The tragic house fire that destroyed John Mayall’s extensive blues collection
Blues music is the root of all rock and roll expression, but John Mayall is the root of all British blues music. Since the earliest days of rock, blues music has provided a continued source of inspiration for rock stars and songwriters alike, but the Macclesfield-born musician played an utterly essential role in introducing UK audiences to those timeless blues sounds. After all, the genre was rooted in the Black communities of the United States, in areas like the Mississippi Delta – the canal systems of northern England didn’t have quite the same appeal.
Nevertheless, Mayall was utterly infatuated by American blues music, going right back to his teenage years in the 1950s. An electric guitar, bought in Japan while Mayall was carrying out his national service, provided the blues obsessive with a means of sharing that musical adoration with audiences across the UK, and he quickly set about doing just that. By the mid-1960s, Mayall was among the nation’s most renowned voices in blues music, and his talents helped to launch now-iconic artists like Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor, to name only a few.
By the time the 1960s drew to a close, Mayall’s distinctive blues sound was in need of some changes. Stripping back The Bluesbreakers to their finest parts, the musician also made the decision to relocate from England to Los Angeles, the centrepoint of American musical expression. Experimenting with jazz influences and working alongside a wealth of different musicians, this move to the US appeared to be working well for Mayall. That was until 1979, when a bush fire engulfed his Laurel Canyon home.
A devastating fire destroyed the entirety of Mayall’s house and everything inside it. This meant that the musician lost his vast collection of antiques, including a collection of Victorian-era pornography, along with countless hours of videotaped films and years’ worth of diaries and journals. Even more tragic, the fire also destroyed Mayall’s extensive collection of records and tapes.
Mayall boasted what was undoubtedly one of the greatest collections of blues records ever amassed. Original, obscure, and unbelievably rare recordings by figures like Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Son House formed just some of the highlights within Mayall’s extensive collection. His collection seemed to chart the development of the blues, its various subgenres, and the countless names that made the genre what it is today.
The destruction of such an unparalleled collection of blues records is akin to the burning of the Library of Alexandria for blues fans. Aside from anything else, these were the records that had spurred Mayall on to inspire a resurgence of the blues, and the foundations of Britain’s blues scene during the 1960s, which went on to produce countless iconic outfits, from The Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin.
In addition to his record collection, Mayall also lost his extensive library of live recordings in the fire. Going back to the early 1960s, the musician kept recordings of his various live performances, including those iconic Bluesbreaker shows with Clapton, Green, or Taylor on the guitar. There is no telling how many vitally important musical moments contained within those live tapes were destroyed as the tape burned up with the rest of the Laurel Canyon property.
Thankfully, Mayall was unharmed in the fire and lived to continue his musical journey into the heart of the blues, inspiring some of the all-time greatest modern blues and rock artists in the process. However, record collectors and blues aficionados still cannot help but wince at the thought of what was lost in that LA fire all those years ago.
