THE HERMES IN BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S is happening in art and reality (like Banksy) which playfully began with John Mayer before I knew him. As a young, extraordinarily successful musician singer-songwriter and a wild sense of humor, especially with the press, John was also a bringer-together of music and musicians and performers no matter what arbitrary category. He was passionate about technical blues to the power of popular culture and was accepting of it all, friends with a young Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato, while also bringing down heaven playing with Eric Clapton and B. B. King. He saw bigger things for the expansive movement of music. Some even thought it odd for a musician of his masterful talent to have a romantic relationship with a pop and reality show star (with an incredible voice), Jessica Simpson, or beloved actress Jennifer Aniston. To some it was two different worlds. In this artistic way, he was a Hermes crosser-of-boundaries to break something more accepting and wonderful open and value the humans involved.
In 2006 of course it was a desirable career to become "famous" in the music industry, and of course there could be power plays against or using other musicians, and not about the music itself. This was the antithesis of what John Mayer held as what music could be. John was also extraordinarily insightful about remaining as real as possible in the business and marketing side of the industry and his approach showed his very human, highly intelligent, and inspired, playful self, like holding Christmas bake-offs.
But certainly he would give someone a chance who was entering the industry on the side of it as a business and as a marketing endeavor, with the artistic side in need of more personal inspiration. Other musicians were welcoming of this too to the young, like Faith Hill and Sheryl Crow. There was room for everyone to be open and grow. And so copying and plagiarism--not inspiration or influence--would be seen as an early "mistake" for an artist who could still come into their own with openness and encouragement from other musicians through kindness and generosity, not to mention kindly offered access from highly successful people.
In 2005 Taylor Swift entered the industry exactly copying the marketing, publicity, and creative. She was young and determined, it could be overlooked, as others in the industry encouraged her so that she could/would find her own footing. But that's not what she was after. She had the endless bank account for hired marketing and publicity, and her directive to this bought team was exactly who and what was already successful on the market: "That's what I want." That included what artists had so hard-earned accomplished with their hours, songs, lives, and sacrifices, be it an album cover, a relationship like Faith had with Tim McGraw, or hard-won true respect.
The plagiarism and copyright infringement went unmentioned in the press and her publicity team were paid to keep regularly placing tidbits of "specialness" into the tabloids, most especially to media like People Magazine who were not "reading the room" or doing their homework. They simply printed word for word what the publicist provided. It would then appear on the outside, to the reader, that some journalist was trying to get a "good scoop" and was following Taylor finding out this as truth of story as it developed with Taylor as this main character in a romantic comedy, actually making the reality fake. It was publicity, not story, not real, not even creative.
And so when Taylor, without the press recognizing it, was quoting and copying John Mayer verbatim as if it were her own writing and personality, he was on edge very early on. He was highly aware of the industry and would pick up on not only the personal invasion, but also the professional ones to his artist friends like Sheryl Crow, Alicia Keys, and Norah Jones, all whom he performed with.
In 2008 Taylor Swift's publicity was openly turned to John personally, as somewhat of a forced pick-up strategy, just drop headlines into People Magazine suggesting it. Looking back at these stories and headlines what also is evident is that John was doing things to correct this subverted publicity in his own truths, while also demonstrating kindness and patience to this young, deliberate perpetrator.
But by early 2010 the stories were now being blatantly fed to People Magazine even as John had subverted it for more than two years. He and a large group of people, including Taylor Swift, went to dinner in Nashville, for example, but it was purposefully written to the press by her as if it were a date.
John's young, raucous humor, yet far-too-audacious publicity in January/February 2010 would come as a shock and confusion for those who did not see what was happening, which was most of everyone. But comparing the press being forced to what John was showing of his personal life--Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston--to put it politely, he was after no one romantically who was 14 years younger and who was pressing him publicly more and more repeating him and staying on the trail, even feeding that repetition of him through innuendo to the very Rolling Stone in the issue he was on the cover.
John and I first saw each other on 1 April 2010. It was intense. I had never felt anything like it. I couldn't believe someone could move me like that spiritually, internally and look at me that way, so intense, like Alain Delon, and that I would have to step away. A couple of weeks later at an ASCAP talk he asked for people to write him honestly on Tumblr, and so, after a lot of deliberation, I wrote to him there, the moment opening up everything. In connecting in this intimate way of communicating, and with his beautiful encouragement to keep him company by continuing to write openly what I was thinking about, I let it pour more and more, and the levies were coming down.
This was all visible on Tumblr, and why, when Taylor Swift released the relationship as her own marketing in October 2010 using his words and mine as her own persona in Speak Now--a malignant narcissist threat to silence everyone and triangulate the press and public--John decided to go completely off-line and gave an interview as to why, to stop the direct line into his living room (of contrived publicity). He was going to find his way back to the real, and the real terrain of all music.