Mayer: Good man

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 5:36 a.m.

Who: John Mayer.

When: 8 p.m. Friday.

Where: Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Tickets: $35.50, $45.50.

Information: 632-7777.

Many musicians claim to have "crossover" appeal these days, but few have proven it as consistently as John Mayer.

The 26-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist has met with as much success with adult audiences as with teens since breaking onto the scene in 2001.

Mayer's biggest hits, such as "Your Body is a Wonderland," "No Such Thing" and "Bigger Than My Body," have climbed into the upper reaches of both Billboard's Top 40 Tracks and Adult Contemporary charts.

Mayer's latest album, September's "Heavier Things," has shown appeal across the board, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Mayer also picked up a Grammy Award in 2003 for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Your Body is a Wonderland."

Friday night at 8, Mayer will perform at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Last week Mayer took time for a telephone interview with the Las Vegas Sun from a Los Angeles hotel.

Las Vegas Sun: Last time you were in town you played The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, which holds around 2,000 people. This time it's the Mandalay Bay Events Center, which is 10,000-plus. Do you find club shows and arena shows to be very different for you?

John Mayer: A lot of people talk about intimacy at a show, and I think there's an onus on me to make it as intimate as possible. But there's an energy that 10,000 people create that 2,000 don't.

Theoretically, its fun to play a room of 2,000 people when you know there's 6,000 other people who wish they could have gotten in. But I want to play for as many people as can come, and if that's 10,000 people then I want to play for 10,000 people. I want them all to see it.

Even when I started out I didn't like the idea of selling out, because there's people in the parking lot (without tickets). The best idea is to almost sell out but have two tickets left, so everyone got in but the room is full (laughs).

I'm gonna follow the music wherever it takes me, except if it takes me to a stadium. There's no one who's ever said they love playing a stadium.

Sun: Someone I know who's in his 40s went to your last show here and complained about the screaming girls up front. Is that still happening at your concerts?

JM: Sure. If you were 16 then you're 18 now and you still scream. Everyone is allowed at these shows. These are all-ages shows, and all ages means all cultures and all walks of life.

Sun: Does the screaming make it tough to concentrate?

JM: I kind of block it out, although it's hard sonically to block it out. I went to using in-ear monitors because I couldn't hear myself sing anymore.

I think about it a lot. People come up and say that they wish that their experience in the seats was different. If I was a government, I'd say it was a people's decision, a municipal kind of thing. Because I would never tell someone not to come. And if you want to come to a show and scream and have a good time, isn't that what you're supposed to do if you want to?

Short of putting up a velvet rope for one side of the arena, I'm not sure what to do. And so all I can do is kind of throw my hands up and go, "I'm just playing."

Sun: Where do you keep your Grammy Award?

JM: I have it on a mantle in my house, and that mantle looks really crappy underneath that Grammy because the Grammy is so gorgeous. The Grammy looks out of place wherever you put it. You have to have like a gold mantle to hold the Grammy.

Sun: Were you more nervous about performing last year, or about the possibility of winning an award?

JM: Performing, definitely. That's why when the win came I was unprepared for it.

Because I had kind of reharmonized "Your Body is a Wonderland" a bit, and I only really thought of doing it that day. So I brought it back home with me in between the rehearsal and the show and banged it around and thought, "Should I do it or should I not?" And of course, the risk of doing something new is that it's untested. That's also the fun part. So I was thinking about whether or not I was going to go to that new little arrangement. And I did.

Sun: You participated in last Friday's MusiCares tribute to Sting. I've read that he was a big influence on you. What was that like?

JM: It was pretty amazing. Me doing a tribute to Sting is like Christian Slater doing a tribute to Jack Nicholson, not so heard, you know.

I picked a song that was kind of out of the way -- "It's Probably Me" -- the song he did with Eric Clapton from the "Lethal Weapon 3" soundtrack -- so I was kind of thinking about ("Lethal Weapon" characters) Riggs and Murtaugh while I was playing. But it came out really good.

Sun: Based on the title of your latest CD ("Heavier Things"), I was half-expecting a Mayer-does-Korn feel. What does it actually refer to?

JM: Looking back on it, it was about hiding less behind ways to say things and more just saying them.

For some reason, I didn't want to use any artifice whatsoever in explaining myself. And so the thing that felt heavier about it to me was that it wasn't hiding behind rhetoric. And I like the way that it kind of threw people off guard. Like, "Well I don't get it. How is that funny?" It's not funny, it's just how I feel.

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