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Reigning chaos agent John Mayer has finally fulfilled an internet prophesy spawned nearly ten full years ago: he transitioned from Grateful Dead‘s “Dark Star” into “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” In 2015, the musician stepped into the Jerry Garcia role as Grateful Dead offshoot Dead and Company‘s touring guitarist, and in the process inadvertently birthed the ultimate “What If” about the collision of their catalogs.
“I’m not going to set it up, this is going to be the weirdest thing you ever saw in your life and I’m proud to do it,” Mayer told the crowd at his Oct. 18 concert in Chicago, before playing the opening riff to the Grateful Dead classic. “I want you to mark it on the setlist that this is technically ‘Dark Star.’ And I’m going from ‘Dark Star’ into this next song. It’s a transition. I want you to mark the transition.”
There’s a noticeable shift in energy among the crowd when he seamlessly falls into the rhythm of “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” and Mayer knows it. “I did it,” he boasted. “I did that.”
After running through the entirety of the record, Mayer closed the segment with a full-circle return back to “Dark Star,” telling the audience: “We have some unfinished business.” He spent a few minutes jamming to the record before concluding.
“You know what that just was?” he asked. “And I do this with extremely love for my brothers in the company. With all love and reverence, that was ‘Dark Star’/’Your Body Is A Wonderland’/’Dark Star.’”
At another point in the set, Mayer combined Grateful Dead’s “Bertha” with his own “Age of Worry” just for the hell of it:
“That’s what’s so great about this music. You get one DNA strand incorrectly, and it’s not the Grateful Dead. It’s not their music,” Mayer told Rolling Stone in 2016. “I’m on a journey of finding out what is essential to the mix and how I can do that – which part of my voice I can add and which part of the original voice needs to be there.”
