John Mayer performs "Last Train Home" on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Courtesy PhotoDuring his concert for SiriusXM and Pandora’s Small Stage Series at the Hollywood Palladium on Wednesday night (Feb. 9), John Mayer stopped the show to help a fan with an apparent medical issue in the crowd.
When Mayer noticed that a fan had possibly fainted in the audience, he stopped singing and immediately called for medics to help. As his band quietly vamped in the background, Mayer then asked to stop the music altogether.
“Is she conscious? Give me a thumbs-up if she’s alert,” Mayer asked the people around her, who responded with a round of thumbs-ups. “I’m gonna step off the stage for a second,” Mayer added before leading his band offstage.
When he returned, Mayer reassured the crowd that the woman was going to be fine. “Anyone in the crowd who’s worried, I’m told she waved goodbye, so she’s OK,” he said, adding, “The system works.”
The ordeal went down as Mayer was in the final stretches of the 2006 Continuum ballad “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room,” and when he came back, he launched into the much more upbeat Grammy-winning single “Waiting on the World to Change” from the same album.
Mayer’s abundance of caution comes a few days after Billie Eilish briefly stopped her show on Saturday night to help a fan in the crowd who needed an inhaler, according to concert footage captured by fans.
Wednesday’s hour-plus concert — hosted by Andy Cohen, who introduced his friend as “The King of Sob Rock” — aired live on SiriusXM’s The Spectrum (channel 28) and on the SXM app and will be rebroadcast throughout the week. On Friday, Cohen’s sit-down interview with Mayer will air on Radio Andy (channel 102) at 7 p.m. ET, and his concert will re-air on Andy Cohen’s Kiki Lounge (channel 312) at 8 p.m. ET. The concert will also air in its entirety on Saturday as part of the Pandora LIVE series at 9 p.m. (RSVP here).
Next up: Mayer kicks off his Sob Rock Tour on Feb. 17 in Albany, N.Y. The Palladium set definitely served as a preview of the trek, with Mayer performing six songs from the July 2021 album, including “New Light,” “Last Train Home” and “Wild Blue,” which just became the rocker’s eighth No. 1 hit on Billboard‘s Adult Alternative Airplay chart.
in London, joined by IDLES and Kojey Radical. He later collaborated with Fred Again.. on the electronic track “Lights Burn Dimmer,” which incorporates and reshapes elements from Jamie’s 2023 song “Hippodrome.”
During a conversation with Radio 1 presenter Jack Saunders on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Jamie called the collaboration a “big deal” for him. “That song, when I wrote it, I hadn’t realised until I heard Fred’s version how much hope was in the lyrics. I felt quite emotional when I heard Fred’s version, and his spin on it. That was really helpful for me, as I wrote that song at quite a difficult time in my life. To see it turned into a more euphoric thing was really quite lovely.”
Jamie will offer an early taste of the new album during a small, exclusive performance at Scala in London on Thursday, Aug. 20. The concert will be his first headline appearance since playing to 40,000 people at Finsbury Park, although he made a short guest appearance with Fred Again.. in February during the producer’s USB002 tour run at Alexandra Palace.
After breaking through in 2007 with the Mercury Prize nominated Panic Prevention, Jamie went on to release another four studio records, with each reaching the top 10 of the Official U.K. Albums Chart. He has also appeared at Glastonbury Festival on several occasions, including his widely praised headline performance on the Woodsies Stage in 2022.
Check out “3310” below.