“I basically realized I’m no good at that, so I’m going to drop<br />that major.” Also: “What I did was probably semiconsciously just reboot it — control, alt, delete.” “It was an induced coma.” His career had “flatlined.” “It was cat and mouse,” he said, “and the mouse lost.”<br />Now approaching 40, “I’m old enough to look back on my life and go: ‘That’s probably the photonegative shot in ‘Behind the Music,’” Mr. Mayer said.<br />On set the next day, there was a makeshift bamboo forest, a woman in full geisha garb<br />and two people in giant panda suits, making up a bizarre tableau that Mr. Mayer called a “disco dojo.”<br />Yet for someone so attuned to the risk of offending people again — “I have nightmares about a second occurrence of” the Playboy era, he said<br />— Mr. Mayer seemed sanguine about the possibility of a controversy over cultural appropriation, an issue that has dogged other pop stars.<br />“Coming up after the break — boom — the downfall.”<br />In reality, after those turbulent moments he moved to Montana, grew out his hair and made two more major-label albums — “Born and Raised” and “Paradise Valley” —<br />that were less “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and more Laurel Canyon.<br />The syncopation of the guitar riff, he said, reminded him of “ancient Japanese R&B”<br />— which he acknowledged “isn’t a thing” — so the video concept followed suit.<br />“I want to say, ‘We’ll take it,’” he said, adding, “I’m right on time for my career, and I’m running late for my life.”<br />Though he’s been in therapy to work on his “attachment style”<br />and recently quit drinking (“I’m actually very thoughtfully entering cannabis life”), Mr. Mayer is wary that his notoriety as a womanizer precedes him.
