Music producer Don Was has worked with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt and WIllie Nelson, to name just a few, so he knows a thing or two about guitarists. Now he has singled out John Mayer as they player he believes is the modern-day equivalent of the Beatles' George Harrison.
The producer first linked up with Mayer for his 2012 album, Born and Raised. He worked on its followup, Paradise Valley a year later, and returned for Sob Rock in 2021. Throughout those experiences, Was says, one thing consistently struck him.
“The thing that separates John from everybody else that I've worked with, in terms of the process we go through, is that I've never seen anyone with that many ideas for arrangements,” he says in a new interview with the Everything Mayer Podcast.
“He's never short of ideas. We know we have to do something in a section, and he'll find 10 different, really elegant ways of making that section work. My job is never to tell him what to play; it's to help him sort through the wealth of information that he's laid down to choose the most effective.”
However, while Mayer’s well of ideas seems never to run dry, it’s another aspect of his musicianship that leads to the Harrison comparisons.
“His guitar tones are unparalleled,” he goes on. “They're not just evocative, cool sounds, but they're thick, and they're warm, and they jump out of speakers. I'm not sure how he does it.
“Yes, he's got the best gear you can have, but I've played his guitars, and I don't sound like him,” he adds, quick to dispel any cynical comebacks. “I think people might take that for granted.
“George Harrison was good at stuff like that, getting distinctive sounds that you only hear once on a certain song. That's a strength of John’s. It’s the same thing.”
Harrison provided a guitar solo on the title track of Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky in 1990, which Was produced. In that moment, he was able to see the Liverpudlian conjure magic in real time, which is why he says the parallels are so stark. And they might even see Mayer go one better than a man who could extract some rather one-of-a-kind sounds out of his collection of guitars and amplifiers.
“I was loath to say John's better than George Harrison,” Was says. “It ain't gonna sit well with people, but he might be better than George Harrison.”
Indeed, Was’s time in the studio with Dylan and Harrison was an eye-opening experience, with Dylan sitting in the producer’s chair as the session got underway.
“He didn't play the song for George, he didn't tell him what key it was in, and George hadn't tuned his guitar; he just fast-forwarded to the part where the solo would be,” he once told Kenny Aronoff. “George is scrambling to play something, and all things considered, it was pretty decent. But it was out of tune.
“Bob said, ‘Okay, that's great, man,’ and George was flabbergasted. So George turns to me and says, ‘What do you think, Don?’ and Bob Dylan goes, ‘Yeah, what do you think?’
“Time slowed down,” he continues. “My mind flashed to the time I was going to sell my career so I could go to the Concert for Bangladesh. And I was terrified.
“Then a voice went off in my head: ‘He's not paying you to be a fan.’ So I said, ‘It's good, George, but let's tune up and see if you can beat it.’”
Harrison, in return, thanked the producer. Right there, he learned “to tell the truth, but don't be a dick about it,” — something that would help when he teamed up with the Stones for Voodoo Lounge four years later.
Meanwhile, Mayer's guitar tone wizardry was pushed to new limits as he figured out an ingenious solution to the strict noise rules of the Las Vegas Sphere.
