In the serenity of a sweet-smelling Milano hotel suite, John Mayer is trying to decompress. A few hours ago, the musician unveiled his new limited edition 18kt white gold Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar 41mm – three years in the making and “the honour of a lifetime” – to a roomful of gasping watch nerds at the AP Social Club, a fancy name for the watchmaker’s annual launch of its new releases.
Mayer won’t admit it, but his influence in the world of watch collecting is practically unmatched. His opinions move markets (the price of a vintage gold Rolex Daytona skyrocketed after he bigged it up in a Hodinkee video), his horological purchases – FP Journe, AP, Patek, G-Shock – drive hype, and he’s even assigned himself the role of ensuring fellow musos “get the right watches that they love.”
“I thought this about guitars before,” Mayer says, leaning back on a grey sofa with his eyes closed, as if about to conjure some deep inner thought during a therapy session. “But I think I’ve created something that will outlive me. And this is the first time I can be sure of that.”
Like all therapists, I ask how that makes him feel. “I now exist somewhere in the Audemars Piguet history of watches. It’s going to take me a long time to unpack that, I mean how do you ever take off the watch you designed that has your name in it?”
Travis Scott and LeBron James share the same quandary, having both designed their own APs – but while throwing no shade towards those creations, the level of detail and outright wizardry housed inside the ‘Gravity’ singer’s Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar is on another level. Using what’s known as a QP (Quantieme Perpetuel) complication for his horological playground (it displays the time, day, date, month, week of the year, astronomical moon and leap year), Mayer’s design was meant to be a one-of-one piece – but AP was so taken with his ideas, it’s made 200. “Taking everything new that I was able to conceive with the watch, nothing was more exciting than having that detail get accepted and implemented by the design team,” he says smiling.
Debuting a starry ‘Crystal Sky’ dial while signalling the final chapter for the OG self-winding Calibre 5134 movement, it’s an horological feat of firsts and lasts. “It’s an honour to send off the calibre and the reference this way. It’s also really clever and unique to turn the idea of discontinuing a reference on its head. We normally think about discontinuing something as we don’t need it anymore. This is sending it off in a way that you normally see this kind of celebration for the beginning of something,” says Mayer.
“It speaks to the power of what this watch has done – turning sports figures, heads of state, musicians, artists to perpetual calendars who would never have otherwise wore one. So for me to have the opportunity to be the swan song for it, handing over the baton from a calibre to a new dial process, is an honour.”
All that considered, perhaps it will go down as one of the watch world’s future greatest hits. Here’s what Mayer has to say on the matter.
GQ: What turned your interest in watches into legit watch nerd status?
John Mayer: I started collecting when it was crazy to own more than one watch. Probably 2001 was when I bought my first watch. I was in my twenties and for a long time, it was this freaky thing that I did. It took me on this journey of learning, knowing, and then fully understanding things through collecting them. Now there’s a bit of an understanding that this is a reputable passion, and it just so happens I have 15 years of collecting and knowledge under my belt that I can help other people very quickly skip over traps that I’d fallen into as a collector. I’ve actually met more young musicians through their love of watches than I have through playing music, and Ed [Sheeran] has taken on that role as well now. I know people that Ed’s onboarded. Ed is now getting other people started, which I love to see. He’s advising other people on what to get.
In the spirit of you liking to be caught off guard, where does putting on your watch come in daily grooming routine – after you’ve moisturised?
Home is where the majority of scratches happen on your watch, not out in the world. In my house in Montana there’s a lot of exposed stone, so putting on my watch is actually the very last thing I do before I go out. And winding a watch has become a ritual of gratitude. I stand there, I close my eyes and wind the watch. It’s like an affirmation for the day.
How have your watch tastes evolved over the years?
I’ve become more selective because of the way my collection’s grown. It’s actually now about appreciating things and going back to them. The return of smaller diameter watches means I can go back to things that I’d already started collecting and wear those and appreciate them more than I did before.
When it comes to collaborations, you’ve done some with G Shock, but this AP is like a whole other benchmark for high horology. How does it rate amongst your many creative endeavours?
I’ve gotten to a place now where I can build longevity into what I’m designing so when it comes to collaboration and design, I would say this is No 1. No 2 would be the PRS Silver Sky guitar. This watch has been in the pipeline for so long that it was going on in the background as the G Shock was being designed. I really loved that the G-Shock was going to allow tens of thousands of people to own a watch with my name on it so that when I released this AP, because it’s a luxury watch and a high ticket item, the headlines didn’t have to be Are you a John Mayer fan? If you want to own a watch he designed, do you have 100 and XX thousand dollars?” It was very important to me to be able to say you can get a watch that I’ve designed for $180.
Why did you choose to design a QP, or a perpetual calendar as it’s more formally called?
It’s not an overstatement that the Royal Oak QP has sparked a mass understanding and appreciation of perpetual calendars. The thought was that complications of that magnitude go into the standard definition of luxury timepiece, which would normally be a round, elegant dress watch. To put it in a sport case of a Royal Oak was fresh. In 10 years, it’s gone from something that was only appreciated by true enthusiasts or bought because it was a status thing, to now being one of the most loved and desired APs. It’s become this cultural thing. Ceramic definitely helped that reference a lot. The white ceramic, black ceramic, blue ceramic, that’s a very clever use of ceramic to help make that statement.
What are your favourite Easter eggs in the watch?
There’s three things I would point out. The ‘Swiss Made’ mark is on the subdial itself because it couldn’t be stamped on the crystal sky dial. The 52-week indicator is a very whimsical way of looking at time. By making the hand blue it’s very tonal to the watch but you don’t see it unless you’d like to. The most time was spent on changing the 31 in the day of the month sub dial. There’s been long historic precedents of using red in a leap year window and the same applies with this detail. I went What if the 31 was white [not red like it usually is] and we did this step down with the 3 and 1 so it wasn’t 311 [day 31 next to day 1]?
It must have been quite difficult to make all these tiny calls.
What I’m most proud of is that given unprecedented access to create anything I wanted to on the dial, there was still this discipline in terms of what I wanted the watch to feel like. You can’t put every lyric into one song, you can’t have a ballad and a rocker at the same time.
Your watch is one of several new releases for AP. Are you happy with how it fits in?
If there was another QP, I would be concerned about the air traffic there, but it stands alone as a QP collaboration. What’s interesting is I’m here to present this watch and then also be the same audience member for the other pieces, which is great. The sand gold is a really interesting colour. I think a lot of watch enthusiasts can be a little scared off by gold so sand gold is really clever, that it can be gold but doesn’t scream gold watch.
Obviously there’s been a few people who’ve worked on this with you like [ex-head of complications] Michael Friedman and [ex-CEO] Francois-Henry Bennahmias, but does it add a bit of extra excitement launching this at the beginning of Ilaria Resta’s new era?
Guys like Michael and Francois are very much embedded in the spirit of the watch, they had a lot to do with it coming to life so this project belongs to them in spirit as much as anyone else. Francois himself left a spirit of looking forward and being excited. I have so much respect for Ilaria who took that stage [earlier] as if she’d been working [at AP] for 10 years. I was very impressed and touched by that.
Any watch myths you’d like to debunk with us?
I don’t think you’ve heard me ever use the word investment. There can be a misunderstanding that every luxury watch is a ‘surefire investment’. That’s not true. I think if you love it, that’s it. I’m always inspired by people who love watches at every price point. I very rarely meet someone who is upset when we show each other our watches, that they have a Grand Seiko or Seiko diver. They have as much love for what’s on their wrist as I do for mine. What I actually see that I like is people who say, One day, I’m going to get that. That, to me, is the heart and soul of collecting.
Which brings us back to your AP QP. Who do you want to see wearing it?
I’ll be happiest when I see someone completely unrelated to what I do or who I am, who may not have a single one of my songs on their playlist, love the watch. Bring on the European football coach who’s got his finger up in front of his mouth as he’s in the final minutes of a game and he’s wearing that watch. That will be the moment that it comes full circle and I go wow, I really have a place.