John Mayall - Blues From Laurel Canyon : John Mayall: My Life as a Bluesman.

This book is dedicated to my family and friends, as well as to the fans who have always believed in my music and stuck with me.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The importance of the role of John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, when it comes to British music, is beyond belief. Johns history is indelibly marked throughout the ranks of rocknroll, not just the blues.

Many of The Bluesbreakers went on to experiment with different forms of music, but their roots were always steeped in the boot camp of Johns band. Historically, their music was unbelievably dynamic in terms of how it was taken out of England into the United States. Look at the work that Mick Taylor did with The Rolling Stones. Look at what Peter Green and John McVie and Jeremy Spencer and I did with Fleetwood Mac. Look at the success which Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce had with Cream, whose mutated blues formula was inherited from John Mayall. Its no wonder that John is known as the godfather of British blues.

I first met John in 1964, when a band that I was in, The Cheynes, opened up for The Bluesbreakers at the original Marquee. In my world, meeting John was like meeting a star, because he was so revered. We got to know each other when Peter Green recommended to John that I join The Bluesbreakers to take over from Aynsley Dunbar. Of course, Aynsley was and remains an incredibly talented drummer, so I couldnt understand why they would want me in his place, because I play in a simple style. At the time, I think John was looking for a way to uncomplicate The Bluesbreakers, so I got the gig, and soon got to know him both as a mentor and as a boss.

John was way ahead of his time in terms of being organised about running the band. You had to do as you were told, but at the same time he became known for allowing anyone in his band including me to be who they were as a musician. That is the legacy of John Mayalls Bluesbreakers. He allowed us to blossom within a safe zone his zone. The same thing happened in Fleetwood Mac, because Peter Green and I learned from John.

What do people need to know about John Mayall? I would say the most important thing is to preserve his legacy. He created a platform, a stage, for musicians me being one of them that needs not to be forgotten. Johns legacy is that he has been true to his schooling as a blues player. He has never compromised that, and he has never pretended to be anything other than that. He has stuck to his guns, and he has placed his love of the blues above anything else. That is his legacy.

Im just one listener among millions who have enjoyed Johns music, and we should all be grateful that he chose to take the path which he has taken.

Mick Fleetwood

January 2019

Welcome to my autobiography! Ive titled it Blues From Laurel Canyon for two reasons firstly, because thats the title of an album I recorded in 1968; it was the first LP I released after I retired the name of my band, The Bluesbreakers. Secondly, and more importantly, the period of my life which this book covers leads up to a particularly golden era in the sixties and seventies, when I lived in a beautiful house in the equally gorgeous Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles.

Its difficult for me to describe, in words on paper, what it was like to be a touring and recording musician in that exact part of the world at that exact time. So much of that period was about sensations and emotions the California sun above my swimming pool; the chink of ice in the cocktails; the tanned skin of the beautiful people who populated my life. Although my mother and my four children lived in England, they were regular visitors, and it was a family home.

At the same time, my house in Laurel Canyon was the location of the infamous Brain Damage Club, the bar where anything could (and did) happen. I damn near killed myself a couple of times, as youll read in this book, and I still struggle to believe the things we got up to behind closed doors.

This was my life back then, and although Im a different man nowadays, I have nothing but affection for the world I used to inhabit and the friends I made. Read on, and I hope you enjoy the ride.

John Mayall

Los Angeles, 2019

Let me introduce you to my family, with as much information as I can recall about them and their lives.

My dear maternal grandfather Fred Leeson, known to all as Grandad, died of a stroke in his beloved garden on May 29, 1964. He took a lifetimes worth of memories to the grave but Ill always remember the stories he told us.

Born on February 12, 1877, Fred was one of the eight sons and two daughters of his mother Sarah and father Edmund, a country labourer. There was a ninth brother, but he drowned at an early age. Life was hard and there were many mouths to feed: only a strong belief in God kept Sarah going, as she tried to control her brood. Grandad told us that discipline was very severe, and for serious infractions of house rules or unruly behaviour, his father would not only beat them with his hefty leather belt, he would take them by their collars and hang them up on meat hooks, suspended from the kitchen ceiling, for hours on end. These seemed like medieval punishments to me.

Despite Grandads rugged childhood, I never heard him complain about his early life. He was raised within sight of Mow Cop on the border of Cheshire and Staffordshire: this was an eleventh-century feudal fort built by the squire of the nearby parish of Lawton so that he could keep an eye on his barons and peasants from the lookout tower. Life in Lawton at the end of the nineteenth century hadnt changed a great deal in the intervening years, and young Fred used to walk to school across the village green.

In those days it was accepted that country children would finish school at twelve and go into an apprenticeship of some sort. Fred was taken in by a butcher, and he began to learn the trade by working long hours as an errand boy, delivering meat to the gentry on foot. Sometimes he had to walk several miles, which motivated him to be successful in his own right. As the years passed, he acquired enough practical experience to strike out on his own, and by the time he got married in 1902 he was a merchant with a huge country estate called Aidenswood.

According to all reports, Fred was a bit of a Casanova in his youth and was always in the company of the village lasses, but he put these affairs behind him when he met Rose Hannah Wilson and began a serious courtship. This was regarded as marrying above his station, as they used to say in those days, as Rose had been educated to be a genteel lady by her upwardly mobile parents, Samuel, a collier from Edinburgh, and Mary Ellen, a schoolteacher. Following in her mothers footsteps, Rose also became a teacher. I suppose Fred thought that he was coming up in the world. However, it ultimately proved to be a poor match, although he remained with Rose for the rest of her life.

It often bothered Fred in his later years that he hadnt married his former sweetheart, a local girl called Alice Band. In fact, I believe he once returned to Lawton and contacted her. She wasnt ready to put out the welcome mat for him, though, and that door remained closed. It hurt his vanity to be dismissed in this way, but she could hardly be blamed; hed ditched her without a word of warning some years before.

The birth of a daughter improved the domestic chemistry between Fred and Rose. My mother was born on August 3, 1906 and was named Beryl Veronica Leeson. Fred now had a more receptive member of the family on whom he could bestow affection and love.