British blues singer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers on stage at Miles Davis Hall during the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 7, 2008.
Sandro Campardo/AP/Keystone
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Sandro Campardo/AP/Keystone
LONDON — John Mayall, the British blues musician whose influential band the Bluesbreakers trained Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and other superstars, has died. He was 90.
A statement on Mayall’s Instagram page announced his death on Tuesday, saying the musician died on Monday at his home in California. “The health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally brought peace to one of the world’s greatest street fighters,” the post said.
He is credited with helping to develop the Chicago-style, urban-influenced British blues style that played a major role in the blues revival of the late 1960s. At various times, the Bluesbreakers included Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, later members of Cream; Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac; Mick Taylor, who played for five years with the Rolling Stones; Harvey Mandel and Larry Taylor of Canned Heat; and Jon Mark and John Almond, who later formed the band Mark-Almond.
Mayall has protested in interviews that he was not a talent scout but played music out of a love for the music he first heard on his father’s 78 rpm records.
“I’m a bandleader and I know what I want to play in my band—who I think are my best friends,” Mayall said in an interview with the Southern Vermont Review. “It’s definitely a family. It’s a little thing, really.”
A small thing, but one that persists. Though Mayall never achieved the fame of some of his illustrious alumni, he was still performing into his late 80s, playing his version of Chicago blues. The lack of recognition bothered him a little, and he wasn’t shy about saying so.
British blues singer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers on stage at the Miles Davis Hall during the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 7, 2008.
Sandro Campardo/AP/Keystone
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Sandro Campardo/AP/Keystone
“I never had a hit, I never won a Grammy, and Rolling Stone magazine never wrote an article about me,” he shared in a 2013 interview with the Santa Barbara Independent. “I’m still an underground performer.”
Known for his blues harmonica and keyboard playing, Mayall was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Wake Up Call” featuring guest artists Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Mick Taylor and Albert Collins. He received a second nomination in 2022 for his album “The Sun Is Shining Down”. He also received official recognition in the UK with the award of an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2005.
He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class of 2024 and his 1966 album “Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton” is considered one of the greatest British blues albums.
Mayall has been asked whether he continues to play to meet demand or simply to prove he can still do it.
“Yeah, luckily there was a need. But it wasn’t really for either of those reasons, it was just for the love of the music,” he said in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio. “I just got together with these guys and we practiced.”
Mayall was born on 29 November 1933 in Macclesfield, near Manchester in central England.
A bluesman of a down-on-his-luck ilk, Mayall once said: “The only reason I was born in Macclesfield was because my father was an alcoholic, and that’s where he had his favourite pub.”
His father also played guitar and banjo, and his boogie-woogie piano recordings captivated his teenage son.
Mayall said he learned to play the piano one hand at a time—one year on the left hand, one year on the right, “so I wouldn’t get confused.”
The piano was his primary instrument, although he also played guitar and harmonica, as well as singing in a distinctive, strained voice. With only the assistance of drummer Keef Hartley, Mayall played all other instruments for his 1967 album, “Blues Alone”.
Mayall is often referred to as the “father of British blues”, but when he moved to London in 1962, his goal was to immerse himself in the emerging blues scene led by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Eric Burdon were among others drawn to the sound.
The Bluesbreakers attracted a vibrant community of musicians who joined and left many different bands. The one Mayall attracted the most was Clapton, who left the Yardbirds and joined the Bluesbreakers in 1965 because he was unhappy with the Yardbirds’ commercial direction.
Mayall and Clapton shared a passion for Chicago blues, and the guitarist later recalled that Mayall had “the most incredible record collection I’d ever seen”.
Mayall accepted Clapton’s intransigence: He disappeared a few months after joining the band, then reappeared later that year, pushing the newly arrived Peter Green aside, then left in 1966 with Bruce to form Cream, which quickly achieved commercial success, far surpassing Mayall.
British blues pioneer John Mayall performs with the Bluesbreakers at the Deutsche Museum in Munich, West Germany, on January 21, 1970.
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Claus Hampel/AP
Clapton, interviewed for a BBC documentary about Mayall in 2003, confessed that “to some extent I took advantage of his hospitality, using his band and his reputation to launch my own career”,
“I think he’s a fantastic musician. I just admire and respect his consistency,” Clapton added.
Mayall encouraged Clapton to sing and urged Green to develop his songwriting abilities.
Mick Taylor, who succeeded Green as Bluesbreaker in the late 1960s, appreciated the freedom Mayall gave his soloists.
“You’ll have total freedom to do whatever you want,” Taylor said in a 1979 interview with writer Jas Obrecht. “You can also make as many mistakes as you want.”
Mayall’s 1968 album “Blues from Laurel Canyon” signaled a permanent move to the United States and a change of direction. He disbanded the Bluesbreakers and worked with two guitars and drums.
The following year, he released “The Turning Point”, arguably his most successful release, with an atypical acoustic four-piece lineup that included Mark and Almond. “Room to Move”, a song from that album, became a frequent crowd favorite in Mayall’s later career.
In the 1970s, Mayall’s career was no longer successful, but he still toured and performed more than 100 shows a year.
“Throughout the ’70s, I played most of my shows drunk,” Mayall shared in a 1990 interview with Dan Ouellette for Down Beat magazine. One consequence was an attempt to jump from a balcony into a swimming pool that went wrong—breaking one of Mayall’s heels and leaving him with a limp.
“It was an event that made me stop drinking,” Mayall said.
In 1982, he reformed the Bluesbreakers, recruiting Taylor and McVie, but after two years the lineup changed again. In 2008, Mayall announced that he would stop using the Bluesbreaker name permanently, and in 2013 he led the John Mayall Band.
Mayall and his second wife, Maggie, divorced in 2011 after 30 years of marriage. They have two sons.
