John Mayall, the musician and bandleader often called the godfather of British blues and a member of the long-running Bluesbreakers group that produced some of rock’s greatest talents, including Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Mick Fleetwood, died Monday at his home in California, according to a statement his family posted on their official Facebook page. He was 90.
The statement did not specify the cause of death, but attributed it to “health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career.”
Mayall, who has toured through 2022, was scheduled to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in October as the organization’s Musical Influence Award recipient. On its website, the Hall of Fame praised Mayall’s “wild personality and unique voice and style” and said he “continued to experiment and expand the blues.”
“The blues is a perennial source of inspiration for me,” he told The Times in 1990. “It’s really inexhaustible.”
A guitarist, keyboardist, singer, harmonica player and songwriter, Mayall released dozens of albums and performed countless times over a career spanning more than half a century, but he is best remembered for helping to kick-start the blues revival of the 1960s, which gave rise to pop stars like Clapton, the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac.
His 1966 LP “The Blues Breakers”, featuring Clapton on guitar (not long after he left the Yardbirds), is widely considered a classic of the form and was named one of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Mayall was born near Manchester, England, in 1933, and his father collected records and played music as a hobby. He told The Times that he was “addicted” to the Mills Brothers’ music at the age of three. After being discharged from the British Army in his early 20s, he formed his first band “purely for my own enjoyment.”
But by the age of 30, he had moved to London to pursue music professionally, and had discovered a thriving blues scene which he described in a Times interview as “the South’s answer to the Beatles-dominated Liverpool pop-rock scene”. In addition to Clapton, the Bluesbreakers recruited other artists including Peter Green, who eventually left the band to form Fleetwood Mac; Jack Bruce, who had played in Cream with Clapton; and Ansley Dunbar, who had played drums for Frank Zappa.
Mayall moved to Los Angeles in 1969 and expanded into jazz in the ’70s, but he reunited the Bluesbreakers in the mid-’80s and was soon averaging 120 shows a year.
“There would be more, but I’ve put a limit on that,” he told The Times. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to live at home, and that’s very important to me.”
Mayall is survived by six children, Gaz, Jason, Red, Ben, Zak and Samson, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. According to a family statement, he is “also surrounded by the love of his former wives Pamela and Maggie, his devoted assistant Jane and his close friends.”