This is a biog­ra­phy of John Mayer, an excep­tional gui­tarist, come­dian and singer. John was born ‘John Clay­ton Mayer’ on Octo­ber 16, 1977 to Richard and Mar­garet Mayer in Bridge­port, Con­necti­cut. He grew up in Fair­field, CT with his older brother, Carl, and his younger brother, Ben. John was musi­cal from a young age and at one time or another, along with play­ing the gui­tar, also played the flute, clar­inet and violin.

At age thir­teen, John began play­ing the instru­ment he is known across the world for play­ing – the gui­tar. It is said that John was inspired to play the gui­tar by scenes of ‘Marty McFly’ play­ing the gui­tar in the ‘Back to the Future’ movie. It was clear from the begin­ning that John was a gifted gui­tar player. Only two years after pick­ing up a gui­tar for the first time, John was already play­ing for an audi­ence at local blue’s clubs in his area.

John began writ­ing his own songs “in earnest” at age sev­en­teen after a week­end long stay in the hos­pi­tal due to a car­diac arrhyth­mia. In high school, John played gui­tar in a band called “Vil­lanova Junc­tion” (with band mates Joe Belez­nay and Tony Proca).

After high school, John attended two semes­ters at Boston’s Berklee Col­lege of Music before decid­ing he pre­ferred writ­ing and play­ing music to study­ing it. After he left Berklee, John moved to Atlanta, Geor­gia. *John has called Atlanta his “musi­cal home.”* In Atlanta, John became a fre­quent per­former on the Atlanta club circuit.

He released his first album “Inside Wants Out” in 1999. In 2000, after John per­formed at the South by South­west Music Fes­ti­val he landed a con­tract with Colum­bia Record’s Aware Records.

John’s first major label debut, “Room for Squares’ was released in 2001. Though it took off slowly, even­tu­ally it reached num­ber eight on the Bill­board Top 200 sell­ing over four mil­lion copies. The album included pop­u­lar John Mayer songs “Your Body is a Won­der­land” and “No Such Thing.” *In 1997, while John Mayer was at Berklee, his father sent him a note that read “Remem­ber me when you go plat­inum.” In 2002, when “Room for Squares” went plat­inum, John gave his plat­inum album plaque to his father with his father’s note to him mounted inside the frame. * In 2003, John received the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Per­for­mance for “Your Body is a Won­der­land.” When he received the award John told the audi­ence “This is very, very fast and I promise to catch up.” A very endear­ing com­ment, but one that John would later express regret for mak­ing. John released a live CD and DVD of a con­cert he per­formed in Birm­ing­ham, Alabama enti­tled “Any Given Thurs­day.” John Mayer’s sec­ond album “Heav­ier Things” was also released in 2003. It included the bal­lad “Daugh­ters.” “Daugh­ters” was a sen­ti­men­tal bal­lad that earned John two Grammy awards; one for Best Male Pop Vocal Per­for­mance and another for Song of the Year. Despite the suc­cess of the song, John believed that the song was sappy and saw it as “career death.” *In a Feb­ru­ary 2009 inter­view on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” John said that he thought he shouldn’t have won the Grammy for Song of the Year because he thought that Ali­cia Keys “If I Ain’t Got You” was the bet­ter song. Because of this, he removed the top half of the Grammy and gave it to Keys, and kept the bot­tom part for him­self.* In 2004, John recorded live con­certs across seven nights of his U.S. tour. These record­ings were released to the iTunes music store under the title “As/Is,” indi­cat­ing that the errors were included along with the good moments. A few months later, a “best of” CD was com­piled from these record­ings. The album included a pre­vi­ously unre­leased cover of the Mar­vin Gaye song “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler). The album included a solo from Mayer’s sup­port act — jazz and blues group DJ Logic. Around this same time, John began a long string of col­lab­o­ra­tions with a wide range of artists includ­ing Kanye West. Buddy Guy, B.B. King, John Scofield and Eric Clap­ton. The release of “Daugh­ters” left John con­cerned over being pigeon-holed and led him to make a move that sur­prised many. In 2005, John formed a bluesy, gui­tar dri­ven band called “The John Mayer Trio.” The band was made up of John, bassist Pino Pal­ladino and drum­mer Steve Jor­dan. The trio released the album “Try” which included the sin­gle “Who Did You Think I Was.” Though the group dis­banded in the spring of 2006, John later announced that the band would reunite to record a stu­dio album. John’s third album “Con­tin­uum” was released in 2006 and just as his first two albums had, it quickly went plat­inum. In 2007, the album won him two more Gram­mys: Best Male Pop Vocal Per­for­mance for his song “Wait­ing on the World to Change” and Best Pop Vocal Album for “Con­tin­uum.” *John was fea­tured on the cover of “Rolling Stone” in Feb­ru­ary 2007 (along with John Frus­ciante, and Derek Trucks. He was named one of the “New Gui­tar Gods.” The cover nick­named him “Slow­hand, Jr.,” a ref­er­ence to Eric Clap­ton.* At the end of 2007, John’s album “Con­tin­uum,” was re-released. It con­tained a bonus disc of six live songs from his 2007 tour, five from Con­tin­uum and a cover of the Ray Charles song “I Don’t Need No Doctor.”

In Feb­ru­ary 2008, John hosted a three-day Caribbean cruise event that included per­for­mances with var­i­ous musi­cians includ­ing Brett Den­nen, and Col­bie Cail­lat. John called the event “The May­er­craft Car­rier” and was held aboard a cruise ship. *A follow-up cruise titled “May­er­craft Car­rier 2? took place in March of 2009.* In July of 2008, John released “Where the Light Is” a live con­cert film of his per­for­mance at the Nokia The­atre L.A. Live in Decem­ber of 2007. It fea­tured an acoustic set, a set with the John Mayer Trio and a set fea­tur­ing John and his band from the Con­tin­uum album. The release con­tained bonus mate­r­ial that included footage of John back­stage and play­ing out­side on Mul­lo­hol­land Drive.

On July 7, 2009, John per­formed an instru­men­tal gui­tar ver­sion of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” at Michael Jackson’s memo­r­ial service.

On August 24th, 2009, John announced his upcom­ing record “Bat­tle Stud­ies” would be released Novem­ber 17, 2009. The first sin­gle from the album “Who Says” was released on Sep­tem­ber 24th.

“Bat­tle Stud­ies”, John Mayer’s fourth album, was released on Novem­ber 17th, 2009. The album was 11 tracks and 45 min­utes long.

On the evening of the release, John Mayer per­formed a con­cert at the Bea­con The­atre in New York which was tele­vised live on Fuse TV.

John spent 2010 tour­ing, per­form­ing to sold out crowds and con­tin­u­ing his tra­di­tion of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the music indus­tries’ finest, most tal­ented stars. On Sep­tem­ber 11, 2010 to the delight of the crowd John joined rap­per Jay Z on stage at Madi­son Square Gar­den. John also col­lab­o­rated sev­eral times with coun­try music mega star Keith Urban co-headlining a con­cert with Urban at The Gorge in WA in August and per­form­ing as Keith’s guest at “We’re All For The Hall” ben­e­fit con­cert on Octo­ber 5.

When John’s 2010 Sum­mer con­cert came to an end in Sep­tem­ber, John imme­di­ately began work on his next record and debuted eight never heard before songs before an audi­ence of his fans at a sur­prise con­cert at the Hotel Cafe in LA on Jan­u­ary 9, 2011.

In May, 2011, John announced that his next album, which will be titled “Born and Raised” is sched­uled to be released in Octo­ber.

How­ever, on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2011, John posted a let­ter on his Tum­blr blog “One Forty Plus” that due to a vocal cord gran­u­loma, which was sub­se­quently treated sur­gi­cally, John announced that the release date of “Born and Raised” would have to be pushed back on is expected to drop early to mid 2012.

John went on to make a smooth recov­ery after his surgery and excited all his fans when he announced that ‘Shadow Days,’ the first sin­gle released off ‘Born and Raised, was set sched­ule to drop Feb­ru­ary 27, 2012. John pre­miered the new song on Cities 97 radio, MN.

The release date for the album, ‘Born and Raised’ itself has yet to be made pub­lic, but it’s been hinted at by John’s crew that word will be com­ing very soon.