JOHN MAYALL R.I.P..

John Mayall became one of my favorite music makers the first time I heard his band The Bluesbreakers debut album in 1966. I thought he was the coolest, sexiest, most authentic of all the Brit blues rockers, including all the future stars who passed through his bands and whose talent he mentored and nurtured, like Clapton and Mick Taylor and three of the founding members of Fleetwood Mac.

I loved his later jazz blues fusions and was eternally grateful to be introduced to the awesome talent of violinist Gene "Sugarcane" Harris et al. And after I moved to LA was lucky enough to meet him, through his then wife Maggie (they were together for over 30 years before splitting I believe) who I adored, like everyone else did. 

They lived in one of those houses in the hills that from the street seem to be one story but when you get inside you realize it's hanging from a cliff and goes down two stories with a pool at the bottom and a beam sticking out over the pool a story or two up with a rope at the end of it you could drop into the pool from. Not me!

I remember sitting at a small bar top in the room overlooking the pool, with him behind it, and noticing a silvery sculpture hanging above his haad that seemed to have the tines of a fork sticking out of one spot. I asked him who the sculptor was, and he said a house fire in his Laurel Canyon home a few years before. It was melted silverware. How cool to turn at least one small part of that tragedy into art.

My deepest condolences to his family friends and fans. Rest In Peace John Mayall.