldrush, before a lengthy pedal steel-driven outro took hold over a bedrock of Dead-esque repeating chords.

Another connection was made in this album’s title track. Jerry Garcia - the founding member and de facto leader of the Grateful Dead as vocalist, lead guitarist and principal songwriter - had played pedal steel on the song Teach Your Children from Déjà Vu, the first album featuring Neil Young in the 70s supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. For the song Born And Raised, Mayer had David Crosby and Graham Nash on backing vocals.