Bummer: John Mayer’s Granuloma Will Continue to Prevent Him From Saying Crazy Crap in Public

Well, here’s some disappointing news: According to the dude’s own personal Tumblr (via Billboard), John Mayer’s throat condition — the same one that forced him to get throat surgery back in October — is acting up again. For what it’s worth, his new album, Born and Raised, will be released on time (May 22); it’s just that the corresponding tour has been indefinitely postponed. More important: Because of the throat condition, and the reduced exposure, one other thing is made implicitly clear — John Mayer will have way less opportunity to bust out his trademark batshit-crazy interviews. As Mayer explains:

A granuloma forms and continues to snowball because it’s in a spot where the vocal cords hit together and there’s no way to really give it a chance to heal without a good stretch of time and some pretty intensive treatment. In short, it’s one giant pain in the ass.

Okay, so here’s the plan … Born and Raised will be released as scheduled, but because I don’t make a very good anything-other-than-a-musician, I’m going to begin writing the next album very soon. I feel really vibrant as a writer at the moment and there’s no reason not to begin the next album project in the time I would have been touring. Somewhere in all of this is another surgery and a very long chemically-imposed period of silence, so I hope you’ll understand that I have to really pick that date carefully.


Total drag, right? A “very long chemically-imposed period of silence”?! And Mayer even teases us with that “because I don’t make a very good anything-other-than-a-musician” line. Look, John, you are perfectly aware that you make an excellent insane interview subject. You are brutally — some might even say unnecessarily — honest, and for years you couldn’t open your mouth without saying something dumb and hilarious. And now, thanks to this awful granuloma, that could all be gone?

Thanks for cushioning the blow with “I’m going to begin writing the next album very soon” and everything, but with all due respect, the world has enough John Mayer music. What the world doesn’t have enough of — what the world may never have enough of — are John Mayer sound bites. To prove this point, let’s forget the racist penis incident for a second and go back to a deeper cut. Here’s a Mayer original on courtship and love, via Rolling Stone: “Like, you need to have them be able to go toe-to-toe with you intellectually. But don’t they also have to have a vagina you could pitch a tent on and just camp out on for, like, a weekend? Doesn’t that have to be there, too? The Joshua Tree of vaginas?” Ah, some truly cherished memories there. Anyway, get well soon, John.

Filed Under: John Mayer, Music

Amos Barshad has written for New York Magazine, Spin, GQ, XXL, and the Arkansas Times. He is a staff writer for Grantland.

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