What he was trying to say in that song is that he was sitting outside in the rain, sitting under an old green tree, sitting there waiting to see if his girl would finally come. And his girl never came, of course, because that’s what the blues are about, about that love that is delayed or that has left, the one that broke your soul, maybe also the one that made you fly and change your life. What is relevant, in any case, is that in that song —Sitting in the Rain— Mayall had Peter Green at his side, and it was he who put into each of the notes he played on his guitar the immense anxiety of feeling abandoned, that infinite and everyday sadness of broken love, life itself.
John Mayall died on July 22 at the age of 90. For many, he was the musician who quietly opened the doors of his home, say in the early seventies, so that you could sit down somewhere and simply pay attention. This is what the story is about, he said, playing well, having a good time playing. It could be the era of The Turning Point, For example, the album he recorded live in July 1969 at the Fillmore East in New York. He had the idea of forming a group that didn’t have a drummer, a blues group without a drummer (my goodness, what nonsense!), and he also let the solos be done, above all, by Marc Almond on the flute or the tenor saxophone. Where were Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, who with their particular guitar skills had given substance, shine and prestige to the Bluesbreakers of their vibrant London era? Mayall turned around and offered you his business card: I always do what I want, I surround myself with the best, I enjoy myself.
And so it was, and he stayed on stage until very late. He was a master with the harmonica and had a particular way of singing – with great vigor and also collapsing at times -; his voice was like the cherry on top, the mark of his way of doing things, and he played the piano and the guitar. But the important thing was to immediately pay attention to what was happening around him, to the game and the complicity of his companions, who entertained themselves at every moment fighting to show who the hell did it better. Go to Accidental Suicide, the song he recorded in Back to the Roots as a tribute to Jimi Hendrix and to draw attention to the danger of drugs: there is his harmonica and Larry Taylor’s imposing bass and Don’s melancholic violin. Sugarcane Harris, but three guitar monsters also take part – Mick Taylor, Eric Clapton and Harvey Mandel – and it is as if Mayall had commissioned them to build paradise for Hendrix to rest there, and boy do they build it!
The Mayall of the sixties in London is one of the best things that can happen to you, but the psychedelic touch that he puts to the blues in his Californian period also has something to it, and then comes that moment, at the end of 1971, when he calls Blue Mitchell, Clifford Salomon and Freddy Robinson to record live. Jazz-Blues Fusion, Don’t miss it. You should listen to it in the rain, but since it’s summer, there’s no other option than to do it in full sun, perhaps under the shade of a plane tree. Now in this summer, and precisely for that reason, to put all the attention on that John Mayall who has just left, but who will continue to be there, the war in Ukraine should stop and any escalation in the Middle East should also be stopped. Let the weapons fall silent, then, and let John Mayall play again. It is right and necessary.
