Meanwhile, back in the heartland: John Mellencamp releases a killer retrospective and avoids giving Dylan advice

By Gavin Edwards
Rolling Stone, 11/25/2004

TO FIND THE BELMONT MALL STUDIO, you head a few miles out of Bloomington, Indiana, and turn right at the bait shop. After heading through the woods down some narrow back roads, you reach the building where John Mellencamp has made music for the past two decades.

The walls are covered with dozens of Mellencamp's gold records. He sits behind one of four desks, his sleeves rolled up, trading insults and boasts with his office staff. The current object of discussion: yesterday's peewee football playoff game, which was an upset victory for the team that included Mellencamp's two sons, Hud, 10, and Speck, 9. "This looks like an office," Mellencamp confides, "but it's like a barbershop in here."

Mellencamp is fifty-three. He's wearing blue jeans, Pumas and a gray sweater. His face has grown weather-beaten, but he still looks like a well-toned bantamweight. He works every day but Saturday. Right now, he's preparing for another tour and working on blues and Cajun songs for Mississippi Ghost Brothers, a stage musical he's writing with Stephen King. In it, a quarreling Southern family goes on vacation to the haunted cabin where two uncles killed each other; it's set in the present day and the 1940s. "What you think is your conscience is actually your past haunting you," Mellencamp says of the show.

He has now made twenty-one albums, the first of which, Chestnut Street Incident, was released in 1976, a fact that makes him eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He hasn't gotten in yet. "People have a disposition against the Midwest," he says cheerfully. "I'm not worried about it — I'll get in when they run out of everybody else who plays rock. They'll say, 'Oh, yeah, let's go back and get Mellencamp.' "

The real testament to Mellencamp's career is his new thirty-seven-song compilation, Words and Music. "What surprised me was that I had a video to accompany almost every song," Mellencamp says with a laugh. "For a guy who didn't like to make videos, I sure did a lot of them." He didn't program the two discs chronologically, which obscures his career progression from meat-and-potatoes rock about girls to fiddle-enhanced vignettes of heartland life to rhythmically complex folk rock about racism.

What's consistent across the years is the quality of the songwriting and the memorable portraits of Americans groping toward something bigger than themselves. Mellencamp says, "I try not to write songs about myself- I'm just not that interesting. For me, songwriting is when you can make somebody say, 'Hey, that guy's eavesdropping on my phone calls.' But you can't do that if you get too specific-everything has to be vague."

Mellencamp's early songwriting idols were Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. He and Dylan eventually became friendly; for a while in the early Nineties, Dylan would call to read him lyrics to his new songs, looking for feedback. "It was really awkward," says Mellencamp of the phone calls, which would come at all hours of the night. He didn't feel remotely qualified to criticize Dylan's work — "Look at the shit you write, and look at the shit I write," he told him — so eventually Dylan stopped calling.

Mellencamp leans back in his chair, sucking on his umpteenth cigarette. (He had a heart attack ten years ago but still smokes quite a bit, even waking up in the middle of the night sometimes for a cigarette. "Smoking's the only thing I do well," he says.) Reclining in his studio's control room, he is such a genial host that it's slightly uncomfortable to point out that Mellencamp does have a public image, or at least a reputation. He is known for being hardheaded and confrontational; in short, people say he has the red ass.

"You're not telling me something I haven't heard," he says. He freely concedes that he's tenacious and stubborn but thinks those qualities come into play when he's tangling with record companies. "I would rather have the red ass than have somebody pull my strings," he says. "If you aren't careful in the music business, you can become a skin puppet." Not content with being taperecorded, Mellencamp insists that I write down a quotation from Jimmy Cagney: "There is no reward in this world for settling for something you don't want."

"Most men, up until they were forty, think the world revolves around them," Mellencamp says.

Including you?

He snorts. "Of course. I was in a rock band." Mellencamp recently completed his stint on the Vote for Change Tour, where he was partnered with the R&B artist Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds. Also an Indiana native, Edmonds produced the two new tracks on Words and Music. Mellencamp marveled at how Edmonds stacked up forty vocal tracks for background harmonies. "I couldn't do that in ten years," he says.

Living in Indiana, Mellencamp is surrounded by his past and his family. One of his two daughters from his second marriage (he has been married to his third wife, Elaine, for twelve years) attends nearby Indiana University. His parents are also still close at hand: "My father can whip us both," he says. "He's seventy-four and looks like my younger brother."

Two years ago, however, his grandmother died at age ninety-seven. She sang "Grandma's Theme" on the 1985 album Scarecrow, she always called him Buddy. "She got kind of nutty toward the end," Mellencamp says. Grandma would ask Mellencamp to lie in bed next to her so they could talk, and then she'd get overwhelmed by religious fervor. "I'm ready to go!" she'd shout. "God, take me and Buddy right now!"

Mellencamp could only make flailing gestures, trying to steer the Lord toward his grandmother. "Not Buddy!" he'd whisper, like a man who still had work to do in this world.

hopefully he will play a big arena tour and play his usual concerts with the hits etc...but this is a special tour and was promoted that way...

I disagree. I hope he never does an arena "hits" tour ever again, and I would say the chances of him doing that at this point in his career are pretty slim. I'll be just fine if I never hear "Lonely 'Ol Night" or "Hurts So Good" played live again. Give me the album tracks over the hits any day of the week.

Few of the hard-core Mellencamp fans want to hear the same tired old hits. We want to hear the other geat songs that never get played live. John is delivering those songs on this tour, and hopefully on every tour for the remainder of his career. Sorry you aren't familiar with enough of his catalog to enjoy those songs.

Uh-huh, John Cougar Mellencamp fights and wins his way

By Gary Graff
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
March 27, 1984

OK, John, let's hear about it; you're 34 years old now, a full-gown adult by most standards. So how come you still sing a song called "I Fight Authority?"

Someone might say, 'John, aren't you a bit too old to be fighting authority?' " John Cougar Mellencamp admitted. "Well, no. I've been doing it since I was little, and I've always come out grinning. You gotta recognize up front it's a losing battle, but you gotta do it."

Granted, the tag line to the song, a rocker from Mellencamp's latest album, "Uh-Huh," is "authority always wins." The thing is, Mellencamp has fought an awful lot of authority during the past six months, and he's won every battle.

The first was over his name. During 1982 they called him John Cougar as an album ("American Fool") and two singles ("Jack and Diane," "Hurts So Good") dominated radio, earned him a Grammy nomination and, with more than 3 million copies sold, was the year's biggest-selling album. But he was born Mellencamp, a product of solid, working-class Dutch stock in Seymour, Ind. — Cougar was tagged on by his first manager, Tony DeFries, who didn't consult Mellencamp about the change.

The deception always bothered Mellencamp, and he used his newly acquired stardom to force his record company to let him retain his real surname.

"I got to the point where (Cougar) didn't mean anything to me at all," he explained. "My friends just kind of said, 'When are you going to get rid of that stupid Cougar name?'

"The record company didn't like it much. They said, 'You've been going for 10 years as John Cougar, then all of a sudden you want to drop it?' I can understand their point. I think next time I'll come up with a completely different name."

Battle No. 2 was to redefine the standard rock 'n' roll ethic of releasing an album, then touring for three or four months. Cougar waited more than a year to release "Uh-Huh," and he's waited about five months to hit a roadful of small venues and secondary markets in the United States, hardly the normal cycle for a major talent.

And finally, he's just about won an ongoing battle with critics whose kindest comments have been to call him a Bruce Springsteen clone. On "Uh-Huh," Mellencamp started the songs in his head and filtered them through his heart, giving them plenty of punch without the sophomoric exuberance of previous hits like "Hurts So Good" or "I Need a Lover."

"I didn't really know that that was my intention," he said. "Let's face it; John Cougar has and never will try to be an intellectual-type songwriter. I never was — never in high school, never in college. When I meet people on the street, I say things very simply.'

"I write a lot of songs I'd never put on record. I don't think people would like them, so why make records if nobody's gonna hear them? What's the use of dealing with the record company if it's not going to be worth it? You gotta hope people who are out there will like it, and then it's worth it — to me, that's the fun of making records. It's not the girls backstage or the drugs or anything like that."

Then he paused to contemplate the rock 'n' roll blasphemy he's just uttered. "Y'know," he said, "somebody's going to read that comment and say, 'What a pompous ass!' I never understood what (John) Lennon meant when he said he'd rather stay home and bake bread and be with his family. I kinda understand his point now."

In case you're wondering, this is a radical change from the self-titled "American Fool" of 1982, the Cougar who talked about how great the girls on tour were, how he loved to rock 'n' roll, how he cherished the jacket a biker gave him in San Francisco. That was a bit of an act, as if John Cougar Mellencamp was playing a part called John Cougar.

Success accounts for part of the change. When you earn a couple million bucks for your record company, you can start calling a few shots. But "Uh-Huh" was a factor, too, a mature display of songwriting depth that gave Mellencamp the courage to take the disguise off his intelligent, if brash, personality.

"Overall, 'Uh-Huh' is the best record I've ever made, front to back," Mellencamp said. "There were a lot of good songs on 'American Fool,' but there was a lot of crap I'm still embarrassed with. They put it on the radio, and inside I'm saying, 'Don't play that!'

"I don't want to have to run out on the stage and say, 'Is everybody having a good time! You wanna rock 'n' roll!' I want to be able to walk out with an acoustic guitar if I want and sing 'Blowing in the Wind.' The most ridiculous thing to me is the encore — how embarrassing! You run off stage and you know damn well you're going to run right back on.

"The awful thing about playing live for me is after the show, when I have to talk to all these people who tell me how good I am. To me that whole thing is just so unbelievable. And embarrassing."

To that end, Mellencamp is not just limiting his public appearances. He's looking for young artists to produce and guide into the industry, and he hopes to help them avoid the embarrassment and hype he has experienced.

"I've always got my ears open," he said. "People want to bring people up too fast — that's what happened to me. I was some dumb kid from Indiana, didn't know how to write a song, but they put an album out, hyped the hell out of me and threw me out for the critics and the fans to clean my bones.

"New acts are just like fighters. You gotta bring them up slowly, just let them learn and develop the craft, don't go for the million-seller on the very first album.

"There are more important things in the world than making money, making records and playing tours, though my agent doesn't think so. If I'm not going to have a good time doing it, I don't want to do it."

Blue-collar rocker still raises a ruckus



CLEARWATER

John Mellencamp, he of the Wolverine hair and Hoosier swagger, has spent most of his feisty, fruitful life raisin' a ruckus in the mythic populist shadows of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. He's never been considered quite their caliber of denim laureate, perhaps because he chased MTV fame with a bit more zeal than his fellow blue-collar bards.

But at an intimate — and rowdy — sold-out Ruth Eckerd Hall on Friday, the 59-year-old former Johnny Cougar showed that a late-career uninterest in chasing glory (and his heroes) has freed him to become the artist he has always envisioned — and, ironically, has moved him closer to Bob and the Boss than ever.

With a celeb-packed crowd of 2,183 (including new gal pal Meg Ryan) robustly cheering him on — especially when he uncorked slick James Brown dance moves — the Hall of Famer and his six-piece band slugged tirelessly for more than two hours, unloading rarities, songs from new album No Better Than This and a smattering of hits, many of which were retooled to wild, imaginative degrees. (Jack & Diane as a frisky barn dance? Sure, why not.)

Before the show, Mellencamp showed a beautifully grainy hourlong doc about the making of 2010's No Better Than This, which was recorded in various music Valhallas, including Sun Studios in Memphis. It also set up the rest of the night, as Mellencamp has more interest in his new material — a Dust Bowl swing that cooks, if doesn't exactly fly off store shelves — than in his oldies-but-goodies.

"I really don't give a (bleep) about the past," he laughed at one point. "I'm always looking forward."

Switching from semi-unplugged to acoustic to a cappella (Cherry Bomb) to a thunderous electric finale — and tossing in stories, including one about his grandma ushering him to heaven a bit too early — Mellencamp was energetic but artful, which didn't always go over with fans. The throngs were downright rude at times, including a numbskullian "yeow!" frenzy when he tried to play the lovely Save Some Time to Dream.

But Ryan must be doing wonders for Mellencamp's infamous temper because instead of skinning the folks for making a racket, he said, "If you're waiting for a song, just be patient. It'll probably come up."

And it did — sort of.

Small Town was delivered via man and his guitar; no offense to the booming classic, but it was always meant to be a pensive soliloquy. Rain on the Scarecrow, on the other hand, was jacked to defibrillating levels, a massive plea for farmers that bordered on civil disobedience.

Mellencamp finished with Pink Houses and R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A., crowd-pleasing nods to those who were patient through the new stuff. He's often said he considers them to be "silly" songs, but he can't resist. Hey, he might never write like Dylan or Springsteen — but at least he's a better dancer.

http://www.tampabay.com/features/music/blue-collar-rocker-still-raises-a-ruckus/1155474

[Critic's Notebook]

Live: John Mellencamp at Broward Center, March 3
By Lee Zimmerman, Fri., Mar. 4 2011 @ 8:20AM

John Mellencamp
Au-Rene Theater, Broward Center for the Performing Arts
Thursday, March 3, 2011

"I admire John. He's trying to survive in a tough business. Yet, he's stripping it down rather than flowering it up."

That statement comes from photographer Kurt Markus, whose documentary It's About You opened John Mellencamp's rare South Florida appearance Thursday at the Au-Rene Theater in Fort Lauderdale. It provided insight into why Mellencamp ranks with Springsteen, Seger and Fogerty as the quintessential American rocker -- an artist whose sentiments and sympathies are a reflection of a workingman's no-nonsense philosophy. Capturing him on the road and in makeshift studios, the grainy photography was shot in Super 8 with an off-handed candor that belies any epic attempt. By the time Mellencamp and band hit the stage after a brief intermission, the audience feels like they know him that much better. "John's show is basically just him and his band," Markus says towards the end of the film. "There's no elaborate big screens or pyrotechnics, no light show or dancers." It's simply a man who's long since become adept at his craft, making music that reflects his heart and soul.

Indeed, after affirming his journeyman stance with his last three releases -- 2008's darkly-titled Life Dark Love and Freedom, last year's equally apocalyptic No Better Than This and the career-spanning box set On the Rural Route 7609 -- John Mellencamp could correctly be referenced as Woody Guthrie's heir apparent. The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer effectively donned that guise last night, while also asserting his ability to rock, reflect and reminiscence. Dressed in a simple blue suit and a tight black tee, he led his six piece band -- Michael Wanchic (guitar), Andy York (guitar), Miriam Sturm (violin), John Gunnell (electric and upright bass), Dane Clark (drums) and Troye Kinnett (accordion/keyboards) - through a stirring two-hour set that alternated between full band rave-ups and solitary acoustic readings, its two dozen offerings culled mainly from reworked greatest hits and the aforementioned albums.



It's to Mellencamp's credit that he's not content simply to spin out the crowd favorites and coast on perfunctory performances. For a man who turns 60 later this year, he's remarkably spry, possessing a polished stage presence that has him waltzing across the stage like the hippest emcee. His voice, gruff and sandpapery from an apparently unquenchable smoking habit, suits the new material well, making the swampier selections like "Walk Tall," "No One Cares About Me," "What If I Came Knocking" and "No Better Than This" sound even more ominous than before. Truth be told, he's wandered several paces beyond the blue-collar rock that was once his standard calling card. Blues, folk, gospel and even occasional cabaret -- as evidenced by the sly vamp "Right Behind Me" -- play an integral part in his presentation. And when Sturm and Kinnett took the spotlight with an instrumental ballad "New Hymn" as the other musicians took a brief respite, the detour into Celtic realms still managed to maintain the momentum.

That's not to say Mellencamp diverted entirely. The opening "Authority Song" asserted his insurgency while robust readings of "Rain on the Scarecrow," "Paper In Fire," "Check It Out," "Pink Houses" and finale "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." found the crowd on their feet and embracing every note. In fact, "R.O.C.K." is arguably the most effective concert capper ever devised, and when Mellencamp invited an audience member up on stage for some impromptu dancing and a brief turn at the microphone, it was clear that this indeed was a song meant to rally the masses. Even when he diverted from the template -- most notably on a jaunty, reworked version of "Jack And Diane," an A Cappella "Cherry Bomb" (supposedly done as a special request, although he performs it every show) and an all-acoustic "Small Town" -- he proved himself a reliable crowd-pleaser, delivering with both credibility and conviction.

There was no divide between Mellencamp's contemporary catalogue and the sepia tones of his newer material. All maintain that homage to the heartland initially inspired by songs like "Jackie Brown," "Pink Houses," "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Small Town." More populist than pop these days, he gives Springsteen a race for his money when it comes to securing an audience embrace. While he refrains from investing himself wholly in politics and pontification, his social concerns reside just below the surface. "It says in the preamble to the Constitution that the government must provide for the defense of the country and the welfare of its citizens," he observed at one point. "So why does the government always seem to have money for defense and not for the welfare?"

Indeed, Mellencamp shows himself a powerful rock 'n' roll preacher, and the fact that the crowd consisted mostly of people in their 40s, 50s and 60s served as testament to his current standing as an elder statesman of sorts, one that's earnest and yet still approachable. "Try not to be too judgmental," he advised. "So others will not judge you." It's cautionary guidance, and a lesson he himself has heeded well. If any judgment were to be rendered, he'd clearly come out a winner.

Critic's Notebook

Personal bias: His admonishment to the younger set to avoid confrontation with anyone boasting a streak of gray hair was especially telling. It's about time an artist embraced the older generation and affirmed their relevance.

Random detail: Guitarist Michael Wanchic could offer a lesson in job security. He's been with Mellencamp's backing band 35 years.

By the way: To the two loud-mouths sitting behind me who insisted on offering their own commentary during the documentary: No, the film wasn't boring and yeah, we believe that your brother used to hang out with Johnny Depp at the Old Agora concert club in Hallandale. It's just that nobody really cares, especially when you insist on bragging about it while the rest of us are trying to enjoy the show.

Set List

"Authority Song"
"No One Cares About Me"
"Death Letter"
"John Cockers"
"Walk Tall"
"The West End"
"Check It Out"
"Save Some Time To Dream"
"Cherry Bomb"
"Don't Need This Body"
"Right Behind Me"
"Jackie Brown"
"Longest Days"
"Easter Eve"
"Jack & Diane"
"Small Town"
"Rain on the Scarecrow"
"Paper in Fire"
"The Real Life"
"What If I Came Knocking"
"If I Die Sudden"
"No Better Than This"
"Pink Houses"
"R.O.C.K. In The USA"

The Go Guide


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John Mellencamp rocks packed Broward Center

By Ben Crandell March 4, 2011

The charismatic John Mellencamp brought his traveling revival show to the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale Thursday night where a packed house was joyfully immersed in the elixir that the Indiana preacherman has been peddling for three decades now: straight Americana.

On a stage that will be occupied on Saturday by a national pop icon of another vintage, Tony Bennett, the 59-year-old Mellencamp delivered a rollicking paean to the heartland and the human struggle for decency, respect and rock 'n' roll.

Here are five takeways from the show:

1. Mellencamp was onstage for right around two hours and two dozen songs, and covered every nook in his catalogue, from 1983's classic sing-along "Pink Houses" to the steady-rollin' ballad "Save Some Time to Dream" on the excellent 2010 release "No Better Than This." The footloose opening number, "Authority Song," got half the crowd on its feet, but the first song that got everyone up was "Check It Out." Other stand-outs included an a capella, solo acoustic version of "Cherry Bomb," an extra-funky "Death Letter" and a Nashville-tinged "Jack & Diane" that snuck up on the crowd, but only slightly delayed the mad rush to the stage.

2. The evening opened at around 7 with the screening of “It's About You,” a documentary on the tour and recording sessions for "No Better Than This." The jittery Super 8 report works as a primer for Mellencamp's newly stripped-down sound and the ghosts that occupy it (from Elvis to Robert Johnson), and as a windows-rolled-down picaresque set along the flat highways that split decaying small towns in rural America. At nearly an hour long, it's also a buzz kill. Sadly, the bars in the lobby were nearly as popular as the film.

3. Mellencamp sounds good, looks good. He came on stage in a tailored blue suit, but soon doffed the jacket to reveal a tight black shirt with sleeves ending just above his still-imposing biceps. The ladies in the audience did little to hide their enthusiasm. Ditto when he would, here and there, bust a move or two across the stage. He's a little gray in the scruff of a latent goatee and maybe some in the hair, but the guy clearly still has it.

4. He's a great flirt, which feels a little different with the end of his 18-year marriage to Elaine Irwin Mellencamp, who is seen in a few shots in the opening documentary. "Patience!" he called with a glance to someone in the front row Thursday night. "You need patience. That's what all you younger girls need to learn. Patience!"

5. His save-the-working-man rap continues to go over with audiences in an era when that kind of talk is out of fashion. He followed his anthem for unity and empathy, "Walk Tall," with a brief critique of the decline of Western values, illustrated in the next song, the searing "The West End." Guitarist Andy York even gave the latter a few subtly eerie allusions to the Doors' end-of-days classic "The End." The crowd seemed to love it.

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/thingstodo/2011/03/john_mellencamp_rocks_packed_b.html

John Mellencamp's style diary

Rolling Stone, 9/16/99

By John Mellencamp

Florida is a place where success goes hand in hand with failure, where the people on the streets are at the absolute peak and the bottom of what we're about as a society. What's great is they all just love mingling together, everything nice and messy and sweaty. You know what I'm getting at: They're about true style -- the attitude underneath the clothes.

* Florida has some of the most beautiful women, cars, houses, boats and weather in the world -- but also some of the biggest damned hillbillies on the face of the earth. They call the townies in West Palm Beach crackers, and I've probably got a lot in common with those local outcasts. One of my favorite authors and playwrights, Tennessee Williams, did some of his best work in Florida. I wrote a song with George Green in '96 about falling in love with my wife, "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)," that used Florida as a backdrop. And I later shot a video in the Keys for "Just Another Day."

* All of these factors, combined with the heat, make Florida a sort of Garden of Eden on the griddle, and the best time to go to Florida is probably in the autumn. But this year we got to Florida in July, not October, and we were on tour, not on vacation, and it was so fucking sweltering on the afternoon before we played the Coral Sky Amphitheater in West Palm Beach that you couldn't walk a step without getting soaking wet from your own fluids.

* By 2 P.M. there was a heat index of 115 degrees under a hazy, windless sky, with 1,000 percent humidity. And it was exactly at the stroke of two o'clock that ROLLING STONE turned up with a bunch of fall clothes for me and my wife and band to try on for a damned photo session.

Now, I like photo sessions even less than I like making videos, and I think the reasons I hate 'era both are maybe similar to the reason why Tennessee Williams announced in 1961 that he wasn't gonna have any more sessions with his damned psychoanalyst: "He was meddling too much in my private life!"

* Williams wasn't trying to be funny so much as he was trying to define the difference between what he would offer the outside world and what he wanted to save for himself. You want the public to look all they want at the stuff you've worked and suffered some to extend to them. But style is something I think you're supposed to keep pretty much to yourself; it's somebody else's discovery about you.

* My style is the absence of it. And when it comes to fashion, mine is everything that's left after the circus leaves town without me. It's funny, though, 'cause one time twenty years ago I got fed up with wearing hot boots and wanted some with the top section removed -- all that animal hide above the ankle always seemed like wasted material to me. So I had a black-and-brown pair made special by a company in Texas called Nakona Boots, which had made such things in the Fifties, when men's pants were too tight to fit over boots. They cut off the tops right down to about an inch above the heel. Cool and comfortable as can be.

* I wore those cutoff boots every place I went for years -- until I started seeing other people wearing them the same way. This annoyed me. I mean, I come from Indiana, a part of the landscape where people wear boots for a good reason -- to stay above the mud and the shit in the countryside -- and seeing the random weirdos in urban areas wearing a manufactured edition of my own shoe style made me feel the point had gotten poisoned a little bit. You see where I'm going with this?

* So I looked at the wool suit that these ROLLING STONE fashion people were holding out for me to put on, and I know I made a mean face, because I'm not used to wearing anything I haven't picked out for myself and then slept in twice. But I took my wife aside and asked her whether she'd split the outfit with me, because that suit suddenly made me think of a photo by Brassai in his book The Secret Paris of the 30's. It was a picture taken at a wild party, the Bal de la Montagne Sainte-Genevieve, in 1931.

* The photo, shot from behind, shows what the book refers to as "a young couple wearing a two-in-one suit." It doesn't make any big deal about the fact that the couple is two guys; the emphasis is on the fact that the look is pretty sensible at that particular party in Paris in the Thirties.

* For Elaine and me, stuck in Florida in a temperature of 115, I'm sure Brassai would agree that the two-in-one style was just as sensible, so we took off all our clothes on the spot and shared what was available in whatever way seemed to fit best. Which is rock & roll, anyhow.

* Which kinda brings me to the real business at hand that day, which was playing music that night for a paying audience. Unlike style, which for me is a private accident that spills into a public place, music begins in a private space but moves on purpose into a public forum. To be a professional musician is to try to create a sense of community in a room full of strangers and make that feeling right, to where it becomes a real thing and not something just for show. It's the end result of years of playing and writing and then daily hours of rehearsal, continually doing the same songs time and again so that everyone knows their instruments so well that they can finally go beyond their parts and find some magic for the audience.

* I can put anything I want on my records, and I'm proud of pretty much all of them. And when I'm all by myself in my house, I can play anything I want by anybody I admire, from the Drifters to Dylan. But I never really got the idea of people like myself getting onstage and not playing the songs that the people in the audience have forked over their hard-earned money to hear. My reaction as a fellow concertgoer to that crap is, "Great, then you won't mind refunding half my money for not giving me what I wanted."

* It's a fine line the performer walks, combining the new with the old, the familiar with the obscure or less understood. I'll sometimes experiment, like I did on this tour, with rearranging some of my best-known work so it can be fresh and surprising but still recognizable in a way that's fun.

* I believe an artist should go onstage to give a bit of himself or herself to people who've decided to gamble and trust the performer. You can't be selfish and offer image over substance. I learned this lesson in public and in private over the course of many years, while thinking that other things were important and finding out the hard way that they weren't.

 * So now when I play music on concert tours, I play it for others. Which reminds me of another thing Tennessee Williams once said: "Hell is yourself. When you ignore people completely, that is hell."

* I think I know what Williams was getting at. Sometimes, when circumstances demand it, you've gotta forget the heat around you in order to generate some of your own.

Is this going to be a regular No Better Than This show, with the same setlist, show length and the movie and everything that he's been playing, or is he going to play a shortened show and a hits-heavy set for a festival crowd?

Speculation about the lineup for the 2011 Beale Street Music Festival ends today when the full roster of acts for the event -- scheduled for April 29 through May 1 at Tom Lee Park -- are announced during a 2 p.m. news conference at the headquarters of the Memphis in May International Festival.

Although not confirmed officially, the more than 60 performers are expected to include big-name and headlining talents John Mellencamp, Stone Temple Pilots, Wilco, MGMT, Godsmack, Lucinda Williams, Ludacris, Ke$ha and the Flaming Lips.

Other acts, already confirmed for the festival by concert industry website Pollstar, include R&B/pop hit maker Cee-Lo Green, veteran soul songstress Bettye LaVette and blues guitarist Jimmie Vaughn.

With the Internet buzzing about one of the stronger Music Fest lineups in recent memory, festival organizers put specially priced three-day passes on sale last month, a first for the event.

Both the early $49 and $59 passes have sold out.

Another full festival pass will go on sale today for $69, through April 18. Single-day tickets will also go on sale today for $30. Tickets will cost $37 at the gate.

Memphis in May International Festival executive vice president Diane Hampton said the advance interest is a reflection of the 35-year-old event's reputation.

"Without even announcing the lineup people have enough faith in this festival to buy the tickets and spread the word," Hampton said.

In addition to a bevy of national acts, local artists and festival perennials -- such as rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and bluesman Hubert Sumlin -- are also expected to perform. In all, more than 15 Memphis or Memphis-connected acts are expected to appear.

Also, The Experimental Tropic Blues Band, representing this year's Memphis in May honored country of Belgium, will perform multiple sets as part of the festival. On May 5, there will be a special "Belgium on Beale" show at the Orpheum featuring a night of Belgian music, dance and culture. Tickets cost $12.

In addition to the music festival, the Memphis in May calendar will include the Sunset Symphony on May 28, featuring the Bar-Kays doing a salute to the music of Stax. Tickets to the Sunset Symphony are on sale at all Ticketmaster outlets, ticketmaster.com or at (800) 745-3000.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/mar/02/mellencamp-flaming-lips-among-headliners-at/

Here's a little blurb from Rolling Stone magazine circa April 1984 to give you some more insight into the Uh-Huh Tour:

John Cougar drops Dylan song

Talk about daring tours: Throughout his sold-out nationwide swing, John Cougar Mellencamp has been kicking off his shows with five songs he's never recorded, from "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" to the Lee Dorsey chestnut, "Ya Ya." "I'm asking a lot of my audience, aren't I?" says the Indiana rocker, who professes delight with the outing so far. "It's the first time in a long time that I've walked onstage and felt good when I walked off. We sure do have a lot of fans out there." Mellencamp admits that he's had to drop his most adventurous cover, a solo acoustic version of Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." "I was playing the second show, and some guy was standing there in an Izod shirt saying, 'We didn't care about Dylan in the '60s, and we don't care about him in the '80s.' So I kinda thought, 'Well, okay.' Nuff said.'

Mellencamp one cool cat

By Timothy White
November 3, 1985

Oct. 2, 1976, should have been the biggest day in John Mellencamp's 'life. But he never felt so small — or so helpless. The banners strung above his head read, "JOHNNY COUGAR DAY" and the limousine in which he was seated made its way down Chestnut Street in Seymour, Ind. The clamorous parade being mounted in his honor rang as false and hollow as the silly rock 'h' roll alias his svengali-like manager of the moment had recently saddled him with.

"Ohhh, brother. That afternoon and the whole circus that went with it is still too, too painful to talk about," Mellencamp, 33, now recalls as he sits in the kitchen of his handsome Bloomington, Ind., home, refering to the outrageous hype and hucksterism of yore.

It had all been part of a master plan for overnight excess and/or success engineered by one Tony DeFries, head of the MainMan Organization that had years earlier signed up a certain Davey Jones and foisted him on the music industry as a painted android-cum-rock band christened Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. That DeFries had gotten considerable mileage out of his initial creation owed more to Jones (aka David Bowie) prior track record as a shrewd, dandy and dauntless poseur (as well as the slack American pop scene of 1972 that he was being marketed to) than any gifted invention on Tony's part. And Bowie had a bit of seasoned talent to back up the con; it was every inch a collaboration.

On his second attempt at pop legerdemain, however, DeFries was reeling from the recent exit, amid threats of lawsuits, of a thoroughly disgruntled Bowie. And Mellencamp, who didn't have but three thin songs to his bumpy German surname, was dazed by a $2,000 swindle at the hands of a fly-by-night New York entertainment lawyer. It was every inch an act of mutual desperation.

"I've done every dumb thing a person can possibly do in pursuit of becoming some sort of damned rock 'n' roll star," says Mellencamp. "The 'Chestnut Street Incident' album that DeFries got MCA Records to put out was a total flop, every bit as bad as the jungle-animal last name he sneaked onto the album jacket and stuck me with. Plus, he left me with 'The Kid Inside,' a record never to be released, and left MCA holding the bag with a $1 million contract."

Mellencamp, who was then married and broke, found a reputable attorney, signed with Rod Stewart manager Billy Gaffs Riva Records and retreated to London to record "A Biography," which yielded a No. 1 smash in Australia with the song, "I Need A Lover." When that track reached America on his third LP, "John Cougar," Pat Benatar recorded it and made it the most played single in the nation, ensuring both her stardom and Mellencamp's second chance at career respectability. "Finally," he allows with a smirk and a shrug, "I had no other option left but to just be myself."

And that new direction of Mellencamp's has made all the difference in the world. Huddling in the studio with Steve Cropper, the renowned Stax/- Volt guitar-songwriter-producer, Mellencamp crafted 1980's "Nothing Matters And What If It Did," his self avowed last shot at recognition. It spawned two modest hits with "This Time" and "Ain't Even Done With The Night." The followup record, "American Fool," completed the comeback in 1982 when it became the best-selling record of the year on the strength of "Hurts So Good" and "Jack and Diane." Most significant of all, Mellencamp had awakened to the fact that all the grist he needed for his own rock 'n' roll mill was right in his own Southern Indiana backyard. He wrote songs about his personal follies and bedevilments, about the tiny burg he was raised in, the citizens who populate it and the hopes they hold dear. In short, he literally won the hearts of millions with "Crumblin' Down," "Pink Houses" and "Authority Song." So much so, that President Reagan wanted to use "Pink Houses" as his 1984 campaign song track. But Mellencamp declined.

"Reagan doesn't know nothin' about working place people," Mellencamp asserts in his raspy Midwestern drawl, so when his people came around hinting at wanting permission to use 'Pink Houses,' I made it clear and plain from day one that he had to forget it."

The point being that the unadorned dream of dignity that is at the core of the song is one best unsullied by the often Tony Defries-sized ballyhoo of partisan politics. The same determination to address workaday goals and needs without diminishing them with a political pitch was behind the Sept. 22 Farm Aid benefit concert that Mellencamp organized in Champaign, ILL with colleagues Willie Nelson and Neil Young. And Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" album and tour are continuing to celebrate the strivings and values that were the heart of the farm relief show.

"The farmers in the Corn Belt and elsewhere are getting the old vice job. America has got a fair trade law on their crops, which means that because a bushel of corn is, say, $2.35, in the U.S., they cannot sell it for a more lucrative price overseas. That was OK in the 1930s and 1940s when it only cost maybe 35 cents to raise a bushel, but now it costs $2.27 or more and farmers can't make ends meet. They can't compete like any other merchant.

"Just as importantly, a way of life that all of the people around me grew up with — that heritage of small family farms — is swiftly being eroded," says Mellencamp, now happily remarried with three children. The title song of the album, "Rain on the Scarecrow," is about hearts being broken by bank foreclosures on farms and the disconnection from a sense of pride and purpose that is crucial for any wage earner. Besides the deeply-felt messages of socio-economic urgencies expressed on "Scarecrow," the crisp, crackling record is also a virtual chronicle of a young man raised on rock 'n' roll in the 1960s, the spare precision of every spunky garage band and car radio classic reverberant in such cuts as "Lonely Ol' Night," "Rumbleseat," "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." and the latest single, "Small Town."

"Growing up in Seymour, listening to the radio every night after my parents, brothers and sisters went to bed, on all those records by James Brown, the Rascals, the Standells, the great and the unjustly overlooked, they all made me feel like anybody could reach out and have an impact. That one young person could risk opening his heart, speaking his piece and letting people have the sheer fun and comfort of knowing they were not alone in their fantasies of doing special things with their lives.

"Before we started recording 'Scarecrow' last April, I had the band learn about a hundred of those old songs to warm up. The songs had an enormous energy, but they also had a lot of individual strengths — a hot guitar lick here, a strange drum beat there — that were allowed to shine through because nobody said it was wrong to take your best shot. It helped my group — who're guys who've been through it all with me — to rediscover some of their own strings."

Anyone as yet unexposed to the band, from the knife-edged rhythm section of bass player Toby Myers and drummer Kenny Aronoff, to the keen guitar interplay of Mike Wachic and lead Larry Crane, are in for a stunning treat. Backup singers Pat Peterson and Crystal Taliaferro lend their own deft coloration to Mellencamp's raucous vocals, and Mellencamp has added keyboardist John Cascella and the violin of Lisa Germano to accent and deepen the overall sound.

He's also providing an exhilarating encore that pays tribute to a son of the South who remains one of the most gifted and original singer-songwriters of the late 1960s and early 1970s — but why give the surprise away?

However hoodwinked or misguided former Seymour mayor Donald Ernest may have been in dedicating Seymour's 1976 Oktoberfest celebration to Mellencamp and then throwing a parade and an official concert to boot, incumbent mayor William Baily will have to concede that John Cougar Mellencamp has brought credit to his small town, and to every small town where his fans can be found.

Here's a review of a show from the Scarecrow Tour for you. This looks back on John's show at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, CA that took place on April 6, 1986:

Mellencamp plays it straight from the heart

By Jim Washburn
The Orange County Register
April 8, 1986

John Mellencamp goes "Heh, heh, heh" a lot these days. There's a self-deprecating "Heh,
heh, heh" when he nervously basks in a welcoming standing ovation; folksy "Heh, heh, hehs" when he tells small-town stories; uncertain ones when he interrupts his music to make a
speech about the plight of the small-time farmer. But when John Mellencamp goes "Heh, heh,
heh" it sounds with the false note of a bad high school actress doing her imitation of a Midwest grandma. Big deal: Some folks sound like Porky Pig when they eat. Mellencamp's career, though, has been tarnished by artifice in the past, and many at his Forum show Sunday may still have been scrutinizing him, wondering, "Is this guy for real?"

Though Mellencamp is now touted as the Midwest Springsteen, doling out homespun music
and a populist vision in a white T-shirt, it's hard to forget that a few years back he was the guy who let his name be changed, let his career be manipulated into glittery hype, and who had singles lodged in the Top 40 when a Springsteen song couldn't crack that territory.

Now that Springsteen's records go megaplatinum and his shows sell out whole valleys, you
can't help but be a bit leery of another fellow suddenly taking dives into the audience and making speeches about the little guy.

So, is it butter or Parkay? I'd guess the former. Though not yet generating the emotional electricity needed to fill a stadium, Mellencamp put on an excellent, high-powered show that left little opportunity to wonder if it was affected or not. Dry chuckles aside, Mellencamp's performance seemed to come straight from the heart, or at least arrive with a minimum of detours.

His 2-hour, 24-song show opened with the hit "Small Town," celebrating the life Mellencamp
still leads in Indiana. In a set which also included expected earlier hits — "Jack and Diane,"
"Authority Song," "Pink Houses," "I Need a Lover" and "Hurt So Good" — Mellencamp drew
most heavily from his current "Scarecrow" album.

That source also provided the show's high spots. "Scarecrow" is a superlative recording, bristling with well-honed, melodic songs boasting thoughtful, illuminating lyrics and charged
performances. It's such a powerful record, in fact, that Mellencamp and band were rarely able to better the performances on stage.

Two telling exceptions were a relentless, pulsing version of "Blood on the Scarecrow," a scathing depiction of the farmer's plight, and "Face of the Nation," delivered with the ominous drama due a song about a nation losing its "do onto others" ethic.

Aside from some gratuitous running around trying to cover all the territory on the immense stage, the six-piece band and two backup singers provided an excellent, straightforward backing for the songs. The rockers got a spark from Kenny Aronoff's inventive powerhouse drumming. Violinist Lisa Germano added a distinctive touch to softer numbers, such as an acoustic "Pink Houses."

Springsteen has cut such a wide swath in rock that it's nearly impossible for a rocker to avoid
touches of his performance or falling into the genre's other major cliches (Spandex, mousse 'n' synths, etc.). Mellencamp's performance certainly had it's Bruceisms — including a story about
growing up, and dancing with a girl pulled from the audience — but most of his singing style and stage moves seemed derived from the '60s soul greats Springsteen also draws on.

Several of those were given a nod in the show's last half-hour, an oldies revival including spirited raveups of the Miracle's "Mickey's Monkey," Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Love Light," James Brown's "Cold Sweat," "Mony Mony," the Dovell's "You Can't Sit Down" and the Human Beinz's "Nobody But Me." During the extravaganza Mellencamp executed some credible Brownian splits and a tandem somersault with one of his backup singers.

Mellencamp capped the set with "Proud Mary," an odd choice since the song has been worn to the nub by every bar band in the nation, and Mellencamp did little to revive it. The lapse was made up for by a rousing encore of "Under the Boardwalk."

OK, it just dawned on me how nearly impossible this itinerary is. John is going to play April 15 in Edmonton and then fly to Indianapolis after the show. His 30-minute performance in Indy is at 4 pm on the 16th, which is 2 pm Edmonton time. He is then going to fly to back to Edmonton for the show that night at 8:30. I don't see how he pulls this off. For those who don't know where Edmonton is, it's not that far from the Arctic Circle. It's so far north that they don't have more than a few hours of light in the winter time. It's got to be at least a six-hour flight from Indy, and then you have to go through customs, get to the venue, etc. It's amazing to me that he's even going to attempt this.

MUSIC TO MY EARS

By Timothy White

"I guess the point is to share the spirit of that old song, by just 'playing real good for free,' " said John Mellencamp, making a sandwich in the kitchenette of his tour bus as it pulled away from Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. The song in question was Joni Mitchell's classic 1970 "Ladies Of The Canyon" track "For Free," and the bus Mellencamp stood in belongs to colleague Don Henley, but the sandwich was for John's young son Hud. The child was hungry after spending 70 minutes sitting placidly on an equipment case in the center of the park, watching and listening as his dad strummed more than a dozen familiar songs and obscure favorites for a stunned lunchtime throng of 400 fans.

Like his offspring's meal, Mellencamp's unannounced outdoor concert was a handcrafted, spur-of-the-moment repast. But contrary to Mitchell's folk/pop hymn, nobody "passed his music by." Indeed, sidewalks fringing the quaint square emptied as a ravenous crowd flocked onto the green from all directions to catch the casual performance. The site had been chosen scarcely an hour before, and Chicago violinist Merritt Lear and accordionist Mike Flynn (guesting from the Indiana band Old Pike) set up the portable amps and battery-powered P.A. system. John walked over with wife Elaine, toting his vintage acoustic guitar (emblazoned with a hand-drawn eagle and a "Fuck Fascism" slogan), and he paused under the trees to check its tuning. Moments later, Mellencamp launched into a hearty rendition of the traditional blues spiritual "In My Time Of Dying," as a nearby bicyclist hollered, "Hey, man, that's John Cougar!" while his jogging companion barked, "Huh? No way!"

The sun sprang out from behind threatening clouds as a grinning Mellencamp eased through a relaxed repertoire highlighted by the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"; "Cut Across Shorty," the Marijohn Wilkin/Wayne P. Walker raver popularized by Eddie Cochran and Rod Stewart; Donovan's 1970 hit "Riki Tiki Tavi"; Mellencamp's own "Pink Houses" and "Big Daddy Of Them All"; and choice Midwestern pop nuggets like "Captain Bobby Stout," off the 1969 LP "The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood."

"I saw the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood play that song in Indianapolis in 1971," Mellencamp later recalled as his bus sped onto the interstate en route to Massachusetts. "They opened for Frank Zappa at an old converted movie house-turned-rock palace called Middle Earth." Hahn hailed from Wichita, Kan., and his band's song immortalized a local deputy police chief who later became executive director of the Wichita Crime Commission.

Mellencamp retains fond memories of his first encounters with such "great, old hippie rock songs," and over the course of his 11-day August trek--which was actually an itinerant family camping trip with unscheduled musical pit stops--he hoped to reintroduce a menu of similar material to unsuspecting audiences. Peering out the bus window as it roared through New Jersey, John held his guitar in his lap and indicated the working set list taped to its side, whose 20-odd scrawled selections also included the Stones' "The Spider And The Fly" and "Dead Flowers," "Last Of The Rock Stars" (off Elliott Murphy's 1973 "Aquashow" album), the Animals' "Hey Gyp," plus some Woody Guthrie ("Oklahoma Hills") and Bob Dylan ("All Along The Watchtower").

The next day, Mellencamp was seated before a log fire at his self-dubbed "Mellencampsite" in Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park outside of Old Sturbridge Village, Mass., watching as Elaine and sons Hud and Speck scurried between Yogi's Petting Zoo, Boo Boo's Aqua Center swimming pool, and Pine Lake. "My family loves this place!" he said with a big grin, stirring the coals. "But I was never much of a camper or woodsman myself as a kid. I got kicked out of Cub Scouts after one week! And the one time I remember camping with my family as a kid in Bloomington, Ind., my mom got so mad at me for general mischief that she left and walked all the way home!"

The occasion for this current atypical road trip was Mellencamp's late-summer hiatus between the recent wrap of location filming in Rochester, N.Y., for "After Image," a murder mystery (in which he stars in the role of a crime-scene photographer) expected to premiere at the next Sundance Film Festival, and the completion of his next album, which he's been cutting in Key West, Fla. "We had some off-time to take our kids around to state parks and family recreation spots before they have to head back to school," he explained. "It was strictly no-stress, and I suddenly get the idea to make a little music the same way. Since my band was also on vacation, I invited Mike and his friend Merritt to come along with us to help eat the marshmellows and chase our boys, and we're just making up free gigs as we go."

The whimsical title coined for the musical side of the journey is "Live In The Streets: The Good Samaritan Tour," a notion inspired by Tony Tingle, a Kentucky buddy of Mellencamp's who once ruminated about quitting his day job, loading his tools in a truck, and heading into the sunset to spend a few months helping anyone gratis that he encountered along the roadside. "I loved that idea," said Mellencamp, "and I decided to take along my own tools as we traveled in the Northeast and Midwest, spreading cheer without looking for a paycheck."

Following a little mid-morning reconnaissance in the Boston area on Aug. 13, Mellencamp and company hopped out next to the Harvard campus and placed their milkbox-size amps in front of the fountain in J.F.K. Park. As rollerbladers and Frisbee tossers frolicked along the stretch of meadow between Memorial Drive and the River Charles, the familiar strains of "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" lofted over the bucolic corner of Cambridge, Mass., and drew 400 disbelieving spectators to the scene. By the concluding number, "Pink Houses," some onlookers were in tears. "Why is he doing this?" asked one woman with kids. "For our families, I think," replied another, pointing to Hud and Speck, who were playing tag with children in the crowd. Two days later, in downtown Pittsburgh, word-of-mouth and clues posted on Mellencamp's Web site led 3,000 people to assemble in Market Square, assuming that would be a likely site for the next "Samaritan" show. Actually no place had been picked yet, but Mellencamp hurried over to the ad hoc rallying point.

Twenty-four hours onward, Cleveland's Public Square had 4,000 people waiting on him, so he obliged. Locales in the Detroit and Chicago areas were scheduled to complete the remaining itinerary, and Mellencamp accepted that he should stop scouting for locations and just turn up where his congregated fans decided he should logically be.

"I've already learned a lot from this experience," said Mellencamp, as he settled into his Michigan "Mellencampsite" and anticipated the final stops on his pilgrimage. "This has been for the joy of the music rather than a job. It's been about pleasure rather than pressure. Once people see we've only got this tiny bit of sound equipment, they get quiet as mice. I can see why people have such an emotional response when we play like this, because they can really feel it's for all of us together. My wife, my boys, Merritt, and Mike, we all got a lot out of it. Nobody's selling anything, there's no souvenirs--except what's in everybody's heart. Think about it: Isn't that where music started? To anybody who's said thank you to me, I say, 'You're very nice, but, really, thank you.' "