I first met Steve in 2003, over the phone, when I cold-called him to tell him I was a devout fan of all things Apple and would love to be involved in what­ever way I could with the com­pany. I remem­ber the call extremely well; me on my hotel room bed, fid­get­ing and doo­dling and cir­cuitously explain­ing that all I could really explain was that I wanted to have a rela­tion­ship. I got ner­vous at one point and started sec­ond guess­ing myself and my inten­tions for call­ing, to which Steve replied “don’t worry, I have a very good bull­shit detec­tor.” I found it very com­fort­able to be myself around him from that moment on.

The bull­shit detec­tor must have stayed silent because In the fol­low­ing months and years I was invited to help intro­duce prod­ucts and soft­ware at sev­eral Mac­world keynote addresses in San Fran­cisco. I got to know him a bit in our time together on and off the stage. I remem­ber Steve as being almost iri­des­cent; one sec­ond he would be talk­ing to you about “archi­tec­ture” as it related to dig­i­tal data flow, and then in a microsec­ond turn his head a dif­fer­ent way and men­tion Bob Dylan or a killer sushi place and just be the biggest rock star on the planet.

in Spring of 2008, RIM (mak­ers of the Black­berry) approached me about spon­sor­ing my upcom­ing sum­mer tour, and as I got closer to accept­ing the offer I knew I had to call Steve to give him the heads up. I explained to him that the money they offered would allow for a bet­ter stage design and an all around higher level of pro­duc­tion. I also told him that the con­tract with Black­berry would mean using their prod­ucts exclu­sively. He thanked me for call­ing him, praised the peo­ple at Black­berry and told me he would send me an iPhone to at least play with on the bus.

I accepted the offer with Black­berry, and in the months lead­ing up to the July 29th release date, the iPhone became the most desired item on the planet. Every­body wanted one, and nobody had yet to see one in per­son. It was myth­i­cal. That day I was play­ing an amp­ithe­atre in Indi­anapo­lis, and some­time in the after­noon the pro­duc­tion office got a call over the radio that a sales asso­ciate from the local Apple Store was stand­ing at the out­er­most gate of the venue with some­thing addressed to me. A few min­utes later some­one knocked on my dress­ing room door and handed me an Apple Store bag. Inside was an iPhone, and taped to it was a card; it belonged to Steve Jobs, CEO, 1 Inifi­nite Loop, Cuper­tino, Cal­i­for­nia. Hand­writ­ten on the back­side of the card was one word: “Enjoy!”

Just the great­est thing.

I used to think that when you died, every­thing you ever learned and amassed along the way in your life just stopped exist­ing, all of it returned into the uni­verse and repur­posed for some­thing else com­pletely. Steve’s pass­ing made me real­ize that can’t be true, because every bit of energy and intel­lect he spent his life to col­lect is still here with us, as vital as it was when it was with him. I can’t think of a bet­ter way to mea­sure a life well lived.

JM

New York City  (Our babies home!! )

Orig­i­nally posted on John Mayer’s blog: ONE FORTY PLUS .

***LOVE*** ***LOVE*** ***LOVE***