John Mayer

His father, Richard Mayer (b. 1927), was principal at Central High School in Bridgeport, and his mother, Margaret (née Hoffman; b. 1947), was a middle-school English teacher.

He grew up in nearby Fairfield, the middle child between older half-sister Rachel, older brother Carl, and younger brother Ben.

His father is Jewish, and Mayer has said that he relates to Judaism.

As an elementary school student, Mayer became close friends with future tennis star James Blake, and they played Nintendo together weekday afternoons after school for three years.

He attended the Center for Global Studies at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk for his junior year (then known as the Center for Japanese Studies Abroad, a magnet program for learning Japanese).

After watching Michael J. Fox's guitar performance as Marty McFly in Back to the Future, Mayer became fascinated with the instrument.

When he turned 13 years old, his father rented one for him.

A neighbor gave Mayer a Stevie Ray Vaughan cassette, which cultivated Mayer's love of blues music.

According to Mayer, his fascination with Vaughan started a "genealogical hunt" that led him to other blues guitarists, including Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Otis Rush, and Lightnin' Hopkins.

Mayer started taking lessons from a local guitar shop owner, Al Ferrante, and soon became consumed.

His singular focus concerned his parents, and they twice took him to see a psychiatrist, who determined him to be healthy.

Mayer says that his parents' contentious marriage led him to "disappear and create my own world I could believe in".

After two years of practice, he started playing at bars and other venues, while still in high school.

In addition to performing solo, he was a member of a band called Villanova Junction (named for a Jimi Hendrix song) with Tim Procaccini, Joe Beleznay, and Rich Wolf.

When Mayer was 17, he was stricken with cardiac dysrhythmia and was hospitalized for a weekend.

Reflecting on the incident, Mayer said, "That was the moment the songwriter in me was born", and he penned his first lyrics the night he left the hospital.

Shortly thereafter, he began suffering from panic attacks, and says he feared having to enter a mental institution.

He continues to manage such episodes with anti-anxiety medication.

Both were met with positive critical reception, while the latter received a nomination for Album of the Year, and won both Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for its single, "Waiting on the World to Change" at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards.

John Clayton Mayer (born October 16, 1977) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

Mayer was born on October 16, 1977, in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

It was the latest of several reunions of the band's surviving members since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.

Mayer's secondary career pursuits extend to television hosting, comedy, and writing; he has authored columns for magazines such as Esquire.

He supports various causes and has performed at charity benefits.

He is a watch aficionado (with a collection he values in the "tens of millions" of dollars), contributing to the watch site Hodinkee, and has been on the jury at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.

He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, but he left for Atlanta in 1997 with fellow guitarist Clay Cook, with whom he formed the short-lived rock duo, Lo-Fi Masters.

After their split, Mayer continued to play at local clubs, refining his skills and gaining a minor following.

He performed at the 2000 South by Southwest festival, and was subsequently signed by Aware Records, an imprint of Columbia Records through which he released his debut extended play (EP), Inside Wants Out (1999).

His first two studio albums—Room for Squares (2001) and Heavier Things (2003)—were both met with critical and commercial success; the former won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for its single "Your Body Is a Wonderland", while the latter peaked atop the Billboard 200.

By 2005, Mayer had moved away from the acoustic music that characterized his early records, and further delved into the blues and rock music of which originally influenced his artistry.

Forming the John Mayer Trio, he released the live album, Try! (2005) and his third studio album, Continuum (2006).

It was followed by Battle Studies (2009) which marked his return to pop.

After having several controversial incidents with the media, Mayer withdrew from public life in 2010 and drew inspiration from the 1970s pop music of Laurel Canyon for the sound of his fifth studio album, Born and Raised (2012).

Discovery of a granuloma on his vocal cords delayed the release of the album until May 2012, and forced him to cancel its accompanying tour.

Despite favorable reception and becoming his second release to peak atop the Billboard 200, the album was less commercially successful than his previous work.

Mayer recovered in January 2013 and released his sixth studio album, Paradise Valley (2013) in August of that year, which peaked at number two on the chart and incorporated country, folk, and Americana influences.

By 2014, he had sold a total of over 20 million albums worldwide.

In 2015, three former members of the Grateful Dead joined with Mayer and two other musicians to form the band Dead & Company.

His seventh album, The Search for Everything (2017) was a loose concept based around themes of a romantic break-up.

His eighth, Sob Rock (2021) was inspired by 1980s soft rock music.