John Mayer: ‘Sob Rock’ and Implanting False Memories | Apple Music

[Music] oh and i like these chairs because you can't slow no you have to stay lit yeah that's something i do ask for is a peak alertness [Laughter] i forgot how funny i am well you're in show speed yeah yeah shows people you're a sharp dude i can't come in there and feel slouchy did you did you have a thought to yourself like oh i'm going in with mayor he's fast i better be fast yeah i did i was exactly you know i did a few press-ups it happens a lot though people think i'm going to be fast and then i'm not fast and then they're fast and then i'm not yeah but you have that same thing that like um certain individuals have where you've established yourself to some degree as uh you know a charming raccoon tour someone who's what i would consider who what how i refer to your manager about 20 minutes ago as a charismatron oh that's great and uh and so what happens is people tend to show up yeah i try to out charisma the careers first of all i hear the headphones and it's driving me batty okay yeah and that that's actually before we go down this road and every other road to come that brings us to this room yes because you're so in tune with this room i didn't even pick up on that yeah it was like it was making me anxious it's just the headphones were bleeding back no but i love that in fact you know it's funny you know because we come into a room like this and we've very carefully made it a set this is not a set this is a place you've spent a lot of oh yeah but i i wrote a lot of songs in this room yeah yeah right behind me where that's where i sit and that's where i spent a lot of time not knowing what it is i'm looking at or listening to you stare into the blankness all the time this is a room where you just make believe and then you stop and you go back in there and you listen and there's nothing yeah sometimes this is the room where you hit something and you go cancel all your plans this is this is it for now here we are yeah yeah that's the best feeling in the world yeah but you can't you're right you can't turn that on no it's not you gotta show up just show up you gotta show up you just show up that's the great thing about this building is i can walk in because someone will say hey let me play you a song in a different studio yeah and i'll sit and listen and if it excites me i'll get up in the middle of the song and go i'm going to get my guitar and so you do you have no problem inviting yourself to that wedding no i don't invite myself in but i'll invite myself on the song that's what i mean so once you're in the room you'll happily say man i could totally make this video i can't i don't have a choice man that that level of excitement when i hear the flash point of someone's new song you're just they're not playing your song they've had forever this is this is they came to get me or something i want to play something yeah yeah yeah so there's already that sort of assumption to some degree yes i think um i think so a little bit yeah and that's what's going to ask you actually which is like being john mayer and being somebody who's some musically gifted yep total facts stand by it and also very adaptable to your environment do you walk in the room and kind of know that people are subtly like you must know that if you go and hang out with sean sean's kind of looking you like dude sean's a little different i mean i really i think i know everything he makes we send each other everything we make so i know it's really cool like as i sit here like i know what his what he's going for on his next record yeah you know which i i find actually like really kind of informative for me as a musician i understand if i can understand where the key players are going it helps me understand where i would sit given the records i make what i love about your relationship with sean is that on paper it feels more like a sort of um you know somebody who is uniquely inspired by you that you would then try to nurture and guide but i know that you actually have a deep friendship and there's a there's a bro down there he's remarkable i got it he's remarkable that's all there is to i mean he'll send me stuff he's working on and i'll send him stuff i'm working on it we don't we don't really sugarcoat it for each other yeah cool but sometimes we go cool sometimes we go now that's one yeah he he is so honest man he's really you know he reminds me of he reminds me of george harrison in the sense that his spirit is immovable yeah and it's his and it's honest yeah and that's very george harrison to me like i remember seeing george harrison on the dick cavett show yeah obviously not when it aired and he's not pushed around by the excitement around him have you ever experienced writer's block and if so what's your definition of it that's a good question okay here we go here we go let's go writer's block is when the two people inside of you the writer and the reader when the reader doesn't love the writer or when the listener doesn't love the player and so writer's block is not a failure to write it is a failure to catch this feedback loop of enjoying what you're seeing and wanting to contribute more to it right so writer's block for me doesn't happen as often as it does for other people because i know when i'm ready to sit down and go for it so you know when you are connected to that conduit in a meaningful way and you know when it's cloudy and best and also i don't really make records unless i've caught a new mission statement for what the music should be what the message should be and once i catch that then it's a little bit easier to write so the reason my records are so different sort of thematically is because i just have to wait until i catch a new field script idea yeah you know i'm beginning to look at what i do more like a film director yeah not to be artsy fartsy it's okay man i think i think conse the idea of being conceptual is misunderstood and often maligned within the creative that's right that's right well because now you're asking me for the first time yeah to articulate verbally yeah the way i've gone at it in my head yeah this is the very first time i've ever put into words what the process of making sawbrock was and and for this one it was i thought about it this morning because even i was starting to have to practice putting these thoughts into words i think i got more out of once upon a time in hollywood than i ever expected to get out in terms of it being an achievement an aesthetic achievement and i thought a lot about being a director on this record having tenure having what the kids call clout if i'm working on a movie or a record then people might want to know what that idea is and might trust that whatever that idea is is worth watching or listening to to keep the metaphor running i'm with it so to me it's like sitting down to write a movie oh i have an idea for a movie i don't hear about movie writers getting writer's block i just hear about them picking different projects i think they probably do i mean i think barton think there's a great example of that script writers do definitely go through that but i think what they have is the opportunity to lean into characters that's right whereas you know there's this whole idea of being of being in the music arts of of like if it's not a real representation of the pain or the feeling you're going through at any given time how are we supposed to connect with you that trade is a lot well what if what if you don't know it's real while you're doing it that's the part i know when you listen back and realize it's real that happens all that's on this record i thought i was joking i thought i was kidding and so did i when i saw the cover but you sent me the record before i saw the cover on you the album title so let me give you a little bit of a twist on the tail you were kind enough to send me the record with no title no nothing no art no nothing so i put it on and i'm like wow all right john's doing some soul searching here and then i see the title and the album cover and i'm like okay good good this is the barometric pressure mash up here this is how are we looking at the puppet now like what are we doing here like why are we looking at this when it sounds like this okay so i'm coming at it from the wrong angle that most people are coming at it from and i'm confused good you know i've done this for long enough that the idea of just a single layer offering doesn't excite me anymore i'm interested by that you mean 10 beautifully constructed songs about heartache and resolution and then presented in a way that perfectly represents that is not the move you got the songs you've already got the songs on the sub rock the songs exist the songs were written before i went in the studio exactly the narrative is there the script close your eyes and listen to the songs there's one narrative what i'm saying is that to follow that narrative all the way through does not excite you you like to put that narrative to one side and work out how i can subvert or create on top of that that is correct right so when i was making the record the idea was that i was getting somewhere if i laughed right right not because it's hilarious and it's insincere and it's jokey it's unexpected yeah we laugh when when when the sentence ends in a way you don't expect or just the song that explains this the most is why you know love me on the record which is funny in the sense that it is so blatantly beautiful and sappy and it's like this late 70s kind of you know all the names you know the lyrics are brutal i've never written more brutal lyrics in my life and when i would play it for people they would laugh because it's like what what are you doing and then sort of go like stop it right it's like this umami flavor where musically you're on a sailboat and lyrically if you really break it down it's really really intense because here's what i can't understand about that song and i need and this is where you're going is that that is that if it just worked phonetically why you know love me fine okay laugh or don't but why don't you love me works just as well no it doesn't why you know love me is how i have spoken those words for a long time in relationship and it is the child who you know it's not it's not english as a second language it's language as a second language how do i use these words that i've just learned as a child to quit and maybe i'm maybe it takes 43 years to ask that question yeah but you still ask it in the language of a child how is it possible how is it possible that you couldn't love me right and [Music] that's brutal but it's funny as all things that are brutal are when you're an adult do you know what i'm talking about and for me i wouldn't have finished that song if i thought it was a joke i would have give i don't have the balls to carry a joke that far but what was really interesting to me remember the hunt for red october yeah they're speaking russian yeah for the first like five minutes and then it just becomes a burger and it flips they're speaking english so that you don't have to read subtitles the whole time yeah but the implication is they're speaking russian the entire time yeah there comes a moment in why you know love me where you get it yeah and it's not broken yeah and it's it's not flawed and it makes the most sense you could ever imagine so i haven't heard that language as wrong since well before i ever recorded it whenever i want to write a big song i can't a big song meaning spatial i want to write about outer space i want to write about the the concept the the huge glacially large space inside of the heart when it misses and this and that and that's when i get writer's block because i try to put the put basically a song to fill the entire galaxy and i've never gotten a song that way but if i write a song about something the size of a glass of water and i do it right i notice a week later it's got the universe in it right beautifully put so i'd rather have the universe in a glass of water than try to make a glass of water fit in the universe and and and that's why i stay home a lot instead of go to dinners because everyone's trying to fill the universe up with one glass of water and i go listen we would have a better time if we picked a microscopically small detail and worked that for an hour and a half or two hours you know i love that um there's a line i don't know why it just it reminded me of a line in the album which made me laugh but also made me really like that's dialed in which was hurt me once remind me the first line hurt me once i'll let it be hurt me twice you're dead to me hurt me three times three times makes you make it's true because it what it does is it creates this infinite loop of pain and hurt because whenever people say to me well you hurt me too many times you're dead to me that's it we're done it's not it's never the end no in fact we hurt our family the most the and like this is also part of getting older is to not create bonds with scar tissue scar tissue is a wonderful way to bond with someone if you're looking to just bond but without any regard to how or who it is yeah you're bonding with and that's you know there are people who have hurt us enough times they somehow join the legacy gang i don't think anyone is going to figure that out in our lifetime that's how that works suddenly like you know the person who hurt you the most she's with me we've been through a lot you know and as you get older you learn not to build relationships off of the connective tissue of sorry of hangovers of morning afters and as you get older you go be good to me from the start because nothing to certain people and i have a kind of a disposition for this nothing feels better than someone stitching up a wound they made yeah there was something more intense and more actualized about someone saying i'm sorry i did that to you that felt like love times a thousand and now and i think this is everybody you get to your 40s you go i want to hear someone say i would never do that to you i think in your when you're 28 that's not very sexy when you're in your 40s that is the language that i think people start getting attracted to is i just wouldn't do that to you you know when i hear these songs on this record right it shouldn't matter but it does that to me is like i'm going to say it classic may i like it you just write these songs that just have this perfect story to them and you sing them in a way that is so in awe of the song like it's like you're an awe of the song not of yourself but of the song like i gotta present this in a way that it deserves to be presented which a lot of people when they're going to belt it out they take away from that i think you seem to truly understand that the song is separate to you ah okay i will agree with that i am making the little world that i then get to stand inside of and sing yes yeah yes and then if it's really good i'm gonna i'm in enough of a sort of separate headspace while i make the record that once it's done i can hear it for the first time so i'm listening to saab rock like a fan i listen to the record i pick one song a day and just go six times into it i love that because i can't believe it's me it shouldn't matter but it does i wrote in my head it was the only song i never wrote down i just knew how i would just work on it in my head and stand in the shower and work on the song and then i went up and wrote it up in the studio in montana i wrote it in an evening i just put it down and i didn't i thought it was nice okay it's nice normally the first song you write for a run is like the pipe clearer right it's all right you know um and went through a lot of iterations while we were recording it from kind of electro to super synthetic did you do a lot of versions of a lot of songs yes this is the record where i had 10 songs locked these are the 10. my record before which was search for everything to me suffered because the door was open to it the whole time new songs would come in old songs would go out so there was probably a version of that record that would have come out a year earlier that would have been a little more focused so the new rule was these are the ten now what are they going to be drinking what am i putting what clothes am i putting if you want to write another one it's for the next record right right right right and so it just became this is my script this is my movie we're not going to write a different scene from a different movie in this movie and it was really about going in and recording it and listening back to it and asking myself the crucial question do i believe this or is this foolish you know or does this really carry out what i think the vision could be for a record like this and shouldn't matter but it does end it up after that maybe the fourth run at it not the fourth take probably the 400th take all in but the fourth set of clothes yes the fourth set of clothes was acoustic guitar yeah vocal count one synth bass and drums and that's kind of in a way that album that's live that that performance is live that the acoustic and the vocal are in the same microphone even the pads in that song that's so subtle that's greg filling gains doing voicings on an old roland you know jx8p yeah like only he could do so this is where i go back into once a time once upon a time yeah you can get actors who can in a movie who can communicate something like they did in the past so that you understand what kind of movie you're watching and i felt very much the same way like get greg filling games instead of get someone to do greg film games and that song if you key in on what he's doing on the synth it is orchestral where it never gets and this is the game this is the whole saab rock game gets sweet but never sappy yeah it's this record is like demonstratively sweet and luscious and melodic and colorful but it's never to the point and i like to teeter on that line where you overcook it where it gets cloying yeah by the way it's easy to do if you're doing quote unquote 80s music well especially when you have a guitar at your side and you're known for being able to go on there and knock out a sweet 32 and what's great about this album is that you touch it the way you treat that is the way everybody treats the album yeah that's right it's like that's right a brush stroke here a brush stroke you know what i'm gonna use it i don't have to use it anymore i'm just gonna go there go beautiful plate like beautiful plate like first of all the china is excellent right make the pasta yourself serve it up delicious evol truffle mm-hmm that's it yes now the kitchen is foreign the kitchen is so messy yeah yeah i would have been shut down by the health department for how messy the kitchen is in this metaphor but the better a writer you are yeah is when you can is the better you are at separating how messy the process is versus the from how clean you know the plate's going to be when it gets walked down yeah yeah yeah yeah and so let me ask you this then you've got this album of 10 songs lovingly put together you've shown real restraint you're in a reduction process in order to create the perfect tense that's correct it's a reduction process which in its very essence by by the nature of the format and the way you've done it is very 80s move because i'm thinking two sides of vinyl two sides of a cassette five and five perfect then you come out and you go as far we touched this a little bit before but not satisfactory enough i think for everyone who loves you to really know why you decided to dress up like don henley and call it sobrock the idea of saab rock is that it might have been something that already happened but when you go looking it's not the idea of sombrag is to implant false memories into your brain because that's what it did for me so it's a little black mirror so this is so familiar to me why can't i find it on the internet you can't find it it's out of my brain and it's out of everyone's shared mandela effect okay and the question is can you have memories of things that never happened to you ever can you have memories of things that never happened to you or that might have happened to you but you were too young can you go back in time and synthesize a piece of work that's so true to the era that when you hear it your brain goes no no no no no we this exists no no no no no i'm gonna find it and you can't and then you subversively plant these new feelings incorrect what the is wrong with you dude correct you're a monster i love it why you no love me it totally when i hear it i can't quite see the memory but i'm almost there it's my grandmother's house and and gumby's on tv and it's all so it's like is it a dream is it a memory can i find it so for me i don't i don't feel you're awesome anymore i don't feel those words i don't feel god you're great yeah i feel now and i think this is because of deaden company someone's telling me they went somewhere because of what i did so when someone tells me the memories that they've had while this music is playing like i would do playbacks over zoom for different uh partners and business partners hey so-and-so yeah uh it's me again can you jump on a zoom and and people would be in the chat like a typed chat and while the record was playing they would just start going this reminds me of this or this reminds me of that oh my god i want to listen to this on this island with this person this is this part of my life this is a john hughes movie i saw you're creating memories through familiarity whether they're real or not maybe maybe you maybe i'm maybe you're that is loud and clear and people are when people tell me where they're going because of this record it's like that started when people came to me after dead and company shows and said because of your music i'm able to take my son or my daughter or because of your music i'm able to listen to the music that my friend and i who's no longer here used to listen to i'm only here for transportation well you're a really fascinating case because on the one hand you've been one of the most long lasting contemporary figures in modern music and yet i don't chalk that down to your albums being in one trend or another or following they've always been out of the trend actually when i when i made my first record i was told look it's not what's hot yeah what a great thing to be told at the beginning by the way oh i would just get my spirit crushed look this is what's hot p-o-d yeah papa rope but i'm serious looking back on it tim thank god you got hit with that realness early on and came through the other side i'm trying what i would love other people to understand is that there is no more reason to have to adhere to any given idea of cool especially post pandemic which for the first time in anyone's lives yeah stopped the clock on hyper modern day trade of culture and so for me i went i don't have to do anything i don't want to do and in fact i can make a record that's in some way provocative if not antagonizing right and then i did what i thought was going to be antagonizing and this is the most important part of the conversation i think creatively you may just have to dress up your intentions to make something different and call it by a name that no one else is going to call it after it's made and for me it was like i'm going to get in trouble i want someone to tell me this is sh and i made a record that to me at the time only in a way to coax something out of me that i wouldn't have normally done post a record it's called sabra because it's a post right but more importantly it's what i thought was a post and this gets down to where artists sit in front of you and play you what they think is their garbage and you go that's the best thing i've ever heard you play so it makes a mockery of them the whole experience it makes a mockery of their interpretation of the experience which is just enough to break out of the mold and make something unique exactly so you detonated it yeah and and and the reason you have to is because i never want to be that artist who runs out of paint colors and begins to just make the same songs over and over again and that's every like if you're lucky enough to be 20 years in you do have to deal with the fact that wow these paint colors they want me to use it's another blue painting it's another blue painting with a white stripe it's another blue painting with a white tree it's another blue painting with a white car so for me i'm only interested if i get to put new paints on the canvas and if my way of doing that this time was no one's look literally no one's looking this one's called saab rock because you just would never imagine that was the name of the record and i'm going to go so deep into my fantasy like i live half of me is in this fantasy all the time now especially as i'm sort of watching the promo stuff come together fantasy of being able to detonate the world of sabra like the world of this music and remember i would get in the car to go home and there's nothing in the world there's just like trash blowing across the street and people walking diagonal across the street you're listening to wild blues quiet as you're listening well yeah like what alternate contrasting reality am i in right now i was actually dead quiet because by the time i left the studio every night that was it right yeah and i'd go to bed and i'd wake up and i go okay let's use this freshness and listen back yeah i go right back into the record yeah and it would tell me what's not right and i'd go i'd listen all the way to the studio and don was would say johnny what we can start with and i go this and that and that and that and that and i would just go in all day because to sit and work on this record was the only shot at a reality that i had that i wanted to be in we would all meet up in this studio put the music back up and that was the only access we had to happiness yeah and joy yeah and so sabrak is made to make you feel joy because it was made in a moment where joy was at such a premium that i was laughing if something sounded good i i was thinking this morning like the best response to music i can think of right now is oh yeah right yeah and that'll change and later on when things get better you'll want a little more intensity on it you want to the music represents the life you don't have or the life you have not enough of so everything related to saab rock is meant it's not i i promise you it's not meant to make me bigger or more anything but what is very interesting is to make a record that is already a world unto itself because of the music and then buff it out with what people experience on their way into or around the record yeah and the more that people can listen to the record and or look at the associated things and go oh there's a fine line between got it and ooh right just like movies you're either watching a movie and you're going that cop's not a cop that's an extra or you watch a movie and you go no no no no it's the cops it's the cops get away from the it's a very thin line between somebody coming along with you on the magic carpet ride or someone else going i got it i know exactly what the carpet is and good for you i think i'm going to stay here and so far because of the way the music is calibrated it seems like a magic carpet ride people want to go on and to be responsible for the magic carpet ride is more interesting to me than to be the carpet and i i i just want to be the the the ringleader of that thing i don't need i i said once the dead thing really kicked in i went i no longer want to be the thing i want to just have access to the thing yeah if you make yourself out of stardust that must have been a beautiful experience because in that environment you don't have a choice because the dead is was always the thing yeah it's like being in star wars yeah yeah it's like being a new character you're a stylist yeah you get to be in star wars yeah totally and then you learn it's kind of more fun to be in star wars than to be hero mcgregor than to be yeah you and mcgregor in a different movie where you're just the star and you know yeah so i get so much more out of being a part of a world or really it's like you know we're talking before the record has come out it's about three weeks before the record has come out and it's a big empty amusement park yeah and we're still hanging up banners yeah and testing out the rides john may's new album soft rock is out now listen listen you

Channel: Apple Music

Views: 383,858

Rating: 4.9526243 out of 5

Keywords: john mayer, john, mayer, sob rock, john mayer sob rock, why you no love me, new light, john mayer new light, last train home, carry me away, gravity, shawn mendes, john mayer shawn mendes, the search for everything, songwriter, album, john mayer album, john mayer 2021, song, guitar, interview, john mayer interview, apple music interview, album interview, john mayer apple music, john mayer zane lowe, zane lowe, zane lowe interview, live, john mayer live, apple, music, apple music

Id: r7W8E1tp97A

Length: 30min 12sec (1812 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/D-is-for-Dan]

‘Sob rock is a shitpost’ 😂

[u/jarret_g]

Watching it now. Hilarious talking about "why you no love me".

"The lyrics are brutal. I've never written more brutal lyrics in my life". I feel like this might be a whole "emoji of a wave" thing, where the title kind of overshadows the great song. I can't wait to sing "why you no love me" to my wife whenever she's mad at me.

[u/chris-ag]

interesting how he mentioned several times by now that TSFE isn't as focused as it could be. to me TSFE does feel more like a 'career mixtape' kind of record - a bit of every style he does.

also interesting how much he brings up the Tarantino/Once upon a time in Hollywood/film director idea.

[u/AllAroundYou23]

Loved the false memories bit. Feels so familiar but it’s never existed. Am I back at my grandparents house? Etc. I get that when hearing some of it so far

[u/ebrown205]

What a genius

[u/Aces11]

Great interview! Zane was much more bearable than the last one lol.

[u/jacobcongdon]

Zane definitely read the comments on the last interview they did because he just let John flow and it was such a better interview because of it. I really enjoyed this.

[u/mnazarsyed]

THANKS!

[u/Accurate-View-2114]

That cop's not a cop, its an extra!