The bandmate John Mayall called “totally unique”
With advancements in technology and genre-blending evolution throughout the early 20th century, the conditions were set for the electric guitar’s golden age. The first first commercially successful electric guitar was developed in 1931 by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker. It was first used in jazz but soon permeated other genres, with pioneers John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters popularising its use in the blues. Within a few short decades, the likes of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix had all but mastered the instrument.
Although the electric blues and later rock ‘n’ roll made the US the home of the electric guitar in the 1950s, the British invasion began to take the limelight in the 1960s. When it comes to pop music, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were undoubtedly the pioneers of the British invasion, but the first domino fell long before. In the 1950s, a small contingent of Brits heeded developing trends in the US and brought them to the rocky shores of Blighty. Among them was the British blues legend John Mayall.
Although Mayall never made a splash of such conspicuous proportions as The Beatles of The Rolling Stones, his role as a mentor of premiere British talent was unrivalled. He established his most notable band, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, in 1963, following several years of success with the Blues Syndicate. The band remained active sporadically up until Mayall’s death in 2024 but had its most important run in the 1960s.
On par with The Yardbirds, the Bluesbreakers proved to be a crucial breeding ground for blues-rock musicians in the ’60s. Famously, The Yardbirds served as a launchpad for the careers of perhaps Britain’s three most celebrated electric guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. When the band subsided in 1968, Page rebuilt it from the ground up and renamed it Led Zeppelin.
When Clapton left The Yardbirds in 1965, he joined The Bluesbreakers and cohabited with the band’s messianic leader. In a 2016 conversation with Classic Rock, Clapton discussed his reasons for joining Mayall’s band. Above all else, he admired Mayall’s unrivalled passion for pure blues. “John was a blues archivist,” Clapton said. “He had the best collection of blues 45s—Chicago blues, everything—I’d ever seen in my life. He was a scholar.”
Though Clapton only played with Mayall and the Bluesbreakers for about a year, during that time, he accumulated a wealth of knowledge both on and off the fretboard. “When he offered me the job, he offered me a place to live, too, in Lee Green,” Clapton revealed. “So I stayed with him almost the entire time that I was working with him. During the day, I would just have all these records out on the floor, putting them on the turntable, learning, learning, learning. And that was all I did. I just studied. Because I realised right away that I was in the perfect environment.”
Clapton had left The Yardbirds, among other reasons, for their gradual migration to pop-rock. Though he was partial to rock ‘n’ roll, he felt the need for some blues therapy, if only for a short while. “He wasn’t impressed by rock’ n’ roll, he didn’t want to be famous, he just wanted to play clubs and have it be ‘real’,” Clapton added of Mayall. “I thought, ‘This is heaven. I can use all this time now just to study my craft.'”
Speaking to Guitar World in 2020, Mayall reflected on The Bluesbreakers’ 1966 record, The Beano Album, as one of their finest, not least for Clapton’s invaluable contributions.
“I think it’s the overall quality of the playing and the fact that Eric was totally unique at that particular time,” he praised. “It’s still a testament to his command of the blues at such an early age. He had such mastery of his guitar, and it really stood out. Eric was definitely ahead of his time, and I think the album captured everything very, very well.”
Clapton was undoubtedly among Mayall’s finest guitar prodigies. However, he would refrain from naming a singular favourite since each brought something different to the table. Besides Clapton’s imminent Cream bandmate, bassist Jack Bruce, The Bluesbreakers brought us Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green and the young prodigy Mick Taylor. When The Rolling Stones sought a new guitarist to replace Brian Jones in 1969, Mayall recommended 19-year-old Bluesbreaker Taylor. Within a couple of years, the star helped to transform the Stones in their most critically lauded run of albums from Let It Bleed to Exile on Main St.
