Three days. 2,800 fans. One ginormous boat. Sail away with John Mayer as he charters a cruise ship and hits the high seas for a Caribbean rock & roll adventure.
“Attention, everyone! I have a very important announcement!”
John Mayer is standing at the starboard edge of the Lido Deck pool, clutching a piña colada in one hand and his Marc Jacobs shades in the other, and quoting Will Ferrell from
Anchorman.
“Caaannonbaaall!”With a grin, Mayer tosses the drink and leaps poolward, jackknifing in with a magnificent chlorinated splash. A few of his buddies lounging in nearby deck chairs crack up. Mayer eases out of the water, and as he hikes up his trunks and reaches for a towel, the girls watching from the Spa Deck erupt in squeals.
“Omigod! WeloveyouJohn!”
Welcome to the maiden voyage of the Mayercraft Carrier—the world’s foremost (and only) floating John Mayer rock festival. It’s a paradisiacal Sunday afternoon in the northern Caribbean. The sun is golden and pure, the breeze heavenly, the sea a deep and brilliant blue. And for the past 48 hours we’ve been stowed away with a few thousand Mayer fans, sucking down Bahama Mamas and listening to enough guitar-oriented pop rock to last a lifetime.
When you hear the words
cruise ship, here’s what probably comes to mind:
The Love Boat. Shuffleboard. Kathie Lee. Your Aunt Phyllis in a tankini and cornrows. Ice sculptures of busty mermaids straddling sea horses. Melanoma. But in the past few years, cruises have become a reliable moneymaker for rock stars across the musical spectrum—from the patchouli-scented Jam Cruise to Kenny Chesney’s Country Cruise Getaway to Vince Neil’s Mötley Crüise. Most bands treat the trips like corporate gigs: Get in, get out and cash a big check. (When Dave Matthews played his cruise two years ago, he was deposited via helicopter onto the private Bahamian island where the ship was docked and jetted home immediately after his set.) But Mayer, a crowd-pleasing Boy Next Door who maintains his own blog and calls his fans his “saviors,” is staying onboard for the long haul—autograph hounds, amorous teens and all.
Still, it’s not like he’ll be giving suntan-lotion rubdowns at the breakfast buffet. He’s going to play some shows, pose for a few snapshots and spend the rest of the time cordoned off on his private sundeck. So what’s the draw here? What kind of person pays nearly $1,000 just to spend three days on the same boat as the “Your Body Is a Wonderland” guy?
Christine Kelly is a 25-year-old marketing rep from Chicago who’s seen Mayer play “probably 30 times.” She was supposed to come on the cruise with two other Mayer freaks, but they bailed at the last minute—too much, even for them. On the Mayercraft’s scale of whacked-out superfandom, she rates somewhere between the five Virginia Beach cougars who dub themselves the “Ass Chicks” and the bespectacled college sophomore with the JM tattoo on her ankle. But even Christine is self-aware enough to empathize with the ship’s star. “Can you imagine?” she asks. “Being trapped on a boat with 3,000 of your nuttiest, most rabid fans? That’s just crazy.”
The Mayercraft Carrier, a.k.a. the Carnival Victory, is a Triumph-class megaship three football fields long by nine highway lanes wide. She has a maximum cruising speed of 22.5 knots and boasts six diesel generators capable of producing up to 62 million watts of electricity—enough to power Mayer’s entire hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut. In addition to her two vast dining rooms and five smaller restaurants, she comes fully equipped with all the luxuries expected of a first-class oceangoing resort: four swimming pools, seven hot tubs, 18 (!) bars, a nightclub, a casino, a 15,000-square-foot spa, a photo studio, miniature golf, wine tastings, even an art gallery. Her pizza buffet never closes. Her Muzak never turns off. She is a 24-hour, 102,000-ton vacation machine.
“Is this weekend gonna be a kick in the tits or what?” Mayer asks. It’s a few minutes before we set sail, and our host—decked out in an admiral’s cap and a rumpled white Oxford unbuttoned to his navel—is hoisting a glass of something pink and toasting the crowd on the Lido Deck. “I need you all to accept the idea that you’re in paradise right now,” he says. “Three days from now, I want you to get off this boat hung over and having had the most fun of your life.” The ship lurches a little, and he steadies himself. “Is it just me, or are we rocking like a motherfucker?”
As the sun begins to set, we wander around VH1’s Best Bon Voyage Ever Party and try to take the measure of the crowd. They are, for the most part, surprisingly normal: music-loving families. A few newlyweds. Philadelphia Eagles running back Ryan Moats (apparently a big J.M. fan). And women—lots and lots of women. “It’s definitely a girls’ getaway,” says Andy Levine, founder and CEO of Sixthman, the organizers of the trip. Ladies outnumber guys nearly four to one; most are in their 30s and 40s, and most left their husbands and kids at home. It’s like the drunkest, sunburned-est Mom’s Night Out ever. Says Tabitha, a 25-year-old Missourian here for her bachelorette party: “This whole boat is just a bunch of horny old women hoping to score with John.”
It’s not quite that bad. The Mayercraft is at least trying to skew young: Onboard activities include a
Guitar Hero shred-off, “hangover yoga,” an ’80s prom and a flip-cup tournament. Mayer’s supporting acts are up-and-comers like Brandi Carlile, a cute singer-songwriter with a few songs on
Grey’s Anatomy, and Colbie Caillat, whose hit “Bubbly” has propelled sales of her debut to 1.3 million. The ship even has its own MySpace page (31, single, Aquarius, 2,044 friends). “This isn’t the
coolest thing in the world,” Carlile admits. “But it’s not
un-hip.”
Most rock-cruise acts tend to be on the downslopes of their careers—graying legends like Lynyrd Skynyrd or Journey who sandwich the trip between a casino gig and a state fair. But cruises also present a valuable opportunity for breaking artists. “You’re talking about a boat full of real, die-hard music fans,” says one manager. “These are the people who’ll buy your records, come to your shows, tell their friends about you. It’s unbeatable exposure.”