February 10, 2010 - 32 year-old JOHN MAYER stopped mid-performance at the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tennessee and made a tearful apology for racial slurs made in a recent interview with PLAYBOY. Mayer says: "it's been difficult because in my quest to be clever... in the quest to be clever and try to slither out of what i perceived to be constant persecution or somebody trying to pin me, which may or may not ever really be happening, but i think that it is a lot of the time when it's actually not. in the quest to be clever, i completely forgot about the people that i love and that love me. and I went as I have begun to do, into a wormhole of selfishness, and greediness and arrogance...and thinking that if i would just continue to be speedy and witty and pull together as many fast words and phrases as I could, that I could be clever enough to buy myself another day without thinking that anybody could finally pin me down and saying 'you're a creep'. and when i should have just given that up and played the guitar... so i decided i would try to be as clever as possible all the time. and i did that at the expense of people that i love and that feels absolutely terrible. it feels worse than any headline i thought i could get my way out of. and i think it's important that you know that everybody on this stage is here playing with me not because they condone what i say in any interview... they are not on this stage because they support what i said, they're on this stage because they support myself as a possible future grown-up. and maybe they see something that i don't... so maybe i need to take a break from trying to be clever and spend a little time looking at what they see. cause they've done an unbelievable thing standing on this stage and standing by my side tonight. it's just not worth being clever.... i'm out .... just wanna play my guitar... "
