John Mayer | Life In Music | Oxford Union

John has released six studio albums most recently Paradise Valley and has won seven Grammy Awards one more than our guest on Wednesday Billy Joel the event this afternoon will take the form of an interview but we will have some questions from you at the end now I know that some of you have been queuing since 12 o'clock so I won't keep you any longer please welcome to the chamber John Mayer Oh so the first question I wanted to ask this afternoon was what made you decide to accept our invitation I like the idea of not only coming to Oxford obviously to speak but the idea of there being a place where you can be guaranteed that there's going to be a room of people who will understand the ideas or the concepts that you set forth you can't always guarantee that your audience whether it's four hundred people or two people at a dinner are going to be receptive to the ideas or the concepts that you want to put out there and so the idea of talking to a roomful of people even if you're not music students even if you're just curious minds that's enough for me to be very excited about setting a time and place to enjoy not having to attenuate the ideas that I want to set forth because somebody is from a different publication or a different outlet and I have to think about what their sort of containment is and then work within it I get a little bit cramped intellectually from doing that so I like the idea of like hey meet at this time and place to talk to some smart kids all right all right we'll live up to those irritations um you attended one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States Berklee College of Music in Boston what was that like and how was that shaped your career um well you know I attended it I always need to make sure that I add that I I didn't I didn't go for very long I went for a year but it was really great and it wasn't great in a way that would be reflected in any sort of transcripts but that was music anyway musics not supposed to be reflected in transcripts necessarily and it was really great to come from a town where I was one of the only two kids we even played a guitar and all of a sudden become assimilated into 5,000 guitar players and that was really interesting to go from the bedroom into a city that was you know basically this amalgam of just musicians guitar players drummers singer all these people want to do the same thing you want to do and for me it was like I didn't really get into the curriculum at all but I got to read this sort of humanity study of it all was what was really great for me as a musician because I got to see what everybody was gunning for how everybody saw themselves what the race was for how everybody visualized what success was or how they visualized themselves and so the first semester I went for two semesters in the first semester was a really rigid idea that I was going to be the best guitar player I was just going to go to become the best guitar player then I realized that that's a very sort of like it is that there's no real way to define what that is anyway and so I went home for a Christmas break and really thought about what it was I wanted to do and realized oh I don't if you're a guitar player if you're only a guitar player who's trying to be the best guitar player then you're only fans are going to be fans of that sport you can't really transcend very few guitar players do and then I realized I remember saying to myself oh I want to be listenable you know I want to be listenable I want actually I remember thinking like I want this entire student body to become my audience you know and that flipped a switch and unfortunately didn't include Berkeley so much in that mission statement anymore but it was really great I've made friends that I still have there and just being able to communicate in this very sort of singular language of having this dream with other people who also have that dream is a huge part of the picture of making it you know um you might presuppose my next question but um so you went moved from Berkeley and Boston to Atlanta yeah that's sort of your way of trying to get it get into that new idea yeah I remember thinking I don't need the instructions anymore okay some people go for four years I get it I get it I get it I get it give it to me give it to me I got it I got it stopped reading stop reading the manual stop reading the manual I get it I get it and from there because I started writing songs when I was at Berkeley see I started ditching class to write songs at Berkeley and I guess looking back on it I needed the fuel of that sort of rebellion to kind of push off from and really become something so I was sleeping through classes and staying up at night recording demos in my room and then I realized oh I get it this is what I got to go this what I have to go do and I had made a friend there who lived in Atlanta and said hey let's withdraw together and go the enact in Atlanta and so we did and I remember the day I walk down the street in Boston and I went and I withdrew and they give you a sheet of paper the canary copy is there's pink copies yours see you later and I walk down the street with it going like what is that like what have I done and I remember I walked into a bump into my guitar instructor one of my guitar instructors who was like I don't see your honor I don't see you in class anymore and I said yeah I'm not going to class any more lately and he said I said I just withdrew as a matter of fact in the very first moment that I learned possibly I was going to be okay was he said well man you're you're phenomenal player and if if you is I sort of like when your teacher says to you yeah I get it hit the road man go do it that was really huge he said if you ever need to come back I'll change your grade but go get it done you know and I remember thinking at that point okay this is not the dumbest thing I've ever done and move down to Atlanta and that's how these things happen they're Hipshot Rogue loose cannon things that happen they're not ever these very specific architectural perfect moves I move down to Atlanta my I had no car I was riding Perpetual shotgun was with my friend didn't drive anywhere you know asking your best friend for rides it's very taxing after a while and then just started from there and you know look to play to 30 people and that turns into 90 people and then you sell out a place that holds 180 and you know keep something you keep you keep going from was that was it was that sort of a gradual progression was there remember when you thought like wow I've got it now like done like when did it sort of when was a left off or was that it the great thing was that the lift off was so gradual and so perfectly stepped for me which actually we will we will review in a later chapter about how that can actually be bad for you eventually but every month was significantly better than the last for five years every month was just better than the last in terms of the up ticks you know so I mean we went from I remember 1999 my goal was to sell out this place called Eddie's attic before Christmas and that place held 180 and we did it and I did it and I went I've made it and that's no different than when I was a kid saying oh this is a G chord or selling out Royal Albert Hall or selling out the o2 all you're doing is just scaling up the expectation or the goal but the feeling is exactly the same and so 1999 I was playing to 180 people mm I had a record deal 2001 put a record out and was touring the country 2002 had my first 2 or 1 Grammy Award playing - I think at that point probably six eight thousand people a night and then I just kept going up and up and up and up and like out like I say that it's a it's mostly a good thing when you have that opportunity the problem is you don't realize what it is that you have because there's no reason to expect or assume that that's crazy well it is crazy nice short factor there's yeah there's none there's there's no reason to believe that you can't get out as many eggs from the goose as you just asked for because there was really a period of time where you would just point to the to the scoreboard and nail it you know and what you then later on in life do is realize you have to realize whoa that was rare it was an incredible opportunity it was an incredible moment that does basically it comes down to like that never happens to people but you don't know when it just happens to you the lens and of the sphere of your own life always feels casual and quotidian I got a goddamn idiot got it in US Weekly doesn't put quotidian in when you say and so by by not virtue but by just the simple fact that it happens to you it's just you pass it this is what happens to people and then I realized you know wow this was an unbelievable trajectory that just kept go it's like a craps roll and it's just like it's like a 45-minute craps roll you know I'm there so it's throughout your career you've played sort of in many different styles like only you have an incredible sort of diversity and range I'm thank you you're welcome I brought a broadly your you've sort of moved from okay acoustic rock to sort of a blues show your that fair to say yeah I was always doing both yeah and sort of it you have a favorite any particular particular reason for the change well I've always loved both right so I grew up listening to I grew up in the golden era of the 80s where like this and and this this is where I have to really tread lightly because I don't want to put any music down but in the 80s is better music so because you would get it was just more it was more music per square inch in the music so it's very rare nowadays to have a hit song also be musically complex they're almost sort of you know they're antithetical to one another but in the 80s the biggest hit in the world could be one of the most well composed beautifully sort of played things like you know Genesis and the police that's really complex stuff Stewart Copeland playing the drums that's his cut that if the police came out today you know they wouldn't be popular for some reason or another because that because of the way they play they they did sort of intimidate the listener you know and so I grew up in a household where just the normal everyday turning the channels you were hearing really incredible well composed well performed music so I was always weaned on that right so I always came up on what I didn't realize was I very dense music composition but then I discovered guitar so that was the other half of this thing was like I always loved pop music I always loved Huey Lewis and the news peewee Lewis the news the blues band you know Phil Collins is a is an R&B freak you know there was there was a strain of musicality of heritage R&B blues you know a really strong presence there then when I picked up the Blues in that this sort of became the you know big quest in my life and the answer is to put them both together that's when I'm the happiest if you ever see me do a blues thing it's because I did too much pop thing yeah and I really shouldn't have to do that if I if I compose correctly I should be doing both at the same time and and in all the songs that I look at on a setlist every night and go I can't wait to play that those are the songs where the mix of the two is perfect and when I hit it it's fantastic and when I don't I have to play one song after the other to get the same effect so I have to actually play a pop song and then a blues song to get that same effect that when I am at my best I can play one song that combines the both of like in the eighties like in the eighties yeah I mean like no one thinks that stuff is corny you know it survived because it it still was connected to the heritage of you know there were even metal bands right like even even you could take a metal band the guy had hair out to here you can say hi well those guys were sitting on the edge of their bed for hours you know there was sort of the original nerds they were the original cool nerds we're like guys and metal bands right like all these guys from rat and poison and you know they were they were they were shredding you know and shredding means sitting in a room yelling mob a practicing you know for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and I really think that ethic was very important you know so did you ever see yourself revisiting some of your earlier styles for sort of the days of the John Mayer trio any yeah oh yeah yeah you know I'm I suffer from the curse of options you know about cast aside it is if you only have a life expectancy of like you know it you know 80 what is it what is it now seventy nine point five or something for a guy if you if your rock starts you know 34 34 I'm living on borrowed time its job for me it's it's like you know most people have time management problems in a day or a week and I think sometimes I stress out because I have like time management problems in a lifespan you know and and and I so I get very I get frustrated with touring you know how many years am I really going to have where I'm fertile and good at this and do I want to spend seventy five percent of those years on the road you know so it's really hard it's it's kind of my biggest challenge I think it's actually if I were to like self diagnosed here it's been a little bit of the problem as to why people have difficulty understanding / appreciating who I am as an artist because I haven't necessarily made the statement and restated it and restated it and restated it so that people could all get on board with the same statement because I need to do the next thing that moves me so that I can move forward and keep evolving I think sometimes by the time people go to the breadcrumbs I lay out for one thing I'm already gone and so that's really not been great for me commercially but I think artistically I think you'll just have to sort of look at it all from you know an aerial view and go well it's okay I'm giving up sort of being the most popular thing of the day to sort of write this much longer sort of script which is wow that's a guy who's we're looking at the letters in the word going oh gee oh I don't know about G this year but if you if you zoom out you can see oh there's something actually being composed here of a larger sort of sloth you know I will let you into this when I when I was home for a long time and I had nothing to do I got a little insane but also kind of brilliant in a weird like get off my lawn sword away people huh I took I went through I was very intrigued by Bob Dylan and how for every point you can make about why Bob Dylan is brilliant you could make another counterpoint as to why you would never want to include Bob Dylan in in your dreams of being a musician right because of one reason or another it's just a great thing to do to look at somebody that you really admire almost to the point of you know obsession and humanize them and break it down and look at it instead of looking at something 30 years after its heyday where everything gets crystallized into brilliant awesome he went electric and everybody went boo and he would yeah take it and the world went yeah we love it well you have to break that down and get into it and look at it linear look at it like you're in that moment looking forward so I took I went to Wikipedia and I took and I took every single record he ever put out the year it came out and the church and the top chart position that it got to and I graphed it and so this was the top sharpest it was went from like 1 to 70 something so that was how wide it was and I went across this way and this thing goes like it looks like an EKG going across now if you're if you're only honing in on one moment right where it goes from where goes from 3 to 20 on the chart it's moving about a half an inch but if you have just put a record out that has underperformed quote-unquote so that now you've slipped and the press imagine going from 3 to 20 this year the press will eat you alive he's done your label will drop you know says it has been nevermind good night on to the next guy oh these three clones they played one one's a DJ other one does backflips and the other one oh that's really impressive fine but your attention will shift but if you look at it like this that becomes the most impressive shape your career can possibly take one for twenty four seventy seventy four thirty one that's to me I think the way that you can be around forever is not to do whatever it takes to hook yourself to the number one position because if you do that then the constant is number one at the expense of the variable being whatever it takes to be number one and that's also a ticket out it's a ticket one now on 1776 I mean now at least it's compressed enough now the way the world works where my last record came in at number two that's um that's incredible I had a cake with a number two made so that nobody forgot around me that number one I'm not upset and I will never be upset at chart position I'm going this way not this way you know and also so everyone else could realize that their hard work is still paying off this this uh this jockeying for one jockeying for real estate in people's minds every single day it's highly impatient and I find that I think impatience is a turn-off yeah so without asking you to sort of divulge anything where you know you've spoken about your variations where are you heading now I don't know if you know this most people don't have to ask me to do that where am i heading now yeah off to paradise funny oh um starting to think about it I have not written a song since wildfire which was like the very last thing that went on the Paradise Valley record that was like June I think I need to make a record that sort of brings everything back into focus I've really enjoyed and I still enjoy the sort of simplicity of some of these compositions but I feel like it's time to make a record that takes a while well the born race took quite a while born or raised was a very well-thought thing Paradise Valley was my first experience and experiment with hey here's a bonus record you can't hate it because it wasn't supposed to be here anyway so going but then I realized that does make a statement people do clock that so I think what I need to do sort of keeping with the previous conversation I think that I've got to make a record that is the ultimate sort of Here I am you know so I think it's time to go back and you know it's like in the movies where the the ex-marine grows the long beard and long hair and takes off to like Tibet or something and then there's always a moment I don't do that anymore and then he shows up at the Pentagon and totally clean shave and he's like where do we start I may be shaving the beard soon yeah I may be shaving the beard soon and saying you know let's make let's really take time and put together the blues the R&B soul blues ethic the guitar playing thing which I've never really been super excited about purposefully being you know like like having guitar histrionics it's never really been not shredding I can't know you exactly because when I went to Berkeley I saw people do it and I was like you know but I do think that that I'm getting kind of this place in my life where if if you can man just do it you know I went I had this moment where my youth I was really frenetic and everything was like whatever and then I hit this mode where it was like less is more and now as I get into my later 30s I'm like if you can do it do it all the time you know you do it all the time as long as you can do it do have just shred show people what you can do you know so it's a sort of this arc also of how fancy you think you are find yourself to be well not known I was speaking to Michael about this earlier I know that you had some throat surgery well too long ago and that was difficult and obviously you know just being perfectly fine today yeah you want to talk a little bit about that I know you've had to be sure Botox II star yeah but Botox II don't know times ii yeah i had botulism inserted into my neck by way of a hypodermic syringe that's um unfortunate it worked it worked immediately it worked immediately the one thing I learned was that medicine the world of medicine doesn't know everything it's not a complete map not every single area of that globe has been charted and and you don't know that till you hit something and you go oh we don't have any I don't have any idea where we are right now you know when a doctor tells you like I remember the first guy really talked on the phone if I went oh boy and that's not good when the doctor yeah you got one kid you got this is a tough and then and then when doctors give you like nine options and each option kind of cancels out the next one and the one before it so at the end you can't there's no clear you know you go to get to that like what would you do if you were me thing and and really all it was was just this like a abrasion in my throat because of where it was my throat kept working working singing singing talking talking it wouldn't heal so like having a cut on your hand they said and just not stop clapping so the first thing was with an operation that tried to cut it out hoping that the healing would be easier I don't know then I met a guy who said here's what we do we shoot you up with Botox it paralyzes the vocal cords so you can't clear your throat you can't you know you can't close them even if you tried and I said great when does that happen and he says right now and I was just like you know at that moment it was like I really thought about athletes right athletes they work at the highest level of physicality that a human being can have you know so in a way these two little muscles right here sort of like being a basketball player football player your football you know I know my audience good save thank you no actually I meant I meant I actually was thinking arsenal when I said I only know one team it's Arsenal where if your if you're performing it this high-level and what I mean by high level I mean sort of these large stages where there's there's crowds of 25,000 people each night I thought immediately in that office thought about athletes and athletes sort of hand their body over to the team go yeah cut the knee out whatever you like take the art Allah take take the cartilage out whatever you need I'll be back in two years you know I thought about Peyton Manning who would had a neck issue and wasn't on the field for a while thought about Kobe Bryant who continually has problems with his fingers and you know like you know Dwyane Wade or Chris Bosh is knee or something like that you know that okay your your body is sort of now handed over to this sort of Olympian level thing that you do so if something happens to it you don't really necessarily have a say or even have a self that embodies that so I was like yeah put it that we got to do it and so they actually put injected it through the neck from the outside just but he feels around and then he goes and pushes it through the you feeling needle go through the neck through your throat and then and then again he's like okay that's that side and and and and in those moments you stare it whatever the dumb picture on the doctor's office wall is or you stare at some arbitrary thing and it becomes sort of you up this bond with it because you're staring at and you go okay you like here and it's others we have to save yourself I love music I love singing I love doing this I will do I'll see you later I'll do it again we'll be back I love this too much and it's what did you have but it's no different than getting that slip from Berkeley going like this I love music they're leaps of faith because you do you want to do what you love and you have no other choice but to move forward because backwards is screwed you know you just burnt backwards death there's no backwards anymore it's that and then in a way sometimes I think we do that so we don't leave ourselves an option there's no debate it's this way because there's nothing back there there's all F you back there this is you know I got forward so I never really freaked out I had a difficult time but I knew I love music I love singing I love being an artist and I'm also in some odd way somewhere in the middle of my own biography that will say and then in 2011 he had this and and and if you sort of commit to the extremes that I do in my life I realized very early on that I was going to commit to extremes then one of the extremes as well as getting a Grammy on your second year of playing on stage is also going to be having an ailment that's going to take you out of the game for a minute and it's when you realize that oh okay so there's sort of this balance that's happening overall and it's it's not happening here it's happening all the way to the left and all the way to the right there you go that's a crazy way to live you know but I'm sort of signed up for the ride now present company and experience included here because this is really out of my element um I know another another big change you made you move sort of to Montana you should try to get away from everything yeah you try to get a sort of a rural setting yeah was that like why'd you do that did that help you greatly it was perfect it was it's been it saved my life save money or uh yeah because I wouldn't had much of a life if I was still in my head the way that I was a couple years ago and it saved my life because it took me out of this perceived noise this perceived action activity this perceived war that didn't exist and that said you sit here and I did it I mean I said I'm gonna sit there and it's really hard at first to feel the fear of missing out and sit through it but in a way I had to help which was there's nothing we could do anyway I wouldn't have been able to keep myself in the woods if I could have gone played because I would have just looked to going to play to get the boost that I needed to get and that's the way my whole life went and in a way I'm really glad that's happened to me because all I would do is book a show if you hurt someone's feelings if you were if you did something like in your personal life where you haven't called a friend back in forever and they chewed you out or if you feel bad about yourself when you should write you feel bad about yourself in a moment that that would probably provide you with some sort of perspective and learning and you go not going to feel it let's go play then you're denying yourself growing up and I could always pick up a guitar and I could always be great and while I was playing I could say why do I ever worry about what anybody thinks and then of course we take the guitar off you're just raw nerves and so because I couldn't just go rely on that as my protection I had to really sort of grow up in the interim that I had been successful for all at once you know and when I figured it out I was like thank God I still have a career after figuring it out because a lot of people figure it out when they don't have a career a lot of people go I get it let's do a show and they go nobody likes you you know so that was really great to get away some of the greatest times in the world were like coming back into LA but knowing what I knew not just about the world anymore but like knowing what I knew about where the mugs are or like where the dog lays or like you know when sunset is or like where you have to go see you know the greatest view and I had something that belonged to me which I'd never had because I always belonged to something else I always belonged to an idea of making it world domination why not keep doubling down because I turned eight hundred into sixteen hundred and sixteen hundred and thirty-two and 32 to 64 and that allowed me to stop and go about time to become a person you know and I had a rapid sort of deceleration yeah and then once I got that slow I was like I now have an advantage to my life as a celebrity because you're not full of it if you put if you say celebrity and then fine because watch this let's try it out if I didn't say they're crooks because you know life is a celebrity don't you really don't you realize that's very important now that gives me such a leg up because I now can I don't want to say this the wrong way but I kind of appreciate nonsense instead of take it on as the enemy I sort of appreciate it as something I know how to turn off because I just have a no no gossip no magazine TMZ bla bla bla rule at my house because I might as well not have a gate if you let people into your mind like that you might as well not even have a gate people lock their door celebrities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security and then get on the internet every morning and look at all this stuff online that makes them feel terrible and it's like they got in you know they got in over the fence you know and so if you're really going to live well you just it's the mind is so important to like not have visitor unwanted visitors you know um I think I'm right in saying that was sometimes when you've considered quitting music is that true yeah yeah I I've always thought I there was one time in particular yeah and instead of going on studying design or something's always been a passion of yours yeah I like a really loved design yeah actually I just finished making continuum handed it in and my manager played it for the head of the label and I was what'd he say what do you say what do you say and the call I remember why was the call came in and he said uh he doesn't hear anything on it he doesn't hear a hit Watts wants you to go back and write some more stuff and I was just like how can you not hear how special this record is and I just thought if I can't do this if I can't do this I'm done and the record went on to be really really successful and my most successful record to date I think and it taught me a big lesson which is like listen to someone's record twice before yeah you give a point of view on it so now if anyone ever plays me a song I go play it again people a lot of times it's assumed what it is they must be saying you and so but that that day I thought I'm just going to go to Parsons and and I love design and I love where it's heading and I want to have something to do with it and I'm still amateur at it but and how long did that feeling sort of a bit of disillusionment for that specific feeling disillusionment lasts for a couple days okay right but then but then take it yeah a couple days then you pick yourself up off the foot but look I didn't say like I'm gonna quit music and you didn't I don't smoke crack I said must quit music and go to school which I would have promptly dropped out of to start my own design company because I have to do those kind of things I can't actually follow the curriculum but designs weird now it's not if I wouldn't want to be a designer right now because it's it's going through its pop phase and it's it has to whatever but I wouldn't want to be a designer now with the sort of celebrity aspect of what design now means which I wouldn't want to be a part of actually do design stuff and I won't tell you what it is because I should not need to okay you know what I mean you should like it on your own you know so I'm still very interested in it but I I never want to be I never wanna have a John Mayer line of something I wouldn't want to win that way or lose that way yeah not want to lose fair and square they didn't know it is you they just didn't like it okay I can learn from that no I had some exhaust without putting you into a whole court of a position what is your what is the work for song the album which you're most proud of that sounds so corny but no it's not corny well you know you have one if I have one well I know now that continuum is the record that it was sort of the best representation of what I could do is really cohesive it was really in the moment how that makes ever had the mix there's also a time in my life where I was very open-minded I wasn't self-protective I was still riding my bike down Venice Beach and I wasn't worried who was taking my pictures why wasn't guarded I guess you should say but I will say and I think it could be believed now because it's not like my latest record it's born and raised was the most incredible experience ever had making a record you know doesn't have to be someone's or everyone's favorite for me to be able to tell you that discovering that record by way of each and every song coming out and going oh I have you Nick that was that was really a remarkable time that's when I needed music the most and that's when being a composer really came in and made me feel great I'm here and when you're what's it like writing new songs and what is your goal did you have a starting point do you start with lyrics or some of the music or does it just sort of happen it's hard to explain though it's different for everybody yeah I've never typed written a sheet of lyrics and gone in and sang them I am there's a certain kind of arrogance that I've trained myself to have where I take a moment I take a song that doesn't exist and I pretend it into existence by way of the arrogance I think of forgetting that that's not really a song yet and playing it like it is and it's really arrogance is sort of a fun word to pick but it's it's really so hard to explain you like sneaking up on this feeling and once you find it it's like lucid dreaming it's like you got a note you got to be wise enough to know you're in the dream to control it but not too excited while you're controlling it to wake up from the excitement so you realize you got something and you're like gonna be pen give me a pen you know and you can't break the trance because if you break the trance from excitement that you don't have it anymore and so really what it's about is playing playing playing playing playing playing playing play hearing when something's happening but not letting your hands stop and letting it keep going so you have to encourage yourself and persuade yourself and when the arrogance comes in is like everything you're doing is great everything you're doing is great just keep - everything's great everything's great you're the you're badass you're so badass that doesn't suck that doesn't suck because that's not the time to tell yourself it sucks anyway because you don't know yeah so it's really interesting to go into that pure make-believe wouldn't it be cool if I had a song that went like Papa a turning on the corner but Baba laid up later I was try it let's do it that fast you know that's just a thing off the top of my head you know and it's like how if you can get that if you cannot be scared of that then it's really an incredible moment to just continually throw yourself in these moments co-writing is very hard for me sometimes I don't do it most the time because if you have a different writing style yeah a lot of times I come off very overbearing not like I have it today but you sometimes it can throw someone off and I can always tell that we'll never finish the song when they go out I'm gonna finish this at home yeah no you're not like the way that I do it is to go into a moment and fight that the emptiness of the moment for something um that neatly brings me on to my next question which is about collaborations yeah so I know your most recent a girl who you love is of course a duet written and performed with with Katy Perry yeah what was that like to do to write to perform and how is that different from your other collaborations I know you that's a good question with Frank Ocean as well in that yep album yep what was that like well I wouldn't have brought her a song if I didn't think it was going to be great she wouldn't have said that she would do it if she didn't think it was going to be great so it was a completely artistic transaction I think the power of the song protected me certainly I don't know about her but protected me from the feeling of it being a little too cute I certainly didn't say and this is where directionality of an idea really comes in to play that song would have been completely different if I'd sat there and said hey let's do a duet what I ever written who you let know it would have been something completely different and so you can have two people in a room doing something that you know the mission statement could be the same in two different situations but if the directionality the idea comes from a pure place if you're just playing and I go hey I think I got a song for you then then that the quality or the it's called like the dignity of a song can it can can can explain a lot about how did you why did you do a song with your girlfriend the dignity of the song itself and the quality of it sort of stands up for ya pretty interesting the song explains why that it explains why we would have gone in the studio to do that but it certainly wasn't hair twirling with like you know what we should do because we both know there's more reason not to do that you know okay now I've got one question before we take some questions from the audience um you're heavily mobile charity work yeah I'm heavily involved with supporting veterans charities yes I know that one dollar out of every ticket you sell go through a veteran's charity yeah um what made you get involved with those charities specifically well I think it's important to say that I up until the point where I realized that this was going to be we got some leg up fans here I see in the photographer crowds I've gone leg folded and a couple more shots he's now checking the leg phone he's like we've got some movement we've got some movement let me just let me just get through all these wheels right I always I gotta be very honest I wondered and I've never told anybody that's before but I always wondered was there something wrong with me and that I didn't have a charity am i cold heartless son of a because I don't have a charity and I'm a cause I hear other people talking about it but I'm not talking about it and my cold dead inside and everything is just about me and then in about 2007 I went with a friend of mine who was an Israeli Krav Maga instructor down to a military camp military base in North Carolina and I didn't go as a celebrity there were cameras I went in under the radar I was wearing you know fatigues and I was there on a whole different capacity and what I saw was so stirring and moving deeply this deeply moving what I saw was never going to be presented to me in any other way that I was going to find on television or the internet this was not converted into media information it wasn't streamlined it wasn't compartmentalized it was a real feeling I had a real experience with this culture and from then on I went this is this is it for me this is where my passion involuntarily gets lit up for this part of the reason it's great is because I was slightly involved in like the on the fringes of the sort of green movement sort of carbon footprint the Inconvenient Truth year or so but found very quickly that people who don't want to sound out it not everybody I have to be careful it's not not everybody people who would like to continue their inaction on something the easiest way to do that is to argue the existence of it I didn't break the vase because there is no vase you know what I mean like this really highly philosophical thing of like there is nothing to fix is a really great way to ignore the question of if there was how would we fix it and I was very discouraged by that when I saw what I found secondarily I didn't go it was wasn't my first thought in the in the in the cause of caring for returning combat veterans was wow this is a debate club this is a fantastic way to corner someone in a debate because you have to then move on to the next question how would we fix it how will we know underneath it you can't deny the existence of it it was one of the very few things that I think there's a cause or movement or a call to a call to action that you can't continue to lull yourself into an action by saying I personally believe it doesn't exist and don't you encroach on my personal beliefs because in my belief system it doesn't exist and you want to go down as being someone who argued my belief system because they're my beliefs you go like this you know there's no way to put your energies into that you have to then talk about what there is to fix there's no controversy there's no you end up sounding like a dick any way you put it other than what can I do to help and that was very interesting to me and that was very compelling to me in addition to obviously for me seeing that there was this incredible need I mean it is glacially large as a need you know the number of people returning and the depth into their life the relative shallowness into their lifespan they are there in the first quarter of their life you know they're 22 years old you can't tell someone who's 22 that they're condemned to their experiences for the rest of their life you couldn't tell anyone in this room that you're condemned to your experiences for the rest of your life but to a lot of these guys and girls coming home the sort of template here is once a vet always with that whatever you are when you get home that's it and if if you can't be inspired by looking at that sort of metric and go wow we've got the resources the money the time and the sort of infrastructure to do it let's just do it this is the easiest thing to do you'd have to then admit I don't want to help get up and leave which I would be very excited to see one day there's somebody just totally implode under that you know you

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 833,873

Rating: 4.9436665 out of 5

Keywords: John Mayer, Life In Music, Oxford Union, John, Mayer, Life, In, Music, Oxford, Union, Full Speech, Talk, Single, Song, Musician, Guitar, Guitarist, Frank Ocean, Album, Free Fallin, Who Says, Heartbreak Warfare, Wildfire, Continuum, MTV, Full Album, Grammy Award, Composition, Learn Guitar, Advice, Tutorial, Interview, Oxford Union Society, Oxford University, University, Debates, Debating

Id: IsFha8P3XNY

Length: 48min 18sec (2898 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Aces11]

A scary thought