As a kid growing up on the outskirts of Manchester, England, John Mayall recognized something personal in the blues records coming over from the United States. He heard joy, agony and stories from real life, all of it set to music that could be euphoric and downtrodden, hopeful and mysterious.
It was music of profound emotion that would stay with him forever, and as a leading purveyor of that tradition in the British blues explosion of the 1960s, he represented a standard for many better-known players to follow. “He was my mentor and a surrogate father too,” Eric Clapton said in a tribute posted Wednesday on Instagram. “He taught me all I really know and gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear or without limit.”
Mayall, who died this week at age 90, provided a home to an astonishing lineup of virtuosic players who passed through his band the Bluesbreakers en route to greater fame later: Clapton and Jack Bruce (who formed Cream), Mick Taylor (later of the Rolling Stones) and members of Fleetwood Mac, Journey, Canned Heat and more.
John Mayall was a mentor to Eric Clapton, Mick Fleetwood and many other superstars.
(Claus Hampel / Associated Press)
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He was a half-generation older than many of the iconic players he nurtured, and an important source of inspiration. He gave refuge to a disheartened Clapton, who had just quit the Yardbirds and was considering leaving music entirely. But the fame that many of Mayall’s endlessly rotating sidemen later enjoyed was entirely beside the point to him.
“The great roster of the most famous names all came out of that period of London of four or five years,” he told me in 1997. “Everybody knew everybody, so they were shifting around, finding their own musical path. As a band leader I just hired whoever turned me on. That criteria is the same today as always.”
Back in the 1990s, I interviewed Mayall a few times, including at his house in the San Fernando Valley. Our very first talk on the phone was cut short by him after about 15 minutes, probably from my own inexperience as an interviewer and for asking too many questions about his more controversial statements. (Like calling Led Zeppelin “a parody of the blues.”)
But he was normally a patient proselytizer of the blues. While his own reputation often rested with his role as a profoundly gifted scout of talent, his own records showed a steady commitment to what had first inspired him. Mayall was a singer and multi-instrumentalist (harmonica, keyboards, guitar), and like his heroes, the songs he wrote were autobiographical — celebrations and laments about his life experiences.
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John Mayall in 2013 at the Classic Rock Roll of Honor Awards show in London.
(Joel Ryan / Invision/Associated Press)
He was sometimes criticized as a purist who rarely wavered, even as former collaborators won accolades and made hit records by straying into rock, psychedelia and pop. If anything, his experiments went further away from the masses with a jazz-rock fusion sound on 1968’s “Bare Wires.” He stretched out with layers of horns and flute, he went solo acoustic, but the electrified Chicago blues was always his North Star.
“‘Purist’ is a funny word really, because it can mean someone who doesn’t want to shift from doing note-for-note copies of stuff other people have done in the early days,” he said. “There are bands that just do that. They consider themselves blues purists. But I’ve always been an innovator, so purist doesn’t really fit.
“I do draw from the pure roots of the blues to make something that’s very contemporary and something that is very personal.”
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He grew up in the late-1940s and ’50s listening to his father’s vast record collection, learning to love the Mills Brothers, Charlie Christian and Lonnie Johnson, and was soon saving up to buy his own 78 rpm discs. “Anything with the word ‘boogie’ on it, I bought it,” Mayall told me. He then discovered the immortal blues played by Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Sonny Terry.
He was already 30 when he left Manchester for London, after a career in typography and art, ready to join the blues scene rising there. “It all really happened rather suddenly, and everybody really came down to London,” he said. “The Animals came down from Newcastle, Spencer Davis and Stevie Winwood came from Birmingham. If you wanted to play you really had to start off and be based in London. So that’s what I did.”
The British blues scene was kicked off by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davis, evolving from folk clubs to electrified Chicago blues. As it had for Mayall, American blues had reached the postwar generation on the British Isles and ignited a movement, even as blues was still underappreciated back in the U.S. It would take a British invasion of inspired young players to bring it back home.
Mayall was a singer and multi-instrumentalist (harmonica, keyboards, guitar), and like his heroes, the songs he wrote were autobiographical — celebrations and laments about his life experiences.
(Claus Hampel / Associated Press)
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In those early days, Mayall was encouraged by successes of the early Rolling Stones and Yardbirds. “I was pretty amazed, because I had been playing this music privately for 15-20 years and knew what it was all about. But I’d never dreamed it was fit for public consumption, so to speak,” he said. “I owed it to myself to give it a shot.”
His best-known album, 1967’s “Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton,” is considered a classic document of that scene, and an early sign of Clapton’s still evolving skills. Mayall otherwise had no major pop hits, and few accolades for most of his life other than a couple of Grammy nominations. In 2005 he was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II, and this fall was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with an Influence Award.
At times during interviews, he would grumble about a lack of recognition, but his focus remained on the work ahead — spending a third of the year on the road, and releasing nearly 40 studio albums and more than 30 live recordings in his lifetime. For him, his musical journey remained always open-ended, right up until his last performance in February 2022 in San Juan Capistrano.
“Creating music is an art,” he explained. “Jazz musicians and blues musicians, their careers do not end except by death. It’s something that has a built-in longevity. It’s not a flash-in-the-pan thing. The years only make you more mature, you learn more and more as the years go by.”
by Sean P. Aune | January 10, 2026January 10, 2026 10:30 am EST
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
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This time around, it’s Jan. 10, 1986, and we’re off to see Black Moon Rising.
Black Moon Rising
What was the obsession in the 1980s with super vehicles?
Sam Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) is hired to steal a computer tape with evidence against a company on it. While being pursued, he tucks it in the parachute of a prototype vehicle called the Black Moon. While trying to retrieve it, the car is stolen by Nina (Linda Hamilton), a car thief working for a car theft ring. Both of them want out of their lives, and it looks like the Black Moon could be their ticket out.
Blue Thunder in the movies, Airwolf and Knight Rider on TV, the 1980s loved an impractical ‘super’ vehicle. In this case, the car plays a very minor role up until the final action set piece, and the story is far more about the characters and their motivations.
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The movie is silly as you would expect it to be, but it is never a bad watch. It’s just not anything particularly memorable.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on Jan. 17, 2026, with The Adventures of the American Rabbit, The Adventures of Mark Twain, The Clan of the Cave Bear, Iron Eagle, The Longshot, and Troll.
California helped make them the rich. Now a small proposed tax is spooking them out of the state.
California helped make them among the richest people in the world. Now they’re fleeing because California wants a little something back.
The proposed California Billionaire Tax Act has plutocrats saying they are considering deserting the Golden State for fear they’ll have to pay a one-time, 5% tax, on top of the other taxes they barely pay in comparison to the rest of us. Think of it as the Dust Bowl migration in reverse, with The Monied headed East to grow their fortunes.
The measure would apply to billionaires residing in California as of Jan. 1, 2026, meaning that 2025 was a big moving year month among the 200 wealthiest California households subject to the tax.
The recently departed reportedly include In-n-Out Burger owner and heiress Lynsi Snyder, PayPal co-founder and conservative donor Peter Thiel, Venture Capitalist David Sacks, co-founder of Craft Ventures, and Google co-founder Larry Page, who recently purchased $173 million worth of waterfront property in Miami’s Coconut Grove. Thank goodness he landed on his feet in these tough times.
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The principal sponsor behind the Billionaire Tax Act is the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which contends that the tax could raise a $100 billion to offset severe federal cutbacks to California’s public education, food assistance and Medicaid programs.
The initiative is designed to offset some of the tax breaks that billionaires received from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act recently passed by the Republican-dominated Congress and signed by President Trump.
According to my colleague Michael Hiltzik, the bill “will funnel as much as $1 trillion in tax benefits to the wealthy over the next decade, while blowing a hole in state and local budgets for healthcare and other needs.”
The drafters of the Billionaire Tax Act still have to gather around 875,000 signatures from registered voters by June 24 for the measure to qualify on November’s ballot. But given the public ire toward the growing wealth of the 1%, and the affordability crisis engulfing much of the rest of the nation, it has a fair chance of making it onto the ballot.
If the tax should be voted into law, what would it mean for those poor tycoons who failed to pack up the Lamborghinis in time? For Thiel, whose net worth is around $27.5 billion, it would be around $1.2 billion, should he choose to stay, and he’d have up to five years to pay it.
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Yes, it’s a lot … if you’re not a billionaire. It’s doubtful any of the potentially affected affluents would feel the pinch, but it could make a world of difference for kids depending on free school lunches, or folks who need medical care but can’t afford it because they’ve been squeezed by a system that places much of the tax burden on them.
According to the California Budget & Policy Center, the bottom fifth of California’s non-elderly families, with an average annual income of $13,900, spend an estimated 10.5% of their incomes on state and local taxes. In comparison, the wealthiest 1% of families, with an average annual income of $2.0 million, spend an estimated 8.7% of their incomes on state and local taxes.
“It’s a matter of values,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) posted on X. “We believe billionaires can pay a modest wealth tax so working-class Californians have Medicaid.”
Many have argued losing all that wealth to other states will hurt California in the long run.
Even Gov. Gavin Newsom has argued against the measure, citing that the wealthy can relocate anywhere else to evade the tax. During the New York Times DealBook Summit last month, Newsom said, “You can’t isolate yourself from the 49 others. We’re in a competitive environment.”
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He has a point, as do others who contend that the proposed tax may hurt California rather then help.
Sacks signaled he was leaving California by posting an image of the Texas flag on Dec. 31 on X and writing: “God bless Texas.” He followed with a post that read, “As a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital.”
Arguments aside, it’s disturbing to think that some of the richest people in the nation would rather pick up and move than put a small fraction of their vast California-made — or in the case of the burger chain, inherited — fortunes toward helping others who need a financial boost.
A still from ‘Song Sung Blue’.
| Photo Credit: Focus Features/YouTube
There is something unputdownable about Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) from the first moment one sees him at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting celebrating his 20th sober birthday. He encourages the group to sing the famous Neil Diamond number, ‘Song Sung Blue,’ with him, and we are carried along on a wave of his enthusiasm.
Song Sung Blue (English)
Director: Craig Brewer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperioli, Ella Anderson, Mustafa Shakir, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi
Runtime: 132 minutes
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Storyline: Mike and Claire find and rescue each other from the slings and arrows of mediocrity when they form a Neil Diamond tribute band
We learn that Mike is a music impersonator who refuses to come on stage as anyone but himself, Lightning, at the Wisconsin State Fair. At the fair, he meets Claire (Kate Hudson), who is performing as Patsy Cline. Sparks fly between the two, and Claire suggests Mike perform a Neil Diamond tribute.
Claire and Mike start a relationship and a Neil Diamond tribute band, called Lightning and Thunder. They marry and after some initial hesitation, Claire’s children from her first marriage, Rachel (Ella Anderson) and Dayna (Hudson Hensley), and Mike’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Angelina (King Princess), become friends.
Members from Mike’s old band join the group, including Mark Shurilla (Michael Imperioli), a Buddy Holly impersonator and Sex Machine (Mustafa Shakir), who sings as James Brown. His dentist/manager, Dave Watson (Fisher Stevens), believes in him, even fixing his tooth with a little lightning bolt!
The tribute band meets with success, including opening for Pearl Jam, with the front man for the grunge band, Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith), joining Lightning and Thunder for a rendition of ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’ at the 1995 Pearl Jam concert in Milwaukee.
There is heartbreak, anger, addiction, and the rise again before the final tragedy. Song Sung Blue, based on Greg Kohs’ eponymous documentary, is a gentle look into a musician’s life. When Mike says, “I’m not a songwriter. I’m not a sex symbol. But I am an entertainer,” he shows that dreams do not have to die. Mike and Claire reveal that even if you do not conquer the world like a rock god, you can achieve success doing what makes you happy.
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ALSO READ: ‘Run Away’ series review: Perfect pulp to kick off the New Year
Song Sung Blue is a validation for all the regular folk with modest dreams, but dreams nevertheless. As the poet said, “there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.” Hudson and Jackman power through the songs and tears like champs, leaving us laughing, tapping our feet, and wiping away the errant tears all at once.
The period detail is spot on (never mind the distracting wigs). The chance to hear a generous catalogue of Diamond’s music in arena-quality sound is not to be missed, in a movie that offers a satisfying catharsis. Music is most definitely the food of love, so may we all please have a second and third helping?
