John Mayer Gives A Tearful Apology In Nashville For His ‘Playboy’ Interview

John Mayer has apparently realized that Twitter apologies probably aren’t going to cut it this time around. After quotes from his interview in the March issue of Playboy surfaced yesterday—where he describes Jessica Simpson as “sexual napalm” and drops the N bomb when discussing his African-American fanbase—the 32-year-old rocker apologized last night on stage at Nashville’s Sommet Center.

“In the quest to be clever I completely forgot about the people that I love and the people that love me,” Mayer said during a five-minute apology in which he teared up at certain points. Watch Mayer attempt to pull the foot out of his mouth below.

The singer admitted that he’s fallen “into a whirlpool of selfishness and greenness 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 would finally pin me down and say, ‘you’re a creep’.”

And given that several members of his band are African-American, Mayer no doubt felt the need to publicly make ammends for his eyebrow-raising Playboy comments—like this one: “Someone asked me the other day, ‘What does it feel like now to have a hood pass? And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a n***** pass.”

“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 given interview, and certainly not in the interview that’s made the rounds today,” Mayer continued in Nashville. “They’re on this stage because they support myself as a possible future grown up. And maybe they see something that I haven’t looked at in awhile.”

He wrapped up by saying, “I quit. I quit the soundbite game. I quite the media game. I’m out. I’m done. I just want to play my guitar to whoever’s around.”

Well, that’s Playboy taken care of. Now if we could just get him to apologize for grossing the masses out with his Rolling Stone interview last month…