Mayer has a neurological condition called synaesthesia, which causes him to see music as colors. He can describe any music he hears by the colors he perceives in it; rock music is usually brown and gray. Jimi Hendrix sometimes talked about seeing colors in music and may have also had the condition.
In middle school, John Mayer played clarinet with little success. After watching the movie Back to the Future, Mayer was inspired by Michael J. Fox's guitar scene to pick up the instrument himself. "My father rented an acoustic guitar from the music store," Mayer recalled to ABC News. "I remember looking at the guitar going, 'Well, if I knew how to play you, I would play you.' And it was that simple. It was just like, I'm not gonna stand for not knowing how to play this. And I still don't."
Although he's had several songs at the top of the charts, John Mayer considers "
Your Body Is A Wonderland" to be his only "hit" song. In an interview with
Rolling Stone, Mayer said "It's the biggest hit I've ever had, maybe will ever have. There wasn't a lot of music in that song. It's a novelty tune. I don't have Lady Gaga-sized hits."
John Mayer was a tabloid mainstay at a time when social media was on the rise and celebrity blogger Perez Hilton was raking lots of muck. Mayer told Rolling Stone that Hilton is "not anyone the world should be scared of" and that he's "uneducated and highly opinionated."
Mayer had a TMI moment in 2010 when he spoke his truth in a Playboy interview, offering intimate details about ex-girlfriends like Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson, whom he described as "sexual napalm." In the aftermath, he jumped off social media for a while and stopped giving interviews for about two years. He's been much more politic in his statements ever since.
At 17, John Mayer suffered a bout of cardiac dysrhythmia, a condition that hospitalized him for a weekend. Mayer admits that he suffers from panic attacks and takes Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, to control his condition.
In 2004, Apple boss Steve Jobs personally asked John Mayer to perform at Apple's annual Macworld Conference and Expo. Jobs used Mayer's performance as a fixture for the event and introduced his company's new Garageband software at the same time. Mayer appeared at the Expo again in 2007 for the announcement of the new iPhone.
In 2006, John Mayer appeared on the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and performed "Waiting on the World to Change" and "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." His song "Gravity" was also featured in the shows House and Numb3rs.
Many oldies acts take comfortable gigs performing on cruise ships, but Mayer got into it early: he hosted two theme cruises for the Carnival Cruise line. The first was a three day trip to the Caribbean in 2008 that also featured David Ryan Harris, Colbie Caillat, and David Barnes aboard the Carnival Victory. The second went to Mexico aboard the Carnival Splendor in 2009.
Mayer was forced to follow an extended vocal hiatus and couldn't tour for a couple of years after granulomas were discovered in his throat in September 2011.
John Mayer quit drinking after he made a fool of himself at Drake's 30th birthday party in 2016. "[I] had a conversation with myself," he told
Complex. "I remember where I was. I was in my sixth day of the hangover. That's how big the hangover was."
When John Mayer writes songs, if inspiration doesn't strike hard enough to complete a song in one burst, he reluctantly creates what he calls a "homework atmosphere" to finish it later. This involves setting up a cozy space with a warm drink and standing in front of a giant digital whiteboard in his living room. Mayer feverishly maps out lyrics and ideas, determined to solve the "song equation." His motivation? He admitted in a SiriusXM interview, "I don't want to work on it anymore - I just want to have it."
Known for pop hits like "Your Body Is A Wonderland" and "
Waiting On The World To Change," you wouldn't think Mayer would fit in with the Grateful Dead scene, but in 2015 he formed the band Dead & Company with Grateful Dead alums Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. Deadheads were skeptical but loved what they heard: lots of Grateful Dead songs with none of Mayer's tunes in the setlists. The band did 11 tours before landing a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas in 2024.
Until he joined Dead & Company, Mayer had never been in a band, although he was part of a duo for a short time called Lo-Fi Masters. "I was a bedroom invention," he told CBS. "I think that explains why it took me a while to humanize as an adult."
Mayer launched his career in the late '90s just as the internet was coming of age, and he made the most of it. Unlike established acts that were reluctant to give their music away for free, Mayer had little to lose by sharing MP3 files of his songs on his website and on services like Napster. This let him reach listeners far outside of his Atlanta stronghold and built enough buzz to earn him a record deal with Columbia.
Many singer-songwriters play lots of seedy bars during their rise, but Mayer was more suited for coffee shops and bookstores. It was at one of these bookstore shows - a Borders - that he wrote the bulk of his song "
Why Georgia." He made up the verse lyrics on the spot about how he forgot his guitar and showed up late.
