The John Mayer track that includes Prince's guitar work.] - Guitar | Technique

Extended Interview: John Mayer – YouTube

John Mayer has recalled how he once crossed paths with one of Prince’s guitars – and ended up using it on one of his records.

Mayer recorded his 2021 solo album Sob Rock there, as well as 2018’s smash single, New Light, which also featured on the LP. It isn’t just the Silver Sky that you can hear on that track, though…

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“It was a pretty big hit for me,” Mayer says of New Light. “I remember being here. Someone had brought Prince’s guitar. This was after Prince had passed away and someone had brought by his guitar, and I went, ‘We’ll put it on this song.’

“So there’s a part of this song, in the bridge, where I’m standing here playing one of Prince’s guitars,” he adds. “That was cool.”

Speaking of the track in 2018, while he sadly didn’t clarify which guitar it was, Mayer did speak about how the guitar entered his orbit.

“It was an incredible day, because we were working on this part of the song, which was definitely Prince-tastic, and the guitar magically came across the table in the studio from a friend,” he says. “It just appeared, for an hour. We didn’t know it was coming. It was one of the strangest, most beautiful, serendipitous moments.

“We sort of got into the spirit of the way Prince would’ve done it. So we plugged it into an API, put a little compressor on it – so that little bit of the song is direct input, I’m not even plugged into an amp.”