According to this question Access Denied for MYSQL ERROR 1045 I should be able to start MySQL in safe mode with
sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables
but this simply logs the following lines to STDOUT:
151116 17:46:46 mysqld_safe Logging to '/usr/local/var/mysql/MacBook-Pro.local.err'.
151116 17:46:46 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/var/mysql
151116 17:46:46 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /usr/local/var/mysql/MacBook-Pro.local.pid ended
and returns me to the command line. The error log quoted has the same last 2 lines output here. When I try and connect to MySQL I get:
mysql -uroot -p
Enter password:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)