John Mayer Praises Alum's Guitar Solo on SiriusXM
Image courtesy of Christina, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
If hindsight is 20/20, looking back at the journey George Collins PDM ’23 took to being an up-and-coming session guitarist in Nashville has a lot of John Mayer '98 in it.
When Collins, who grew up in Northern England, was a teenager, he was on the fence about whether or not a future in music was something he wanted to pursue. At 16, he skipped school to attend a John Mayer concert in London, and it blew him away, cementing Mayer as a major influence.
In 2018, Collins began uploading guitar videos to his Instagram feed. Finding followers was proving a challenge until one day he posted a video of him covering a Mayer guitar solo, and it quickly racked up 5,000 views. By the time he arrived at Berklee a couple years later, his channel had 50,000 followers.
So there is a real full-circle feeling to the fact that this week, John Mayer took a moment on his SiriusXM radio show Life with John Mayer to praise Collins for his guitar skills on the single “Don’t Hurt Me So Bad!” by BabyJake. “When I hear a great guitar solo on a tune in 2024, I get very excited,” Mayer said of the song. It’s no surprise that the shout-out left Collins in shock, responding on his Instagram account that this was “the most surreal moment I’ve experienced.”
Listen to Collins's epic solos in "Don't Hurt Me So Bad!":
Adding to the stylistic parallels between Mayer and Collins is the fact that both guitarists studied at Berklee and trained under Tomo Fujita, professor of guitar. Fujita specializes in blues and funk styles, both of which are hallmarks of Mayer’s and Collins’s playing.
Watch Fujita's first jam session with Collins:
Collins has been building a career in Nashville as a go-to session guitarist, and was highlighted earlier this year in a Guitar World profile. Mayer's cosign is likely to boost his already growing reputation. Mayer, who once told the Boston Globe that he sees himself as "a product of Berklee," has a history of taking the time to hype new artists and has returned to Berklee to work directly with Berklee students.
