John Mayer and Tennis Pro James Blake Are Friends

John Mayer’s publicist greeted us upon entering the Men’s Vogue party for tennis pro James Blake, and cheerfully told us that the rocker was not there to talk to us about Jennifer Aniston or anything else. Mayer and Blake are lifelong friends, it turns out, having grown up together in Fairfield, Connecticut. “I’ve known him forever,” Blake confirmed. “We were in my basement, and I was hitting tennis balls against the wall and he was playing the guitar, and now we’re both doing it for a living. It’s a little crazy,” he added. Older (and equally freakishly good-looking) brother Tom Blake explained that his parents and Mayer’s were friends. “John’s got an older brother that’s my age and a younger brother that’s James’s age. We used to all take the school bus together, and they used to come to our house after school because his parents both worked, and our grandmother used to take care of us all. So they would just come back there; their parents didn’t want them in an empty house.” So who was the bigger nerd, his younger brother James or Mayer? “It depends how you define nerdy,” Tom told us. “John kept to himself a lot more than James did, but I mean, James went to Harvard, so that’s got to count toward some nerdy points.” Did Mayer’s brooding cause him to predict his future as a rock star? He laughed. “Absolutely not. I never would have thought that.”