John Mayer is reacting to Jessica Simpson’s tell-all, Open Book.
In her memoir, she writes about her tumultuous relationship with John, including how the insecurity brought about by their relationship “was the start of me relying on alcohol to mask my nerves.” She also accuses him of causing her split from Tony Romo, and toying with their relationship in order to “torture himself enough to get good material.”
She also recalls how John calling her a “sexual napalm” in an interview became the final straw in their relationship.
“The guy got on the school intercom and said I was crazy in bed. I didn’t accept his apology,” she writes. “I deleted all his contact information from my phone. I was done with this man in a way I never thought was possible. When he reached out to me, I changed my number and changed my email.”
“I know that he’s publicly apologized and I don’t want to take that away from him,” she admits. “I think he knows a lot of this about me already but he doesn’t know the perspective I have as a woman. That was Jess in her 20s.”
“He loved me in the way that he could and I loved that love for a very long time. Too long,” she adds. “And I went back and forth with it for a long time. But it did control me.”
On Wednesday (April 1), John joined Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, where the topic of their conversation eventually turned to Jessica’s book.
“I’ve heard about it,” John admitted. “I’ve heard some bits.”
Although it’s not exactly clear which “bits” he’s heard, he says he doesn’t really need to read about it – he was there.
“As Pee-wee Herman says in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure before the movie of his life is about to play out at the end, he’s not watching the movie, and the reason he’s not watching the movie, he says, ‘I don’t have to watch it, Dottie, I lived it,'” he told the host. “And I think that’s prescient here.”
During the episode, Andy also asked him about the greatest piece of advice he got from a fellow musician.
“Elton John said to me back in 2002 when I was going through my first public relationship snafu, he said, ‘Welcome to the world of bulls**t, my darling, you have arrived,'” John recalled.
He also talked about his parody of “Imagine” on Instagram, where he joked that he accidentally sang Ariana Grande’s song, “Imagine,” instead of the John Lennon classic.
“I did hear from Ariana. I wanted to make sure she knew I wasn’t making fun of her, and I’m really not making fun of anybody in that video,” he said. “Look, I think if somebody comes up to you with a tool to try to help you, but it’s not exactly the right tool for the job, they still tried to help you. I just look for opportunities to make people laugh right now.”
