John Mayer: How do you find a real guitarist? Ask a real pianist

ELTON JOHN: The first thing that struck me when I heard your album [Room for Squares, Aware/Columbia] was the musicianship involved in it. Your guitar playing, and the high quality of all the musicians' work on the album, immediately endeared me to it, because I feel that as far as skillful musicianship goes, it's kind of gone out the window of late. Your playing seems to be influenced by so many different people. Who were they?

JOHN MAYER: When I was a kid I was influenced by whoever was on the radio--Michael Jackson and the Police and bands like that. Until I picked up a tape of Stevie Ray Vaughan's music. There was something resonating in it that I still can't describe. My life was different once I heard that. I didn't know what that was, but I wanted to do it. I remember saying to my dad, "Can I go to blues lessons? Do they have blues lessons down the street?"

EJ: And when did you start playing the guitar?

JM: I was 13. I remember the first night I got my guitar, trying to figure it out for myself--and it didn't take long to figure out a chord. I had the guitar two weeks before I took lessons, and I feel like that's the best thing you can ever do for yourself.

EJ: I agree with you. I kind of learned by ear and then I had lessons later on and it really helped me, just picking things up myself. I think you form your own style that way.

JM: Yeah, I see the guitar in a way that I could never articulate to anybody. Everyone has their own theory. You have to have a theory to play the instrument, but for the most part--

EJ: --It's all about your own soul coming through. I'm sure you hold your guitar sacred, right?

JM: Absolutely. It's the biggest joy. It's like this firework in your gut. It's the closest thing to being able to make things appear and disappear, it's almost magic.

EJ: You can get so high off a feeling like that. So when did you start singing?

JM: Singing had always been there. I used to do middle school and high school theatre before I hit puberty. But I just got so into guitar playing; I wanted to be the best guitar player. I didn't care if people said that John Mayer was obnoxious, because I probably was. But if it was ever followed up by "But, damn, he can play guitar," that was fine with me.

EJ: And when did your songwriting start to come together?

JM: I was always observational and would find a way to make people go, "What the hell are you talking about?" So, I didn't see how I could not put that into a song. When I heard Ben Folds and even Dave Matthews before him, there was this kind of going above and beyond and almost taunting other bands. As a writer, as an arranger, Dave Matthews was almost taunting everyone else in terms of how many hooks he was putting in one song. He really inspired me to stuff as much as I could into a song before I called it done. And Ben Folds, his conversational style was so breezy--

EJ: --And also very observational.

JM: Very observational! His poetry was that he wasn't taking his thoughts and processing them, imprisoning them through romantic-speak. I really gravitated toward it and decided that I was going to write

EJ: The thing I like about Ben's lyrics and yours is that they sound so American. I come from a background of loving Americana--Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys, Randy Newman--and Ben writes about Americana as it's happening now.

JM: With him, it's melody first, and I think you're the same way. I almost think bands now could be more melodic, but don't want to be.

EJ: A lot of bands are not great musicians, so they're tied to a certain number of chords they can play. And that limits them.

JM: I can't imagine how it doesn't limit you emotionally, either. I don't know if I would enjoy doing what I'm doing now if I didn't have all my faculties coming into it.

EJ: That's one thing I noticed when I first met you--you are enjoying yourself so much. When we had dinner the other night and you said, "I've done my thing in the van," it brought me back to when I did my thing in the van. And then you said, "I'm now graduating to a tour bus," which is gonna be like, Wow! It sounds really cliched, but I think doing that and serving your apprenticeship does give you that determination. So when you do progress, you're just so happy because you've been in that bloody van. There are times when you're traveling and you think, Is this all worth it? But you know inside that you wouldn't want to do anything else.

JM: Absolutely. I've always had a confidence that I can't explain. It's not like a boorish kind of overcompensating confidence. It's just that growing up there was enough doubt from all angles in what I was gonna do that I developed this really ice-cold confidence in being able to go, "OK, well, watch and see."

EJ: These days it's a case of make a record, go on MTV, and then do a gig. You've done it the other way around, and that's the proper way for a musician to do it. In the old days, even people like the Rolling Stones had to do that--they didn't get the record contract first. It drives me nuts that bands make these videos when they should be on the road. The record companies should be pouring money into them on the road so that they learn their craft and write their songs.