John Mayer on the Making of Dead & Company’s Mind-Bending Sphere Residency: ‘I Love That Adults Are Having Childlike, Wondrous Experiences at This Show’ (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic John Mayer says he didn’t always feel a sense of urgency about getting people out to see Dead & Company concerts … not even when the group was doing a final national tour in 2023.
Now, he does, with a month and a half left on the group’s engagement at Las Vegas’ Sphere. He’s not making any pronouncements about this marking an end of the road for the band — a Grateful Dead offshoot that he formed with three original Dead members back in 2015.
And maybe there could be a return to Sphere someday. But for the time being, there’s an expiration date on the visa for this particular Ultimate Trip. “I just don’t want people to miss it,” he says, “because we’ll be out of that building at some point, and you can’t see it unless you’re in that building.” In his first extensive interview about the 30-show residency, Mayer tells Variety about exactly how long it took to get from the first glimmerings of a Sphere run to May’s opening night; whether this was always in the cards when it wrapped up its farewell tour last summer; and how he acted as point man between the band and the visual team firing up the world’s biggest wrap-around screen.
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