John Mayer is one of today’s most visible exponents of pure Fender-fueled guitar music. The winner of several Grammy awards, he rose to fame with a pair of multi-platinum acoustic rock albums before boldly embracing blues-rock in 2005, a move that highlighted and drew widespread acclaim for his impeccable work as an accomplished guitarist/songwriter in the Vaughan-Hendrix-Clapton mold.

Born in Bridgeport, Conn., in October 1977, Mayer began playing guitar in his early teens and was especially moved by the playing of Stevie Ray Vaughan. He began gigging as a solo act and with a band called Villanova Junction while still in high school.

At age 19, Mayer attended Boston’s Berklee College of Music. After two semesters, he moved to Atlanta and soon became a fixture on the local coffee house and club circuit. Mayer recorded an EP, Inside Wants Out, and toured regionally in the Southeast in the late 1990s before a 2000 appearance at the South by Southwest Music Festival brought label attention. His 2001 album Room For Squares was remixed and re-released by Columbia and produced the hit singles “No Such Thing” and “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” the latter of which earned Mayer his first Grammy award.

In 2003, Mayer released live album Any Given Thursday and second studio album Heavier Things, scoring his first number-one single with “Daughters,” which also earned a pair of Grammy awards in 2005 for Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Mayer shifted musical gears around this time, announcing that he was “closing up shop on acoustic sensitivity” and pursuing a much more blues-oriented path. He concentrated on guitar even more and drew acclaim as an accomplished player in the vein of several of his idols, including Vaughan, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. In spring 2005, he assembled the blues-rock John Mayer Trio with drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Pino Palladino; Grammy-nominated live album Try! appeared that November.

Mayer combined his pop sense and blues instincts on 2006’s Continuum, which won a Grammy for Best Pop Album and contained the Grammy-winning single “Waiting on the World to Change.” All along, his status as a major star and reputation as a formidable guitarist continued to grow—Mayer appeared on the cover of the February 2007 Rolling Stone, named therein as one of the “new guitar gods” and nicknamed “Slowhand Jr.,” in reference to Clapton.

Mayer is a longtime friend of Fender who headlined at the company’s massive 60th anniversary concert in spring 2006. His signature model, the John Mayer Stratocaster, debuted in 2005; the Limited Edition John Mayer Stratocaster appeared in 2007.

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Photos courtesy Jerome Brunet