君に届け ♡
❀ paulinalydwinedavita
on the contrary, am a total hypocrite so is a cynical. rest assured though, i acknowledge that ❀
❅風早;;大国男児
❀ paulinalydwinedavita
on the contrary, am a total hypocrite so is a cynical. rest assured though, i acknowledge that ❀
❅風早;;大国男児
click here for my sns list
![kdtesting123:
BACK IN TIME
CT Post 2/13/04
Up for a second Grammy, Bridgeport native revels in past, present, future
By SEAN SPILLANE
John Mayer’s success in the pop-music world may have stunned some people, but not those who knew him growing up. They say it was always just a matter of time. Even in high school, they say, the aspiring musician exuded a certain something. Arrogance? Confidence? Whatever you call it, combine it with talent and it’s brought the 27-year-old Fairfield singer a Grammy Award in 2003, more than 6 million records sold and tremendous drawing power as a touring act. His concerts grossed $23.6 million in 2004. And it’s brought him two more nominations for tonight’s Grammys for his ballad “Daughters.” For those that think he is overloaded with confidence, Mayer has no trouble with that. “OK. Yes, I have no defense for that, nor should I, because you better be,” he said. “I was always confident, and maybe arrogant, but never to put anyone else down. It was always just full-on, 100 percent trying to get this thing off the ground.” During a wide-ranging, 90-minute interview at P. Gordon’s Coffee Roasters in Fairfield, the star discussed his musical beginnings in Fairfield, his road to fame and fortune and the treasured and not-so-treasured memories that fuel his art. Born Oct. 16, 1977, Mayer lived in Bridgeport for seven years before moving to Fairfield. He has an older brother, Carl, and a younger one, Ben. If there’s anything John Clayton Mayer likes doing more than playing a guitar and singing, it just might be talking. Even the shortest question could draw an articulate answer that, more often than not, would spin off into fantastic imagery, an oral riff, before coming back to earth and re-engaging with the question. In torn jeans and sweatshirt, his 6-foot-3-inch frame slouched in a chair, hair curling in lots of different directions, he wouldn’t have been the most likely pick, even from the small crowd in the shop, as the driver of the black Porsche Cayenne out in the parking lot. Despite a steady stream of customers at the coffee shop and during a photo shoot at the nearby Fairfield train station, there was no sign of a teen frenzy that Fairfield Warde High School officials feared when they barred him from his Hall of Fame induction in December. Mayer said he has put that incident behind him. Mayer lives in the city but the star is frequently in Fairfield. He delighted the little kids and probably a few moms last year when he handed out Halloween treats at his parents’ house. Now, about that attitude. “I swear, the first time I met him he was signing this sheet of paper … like his autograph all over this sheet of paper,” recalled Joe Beleznay, a friend and former band mate, of meeting Mayer at Fairfield High School. “And I was like ‘What are you doing?’ And he’s like ‘I’m practicing.’ And I swear that sticks in my mind.” “That could be,” Mayer said with a laugh. “I probably was.” “I think a lot of people might have taken it as a cockiness,” Beleznay said, “but when you really get to know the kid and see how good he is, it fits. You have to have that level of confidence to play that well.” Ward Whipple worked at Murray’s Compact Discs in Fairfield and remembers Mayer as a “typical Fairfield High School kid.” But he also saw something else. “I think when I first heard what he was doing, planning to be a recording artist, that didn’t surprise me,” Whipple said in a recent phone interview from Chicago. “He had a certain arrogance and confidence that set him apart. The first time I saw him on VH1, I said ‘OK, maybe I’ll be staring at this guy for a few years. It would not surprise me at all.’ His talent is there.” Pete Pavone, a mechanic who worked with Mayer at the Stratfield Service Center in Fairfield in the mid ’90s, recalls that Mayer, then a counter clerk, was determined. “He had his mind set,” Pavone said. “He knew what he wanted and he was going to do it.” It was Mayer’s father, Richard, a former principal at Bridgeport Central High School, who got his son on the road to stardom, getting him his first guitar when he was 13. “There used to be the Professional Music Center on Black Rock Turnpike and my dad rented a guitar for me and I picked it up and started playing it,” Mayer recalled. “It wasn’t that it made instant sense to me; it made sense that it could possibly make sense to me. “It wasn’t that I knew everything when I picked it up, but for some reason I didn’t mind not knowing things on it. A lot of people get discouraged when they don’t know something. I was encouraged by all the things I didn’t know. I’m still encouraged by what I don’t know about it. “I had a couple of weeks before I took lessons, so I got to play a little bit before anyone told me where to put my hands. I still think a little like that; throw your hands around it and listen and if anything cool comes up, remember what you did, remember why that happened and remember how to do it next time. That’s what I still do to this day. That’s my theory.” “I remember listening to a lot of music for the first time at Murray’s,” he said. “Some of my favorite artists I heard for the first time sitting in there.” While in high school, Mayer would eventually team with Beleznay, Tim Procaccini and Rich Wolf and form a band called Villanova Junction. “We weren’t doing anything extremely serious, but the big Spring Jam at Fairfield High was the big thing,” Beleznay said. “It’s that thing you want to play if you’re in a band. “We were just doing covers at that time, fooling around. John played so well. When I first saw him play, when I was 17 or 18, the level he was playing at was like a 50-year-old musician would have been jealous. Someone that had been doing it for years would have just loved to be at his caliber.” Villanova Junction, named by Mayer after a Jimi Hendrix tune, would soon be led by the young guitar slinger. “He was the main writer. He definitely was the brains behind it,” Beleznay said. “I would try to kind of pepper the songs with ideas I came up with or lyrics here and there, but he primarily brought a lot of the music to us. “He’d say, ‘This is something that would be cool’ and we’d try to go with it. He had that confidence level; it was contagious. If you’re playing with someone of that caliber, you just never worry about it. More or less, when you’re playing with someone like that, you just know that it’s all set.” Villanova Junction didn’t play too many shows, but it did record an eight-song tape and made up around 300 copies to sell locally. “The summer after high school I made a record, which was kind of cool,” Mayer said. “I haven’t heard it in years and probably won’t hear it for a long time. I think the concept was pretty cool, making a record when you’re in high school. “It’s not a very listenable piece of work right now as it stands, but as it stood when I was 17, I had a record. Forget about the fact that it was eight songs and they weren’t very good, it was a record and it had a cover and it had shrink-wrap on it and they were original tunes.” “It was just one of those really cool things that it’s nice to be a part of when you’re that age,” said Beleznay, who is trying to make his way in the music business. “It was a really big accomplishment for us. “I’ve seen some copies floating around on eBay and somebody said one sold for $300 or something crazy like that… . But you know the fans always want to know where you started. It’s like the Holy Grail to them.” After high school, Mayer attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he would meet up with Clay Cook, nephew of The Marshall Tucker Band’s Doug Gray. “[We] started writing music up at Berklee and I started skipping classes to write music and record stuff,” Mayer recalled. “We had this kind of secret society of people making these songs up. We started recording at 2 in the morning and would stop at 6 or 7 in the morning and sleep all the way through to 3 in the afternoon. It was exciting.” Mayer and Cook, who co-wrote a few songs on Mayer’s debut album, “Room for Squares,” would eventually drop out of school and head to Atlanta to try their luck on that city’s music scene. “It just so happened it ended up being a really supportive place musically,” Mayer said. It was while in Atlanta that good things started to happen professionally for Mayer. “It just accelerated more when I got to Atlanta,” he said. “It was a definite trial by fire. I couldn’t do anything else. I remember thinking to myself ‘I have one option left.’ “I remember thinking ‘I’m going to have to push so ridiculously hard. I’m going to have to get up in the morning and make this happen.’ And I did.” In Atlanta, his musical style also would change to the more acoustic-based music for which he is now so well known. “That was the genesis for my playing acoustic music,” he said. “I never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought to play acoustic music. I knew that it would have taken much too long to find a band that I was happy with and I wanted to hit the ground running when I moved to Atlanta. So I started just playing acoustic and being self-sufficient that way.” His burgeoning success playing solo shows would eventually lead him to record his EP “Inside Wants Out.” “I felt like what I was playing wasn’t really locking in with anybody, so I made a record out of necessity … and money,” he said. “People would literally take money out of their pocket and go ‘How much is your CD?’ If enough people come up to you with money and say ‘How much is your CD?’ and you don’t have one, you’re going to have one. You’ll find a way to make one.” His EP caught the attention of a Columbia Records subsidiary and the rest is history with his 2001 debut “Room for Squares” selling more than four million copies and its 2003 follow-up “Heavier Things” moving more than two million units. The perks of fame and fortune are definitely nice, but it’s the time on the way up that Mayer thinks of most often. “Those were like my really special, special, special memories,” he said. “The memories I have now are kind of shared with the world… . But the memories of selling out a club that holds 180 people for the first time, what that drive home was like, that’s mine. “Those were really special days for me. Playing Ernie’s Attic [a club in Atlanta] and selling a bunch of CDs and getting a handful of cash, those were really amazing days. Those were the big steps. The way up, that was a great time.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/d665bb15a7f5f35d73e037ccf7a17448/tumblr_mmlt6ue3zV1qbhe99o1_400.png)
John Mayer was house painting with Veteran, Cliff Malone in Shreveport, LA as part of Roger Waters The Wall’s funding homes for Veterans initiative. 24.04
