Creativity Quote by John Mayall

The numbers in John Mayall's sentence quietly tell you everything about how bands actually work: loyalty comes first, intimacy comes later, and sometimes it never arrives on schedule. "Joe's been my drummer for 14 years" is a credential, a statement of professional endurance in a world where rhythm sections often rotate like spare parts. Then Mayall undercuts the expected romanticism of musical brotherhood with a second, smaller number: "we've been buddies for six years". The gap is the point. It admits that chemistry onstage doesn't automatically translate to closeness offstage, and it treats that fact as normal rather than tragic.

Mayall, a bandleader who built his legend by assembling and training elite players in the British blues circuit, also signals hierarchy without spelling it out. The first clause is employer-artist talk: my drummer, tenure, reliability. The second clause is the human add-on, almost a bonus feature: buddies. Friendship is presented as something earned over time, not assumed because two people share a van, a setlist, and a paycheck.

There's a dry, musicianly pragmatism here. He doesn't mythologize the band as family; he respects it as work that can, if you're lucky, grow into something warmer. In an era that sells audiences the fantasy of instant "brotherhood", Mayall gives the more believable story: trust built at tempo, friendship arriving after the downbeat.