John Mellencamp brings Americana to the Fox
By Bo Emerson [email protected]

John Mellencamp pulled his Airstream trailor behind the Fox Theatre Sunday and delivered a solid evening of Hoosier rock and roll to an appreciative, almost-sold-out crowd.

Looking fit and pumped, Mellencamp started with a croaky voice that grew stronger through the evening, and by the end of the night he was shouting out the high notes with ease.

Themes of youth and age have been in Mellencamp’s songs since he had three names. This year he turns 60 (plenty of his audience members Sunday looked like they’d already crossed that threshold) and seems to be staring at mortality more often. “With all the cigarettes I’ve smoked I guess I have another 18 years,” he said.

Mellencamp spoke about making fun of old-timers when he was younger: “I thought I was a dangerous young man, but I really was a smart-ass.”

Now he said his attitude toward age has changed.

“Take a look to your left and a look to your right. If you see a guy with gray hair he’s probably a dangerous old man.”

Mellencamp paced the show with theatrical flair, backing off the tension for low-key songs on acoustic instruments (such as his lilting duet with violinist Miriam Sturm on  “Jackie Brown,”) and then bringing the full band back for the floor-stomping numbers like the show opener “Authority Song.”

“I might be the worst guitar player in the world,” he said after a solo acoustic version of “Small Town.” Of course, he’s a fine three-chord basher. But his songs demonstrate that great music doesn’t need complex harmony.

“He’s a storyteller,” said Bill Fowler of Suwanee, putting Mellencamp in the same league as  Bruce Springsteen. “He’s iconic.”

In the most powerful moment of contrast, a delicate instrumental moment between Sturm on violin and Troye Kinnett on accordion was followed by a red-lit “Rain on the Scarecrow,” with Dane Clark switching from cocktail drums to a full set and John Gunnell moving from acoustic to chest-shaking electric bass. (Guitarists Andy Yorke and Michael Wanchic rounded out the ensemble.)

The concert was preceded with the screening of a documentary about the making of Mellencamp’s latest album, “No Better Than This,” which was recorded in historic locations on a vintage portable Ampex. Mellencamp and his band traveled to Sun Studio in Memphis, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah and the San Antonio hotel room where blues singer Robert Johnson recorded “Crossroad Blues.”

Also on display at the Fox were paintings from Mellencamp’s second career as a visual artist, though they were not well lit nor explained.

Mellencamp played without a break for more than two hours, sprinkling even his most well-worn radio hits, including “Pink Houses” and a reggaed-up version of “Jack and Diane”with his newer material. The audience was grateful, and stayed on its feet through the finale.

http://blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-music-scene/2011/02/28/john-mellencamp-at-the-fox/?cxntlid=thbz_hm

Mellencamp to play acoustic set at Landmarks debut

Indiana rocker John Mellencamp will play a 30-minute acoustic set April 16 during the grand opening of the Indiana Landmarks Center in downtown Indianapolis.

Indiana Landmarks, formerly known as Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, said in a news release that the mid-afternoon concert will be among several events marking the opening of the center in a 120-year-old former church.

Mellencamp is a longtime friend of Bill and Gayle Cook, the Bloomington couple who are contributing more than $10 million of the $13 million cost of the project. He's scheduled to return to Edmonton, Alberta, in time for a concert later the same day as part of a concert tour of Canada.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110301/ap_en_mu/in_mellencamp_historic_landmarks

[John Mellencamp's New Blues]

John Mellencamp's New Blues
The heartland hero settles into a happy middle age -- and makes his unhappiest album yet

By Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone, 8/21/08

THE COUGHING FIT DOESN'T LAST LONG, BUT IT'S ferocious: Four sharp hacks, and then John Mellencamp can speak again. "Fuckin' cigarettes," he says, catching his breath. Mellencamp is sitting on a brown leather couch in the rural Indiana studio where he's recorded all of his music since 1985 -- including a haunting new album called Life, Death, Love and Freedom that leans hard on the death part. It's disquieting stuff, especially from a guy who suffered a heart attack in 1994 and kept right on smoking. On the ghostly folk song "Don't Need This Body," Mellencamp sings of impending mortality in such stark terms ("Ain't gonna need this body much longer") that his wife and kids burst into tears when he played it for them.

Despite the doomy songs and smoker's cough, Mellencamp, 56, has no intention of checking out in the near future. "It's just a song!" he says, voice rising a couple of decibels from his usual gruff near-whisper. "They took it so personally." The mumbling is a remnant of a long-vanished childhood stutter; the twangy accent is a pure product of geography; the laconic tough-guy drawl is on permanent loan from the James Dean and Paul Newman movies he watched over and over as a kid. He is wearing what he almost always wears: a black T-shirt tucked into Levi's, and black leather boots. "I haven't changed my fuckin' clothes in 40 years," he says, brushing ashes off his shirt.

Sitting beneath a giant reproduction of a vintage Johnny Cash concert poster, his feet up on a stool, Mellencamp takes a bite of a peanut-butter sandwich and tries to explain why he's recorded the darkest music of his career -- songs about lonely old men, racist juries, carny murderers. Here, the darkness and anxiety that lurked at the edges of his Reagan-era hits move center stage -- these are anti-anthems for bleak American times, when Jack and Diane can't afford gas to drive to the Tastee Freez, and the banks are foreclosing on all those little pink houses. "The album title is perfect -- Life, Death, Love and Freedom," Mellencamp says. "If you listen to Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, those were traditional topics in American folk songs -- the songs are about the parts of life that most people don't really want to discuss. Which doesn't necessarily work for pop music that record companies really want to put out. I made this album for me."

Mellencamp mined some of the same territory on last January's Freedom's Road, but all of the attention went to "Our Country," the "This Land Is Your Land"-style tune he sold to Chevrolet for a TV ad. It got more airplay than he ever expected: "That Chevy ad killed Freedom's Road," he says. But he's not apologizing. "I don't think people like the idea that I did that. But you know what? I've done so many things in my career people didn't like. If I thought it was the end of the line every time I did somethin' that people didn't like, hell, I'd been done with Johnny Cougar."

With its rich, gothic-Americana sound, shaped by the impeccably tasteful roots-music producer T Bone Burnett, Life, Death, Love and Freedom is an "adult record," as Mellencamp sees it, marking the end of his hitmaking days and the beginning of something new. "I'm trying to live up to, you know, what a guy my age should be doing," he says. "I'm trying not to look silly. You know, it's like people say, 'Hey, you're a rock star, man.' And I don't see myself that way anymore. I'm just, like, a journeyman electrician or something."

MELLENCAMP'S HOUSE overlooks Lake Monroe, massive, pristine and blue; the property encompasses a good chunk of what used to be Paynetown, a village flooded by the government to create the state's largest man-made body of water. Mellencamp and his former-supermodel wife, Elaine ("the prettiest girl in the world," in his estimation --which objectively speaking is not far off), built the house from scratch a decade ago: It's a tasteful, Italianate mansion with a single turret. Inside, it's all high ceilings, dark-wood floors and eclectic art on the walls. After driving up a long and twisting driveway in his 1956 Chevy 150 station wagon (no air bags, seat belts unused), Mellencamp looks up at his home like he still can't believe it's his. "Not bad, right?" he says. "Talk about a house."

We're sitting at a picnic table in the decked-out pool area behind the house -- which offers a lakeside view so spectacular that T Bone Burnett compared it to the Bavarian Alps -- when Elaine Comes home with their two kids, Hud, 14, and Speck, 13. Hud (named after Paul Newman's reckless man-child character in the 1963 movie) is a junior champion boxer -- in his last fight, he broke his opponent's nose in the first 30 seconds of the match. "That kid over there is one tough fuckin' guy," Mellencamp says. "But the first time I saw him fight, I didn't like it -- after it was over, I pulled him aside and said, 'Hey, you don't have to fuckin' do this, 'cause this is serious stuff.' "Longhaired Speck is a musician who played guitar with his dad when Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year: "I learned to play 'Whole Lotta Love' today, Dad," he says.

Speck has other news: He and Hud just went to the doctor, who informed them that they'll both end up being over six feet tall -- unlike their dad, who's five-feet-seven on a good day. "Who said that -- the doctor?" Mellencamp says, not hiding his delight in this revelation. "What the fuck does he know?"

Elaine, who is five-feet-eleven, looks at her husband, big blue eyes glittering: "You probably would have been six-feet-four if you hadn't started smoking," she says.

"I know!" John says, as his kids smile. "I'm the littlest guy in my family."

The Mellencamps have a vacation home in Georgia but otherwise spend most of their time here, on the edge of the sleepy college town of Bloomington, the kind of place where the firing of an Indiana University basketball coach dominates small talk. Coastal-elite types might call it the middle of nowhere. Her glamorous past aside, Elaine is comfortable with this life, perhaps because she, too, was born in a small town, albeit in Pennsylvania. She's lived with Mellencamp in Indiana since they married in 1992, when she was 23 years old. It's John who has moments of doubt: "Sometimes I say to Elaine, to this day, 'Why the fuck do we live here?' The weather's wacky, and people are mad at us 'cause we're too liberal. I've probably got more friends in New York than I do here. But some of the people I like most live here."

The sound of motorboats cruising on the lake below occasionally intrudes on the conversation, and we hear dudes shouting, "Jooooohn! Yo, John!" They're friendly enough, but a couple of years back, there were more-hostile voices coming off the lake. With his 2003 song "To Washington," Mellencamp became one of the first singers to take on George W. Bush, and his red-state neighbors were not happy. "It wasn't like we were the only two Democrats in the entire state," says Elaine. "But I felt ostracized. When people come up in their boats and scream things at you, and leave notes on your car and scream things at your kids on the playground, it is irritating."

Mellencamp is a lifelong Democrat, as are his parents -- he recently found a photo of his mother protesting at a labor rally in the Forties. But his music has broad appeal in areas of the country that haven't voted Democratic in decades. "I have known for a long time that I was at odds politically with my surroundings," Mellencamp says. "I never wrote to my base. Nobody who is a Republican in Bloomington, Indiana, is going to buy Neil Young's last record, not even going to entertain the idea. But they might buy mine."

Mellencamp has a grim view of the state of the nation. "I don't know the denotation of fascism, but it's something like, you know, when government and big business control policymaking --we're there, baby. We're there," he says. "I said it on one of the songs on Freedom's Road: You know, when you say America's free, what freedom you talkin' about?"

This year, polls suggest that Indiana might go blue, but Mellencamp doesn't expect forgiveness for his anti-Bush stance. "Before, it didn't matter to people that Mellencamp was a little left," he says, looking grim. "Because gas was only $1.85 a gallon, and, you know, nobody was really gettin' killed, and, you know, there weren't so many bad things happening. The housing market was booming. People were pissed at me. And, you know, they probably still are. My ticket sales, everything I do -- I'm paying a price for that."

EARLIER THAT DAY, Mellencamp and his six-piece band of bedenimed, arena-hardened pros are crammed into the garage next to his studio trying, without much luck, to find a new way to play "Pink Houses."

It looks like a place more appropriate to prep for a junior-high battle of the bands than for a national amphitheater tour. It's also loud as hell. "We've all given up on earplugs -- we've already lost everything they're supposed to protect," says guitarist Mike Wanchic, sipping a protein energy drink between songs. Wanchic has managed to stay in Mellencamp's band for 32 years, even as every single other slot turned over -- the rest of the current lineup joined in the Nineties or later.

And right now, Mellencamp is fixated on Wanchic's 12-string guitar, which is supposed to be giving this version of "Pink Houses" a fresh vibe. He has Wanchic play the song's signature ringing riff over and over, while the rest of the band looks on. "It just doesn't sound like a 12-string to me," Mellencamp says, glaring at the offending instrument over the plastic-frame reading glasses he's wearing to decipher his lyric sheets. "We need that color, or else it's pointless." The band starts the song from the beginning for the umpteenth time, and Mellencamp turns to face it, folding his arms across his chest, staring down his employees. His face is sour. It's not the old days, when Mellencamp was known for mike-stand-throwing tantrums, but it doesn't seem like much fun, either. "Our rehearsal sessions are like a young man going to Parris Island after he joins the Marine Corps," says Wanchic. "It's not for the meek. A great band cannot be run by democracy. You need a benevolent dictator -- and John supplies that very, very well."

This is the smallest band Mellencamp has had in two decades. His backup singers and percussionists are gone, replaced by a leaner sound. "When I had that big band," he says, "I needed all those people to re-create the record. I don't care --I don't do that anymore. Now when we play 'Paper in Fire,' it doesn't sound anything like the record. I'm not a general-public man anymore."

Mellencamp has an uneasy relationship with his hits, in part because he has so many of them -- no fewer than 17 Top 40 singles in the Eighties, which is more than, say, Bruce Springsteen, and nearly as many as Michael Jackson. "There's a danger in having too many hit records," he says -- meaning that with each hit comes the expectation for more. But as he sees it, he had to aim for the charts. "I had to take the path that I took because when you start out with such ridiculous, humble beginnings as Johnny Cougar, there's not any rock critics or anybody that's ever going to take you seriously. We were tainted by the late Seventies," he says, lapsing into a rock-royalty We. '"We had to be so successful that nobody could really tell us what to do. That was the only way that we were going to ever gain any control over anything in the music business, our own career, even our name."

Mellencamp was shaped by his time in bar bands, cranking out endless cover songs -- and he argues that rockers who skip that training are missing out. "The shows lasted forever," he says. "Four or five sets a night. Lots of covers: 'Can't Get Enough of Your Love,' 'Saturday Night's Alright (for Fighting),' 'Gimme Shelter.' You're not going to get the kind of longevity today that you see from guys my age, because they don't have that type of background. You have to go where Tom Petty started out, or where I started out, or Billy Joel started out, or Springsteen started out. All of us started in the same bar; the difference is, me and Seger were in the Midwest. 'Cause, you know, some nights you walk in there and you're playin' for guys who got more tattoos than teeth."

BACK AT THE HOUSE, Mellencamp hops into a small utility vehicle and drives us a few yards to the steel-paneled building that serves as his art studio. Mellencamp has been serious about his art for 20 years, and there are paintings everywhere, including an unfinished, abstract work-in-progress on the floor. There are dozens more stacked in closets downstairs -- Mellencamp doesn't like seeing them after they're done, though he does project them onto video screens at his shows. He is convinced that he has more innate talent as a painter than as a musician.

The paintings don't seem like the work of the guy who wrote "Jack and Diane." They're dominated by dark colors -- purples, blacks, browns -- and darker imagery: Many of the human figures in them are twisted, grotesque. As far as T Bone Burnett is concerned, the new album is the closest Mellencamp has come to these paintings. "His art is raw and tough, and these songs are real like that," Burnett says. "They're sort of the underside of the Midwest."

Mellencamp's original version of Life Death, Love and Freedom was missing its most buoyant and hopeful track, "My Sweet Love," which he felt was too light, too poppy. Elaine helped convince him to put it as the second track on the album, arguing that it was one of the only songs to emphasize the life and love parts of the equation.

For all of his faith in his new music, Mellencamp isn't sure it will get a chance. "There's a lot of people who have bad ears on for John Mellencamp," he says. In his more hopeful moments, though, he takes inspiration from a friend: "In the mid-Eighties, Bob Dylan couldn't do a right thing. The critics hated him. But all of a sudden, he made one great record, and all is forgiven." Mellencamp offers a rare smile and says, "That's the great thing about music, isn't it? All you gotta do is make magic one time."

I don't think he's ever played that song live. I can't rule out it being played once or twice, but as far as I know, he's never played it live.

It isn't yet, but I'd be surprised if it isn't made available at some point this year. Tony may know more specific details.

Typical Uh-Huh Tour setlist:

Heartbreak Hotel
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Pretty Ballerina
Ya Ya
Jack and Diane
Crumblin' Down
Hand To Hold On To
Authority Song
I Need A Lover
Play Guitar
Pink Houses
Golden Gates
Shoot Out The Lights
Serious Business
Hurts So Good
Jackie O

Typical Scarecrow Tour Setlist:

Grandma's Theme (recorded intro)
Small Town
Jack and Diane
Minutes to Memories
Lonely Ol' Night
Rain on the Scarecrow
Between a Laugh and a Tear
Hand To Hold Onto
Rumbleseat
I Need a Lover
Golden Gates
Ain't Even Done With the Night (acoustic)
Crumblin' Down
R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.
Play Guitar
Hurts So Good
Authority Song
Face of the Nation
Pink Houses
Mickey's Monkey > Turn on Your Lovelight
Cold Sweat
Mony Mony
Nobody But Me > You Can't Sit Down > Land of 1000 Dances
Proud Mary

Encore:
Under the Boardwalk

John picks his favorite songs and comments on each one. From February 2007:

Track 1 Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - Bob Dylan, "The Perfect Record. It
works both as folk and rock."

Track 2 California - Joni Mitchell, "The first record by a woman that I ever
heard that sounded as if she was making love to the male listener."

Track 3 Tumbling Dice - The Rolling Stones, "The best garage record ever
made."

Track 4 Pastures of Plenty - Woody Guthrie, "Every song that Woody wrote was
plainspoken and honest."

Track 5 We Gotta Get Out of This Place - The Animals, "Eric Burdon and the
Animals were able to take any song and make it their own. While the Beatles
were content to hold your hand, the Animals made you feel they wanted to go
a lot farther."

Track 6 Season of the Witch - Donovan, "Like Dylan, his is a wonderful blend
between folk and rock."

Track 7 Summer In the City - The Lovin' Spoonful, "Folk music from Greenwich
Village that permeated Middle America."

Track 8 All Day and All of the Night - The Kinks, "Just can't quit 'em."

Track 9 Walk a Mile In My Shoes - Joe South, "A tremendously overlooked
songwriter from the South."

Track 10 Tight Rope - Leon Russell, "One of the greatest, most heartfelt
records ever recorded."

Track 11 Gasoline Alley - Rod Stewart, "A great blend of Scottish and
American folk music."

Track 12 Suffragette City - David Bowie, "Great acoustic rock songs, being
at the right place at the right time in the early '70s"

Track 13 America - Simon & Garfunkel, "Intelligence and fun, all in the same
word."

Track 14 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon, "A wonderful
combination of Paul's songwriting with an upbeat music that had not been
heard in the late '80s."

Track 15 Masters of War - Bob Dylan, "What a great talent can do with just a
voice, an acoustic guitar, and a harmonica."

Track 16 Nature's Way - Spirit, "One of the great overlooked gems from a
California band that, for a certain type of listener, still sounds fresh
today."

Track 17 When You Dance You Can Really Love - Neil Young, "A beautifully
crafted and recorded folk/garage record that touched every hippie I knew."

Track 18 Search and Destroy - Iggy & The Stooges, "Raw Power!"

Track 19 Ride Sally Ride - Lou Reed, "A New York record that had a New York
club feel of the time. Dangerous and thrilling from track to track."

Track 20 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Joan Baez, "A beautifully sung and
performed album from a great folk artist."

REVIEW: Mellencamp concert offered a mix of old and new

By HAYS DAVIS
Published: February 26, 2011

John Mellencamp, in a way, opened for himself at the Landmark Theater Thursday night. His show started with a screening of the film "It's About You," a documentary about the artist's 2009 tour with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.

If that sounds a bit like a self-congratulatory move, the documentary added an appealing level of depth to the standard concert experience. Rather than a telling of Mellencamp's story, "It's About You" is more of a travelogue and a period piece, highlighting his work during that time.

Before a backdrop of the kind of faded cityscape depicted at times in the film, the show kicked off with a spirited "Authority Song." Rolling straight through 25 songs with no break, Mellencamp was well served by an accomplished band that included guitarist Mike Wanchic, who has played with the star for 35 years.

After channeling an early-period rock 'n' roll style driven by a stand-up bass and a small drum kit for their first few songs, the band was fleshed out with the addition of fiddle and accordion or keyboards.

Mellencamp's voice has developed more of a growl over the years, but he maintains remarkable vocal strength. It's an instrument that's perfectly suited to a catalogue of songs that aim to provide a voice to a cast of uncelebrated working-class figures.

Songs from his latest album, "No Better Than This," were well-received by an enthusiastic crowd. With "No One Cares About Me" and "Easter Eve," Mellencamp's sound continues to push further toward roots in folk and blues.

Having played some of the evening's songs for nearly 30 years, Mellencamp sought to keep them fresh with a few new approaches. "Jack & Diane" was retooled with a folksier, acoustic-driven version that retained the flavor of the original. The singer handled most of "Small Town" by himself with acoustic guitar, and even stripped "Cherry Bomb" down to a cappella.

After bringing down the tempo for a stretch, the band launched into a strong finish for the night's last eight songs, lighting up "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Paper in Fire," and closing with a rousing "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A."

The Landmark crowd was game throughout, enraptured by the hits but attuned to the newer material as well.

A few folks simply couldn't contain themselves during a quiet moment featuring a story about Mellencamp's grandmother, though he didn't seem to mind. Considering how well the performance went over, his grandmother probably wouldn't have either.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/entertainment/2011/feb/26/tdhome05-mellencamp-concert-offered-a-mix-of-old-a-ar-868569/

In the Studio
Rolling Stone, June 13, 1996

By Susan Richardson

"People keep asking me what's the style of this new album," John Mellencamp says of his 14th effort, Mr. Happy Go Lucky. "So tell them the style is 'John's next record.' "

The singer/songwriter never looks back. Mellencamp says that Lucky, due out in August, is the polar opposite of 1994's Dance Naked. Dance was put together in a mere 10 days; Lucky has been a more extensive effort, continually reworked and revised. It was recorded during a period of a year and a half at Belmont Mall, Mellencamp's studio in Bloomington, Ind., and now Mellencamp is mixing it at New York's Hit Factory.

The mordant, slightly self-mocking humor of the album's title and lyrics reflects what the 44-year-old Mellencamp has been thinking about for the last couple of years, ever since his heart attack in the summer of 1994. "I felt I was bulletproof before the heart attack," he says. "And when I had the heart attack, I thought life was over. Then I realized there was life afterward; I realized that my destiny was in my own hands. I take better care of myself now" -- he exhales a puff of cigarette smoke --"but there were many dark moments when you confront what heart disease means. These songs come out of that."

In addition to his own reflections, Mellencamp was inspired by the urban undercurrent of a lot of '90s pop. Tony! Toni! Toné! bassist, Raphael Saddiq, guests on one track, and techno-dance producer Junior Vasquez served as a musical adviser. "I took a look at the best of the musical styles of the '90s," Mellencamp says, "and wanted to use them with what we already do. My songs are always folk songs first. Then we turn them into something else. With this album, that was real exciting -- adding strings, organ, more percussion."

There are still elements of Mellencamp's old Middle American unpretentiousness. In the easy-rockin' "Just Another Day," he sings, "It's just another day/Watching girls on the streets/That's all right with me." And "Key West Intermezzo" is, in his words, a "stolen moment."

But Mellencamp's demons haunt the album. Set against a backdrop of Daniel Lanois-like guitar effects, "Jerry (The Man in the Moon)" is about the goblin inside each of us who's sometimes goofy and sometimes threatening but always out of control. And "The Full Catastrophe of Life" takes on the theme of life's ambiguity against a sashaying backbeat and hypnotic guitar riffs.

Mellencamp has succeeded in broadening his range while remaining true to his home-grown rock & roll style. In a comment tellingly evocative of his predecessor Bob Dylan, Mellencamp sums up his style. "I'm a song-and-dance guy,'' he says. "I want to write songs people will still dance and fuck and throw a Frisbee to years from now."

CAMP MELLENCAMP: ROCK'S BAD BOY COMES OF AGE IN HIS HOOSIER HIDEOUT

InStyle Magazine, Nov. 1996

By Steve Pond

John Mellencamp sits back, watches his two sons romp across his yard, and considers what is for him a new concept: maturity. "It's amazing," he says with a grin, as 2 1/2-year-old Hud and 1 1/2-year-old Speck Wildhorse play nearby. "The person who has helped me grow up more than anyone--is 17 years younger than me."

That person is inside the family's log cabin, helping to prepare a lunch of make-your-own sandwiches, vegetables and salads. She's Elaine Irwin, the head turning 27-year-old New York-fashion model turned Midwest mom, his wife of four years, and the picture of placidity. If you suggest that her composure may stem from the fact that the foursome is relaxing at their cozy retreat, in the dense woods and rolling hills outside Bloomington, Indiana (only 20 minutes from their year-round home), her husband begs to differ. "Elaine has a very positive, calming outlook on life," says one of the more famously stubborn and argumentative rock stars of the past two decades. "It's been very beneficial to me." Mellencamp's talking about his most recent accomplishments: growing up, calming down, learning to relax after 20 years spent writing rock and roll songs. At 45, he has sold 20 million records, made 14 albums, had two failed marriages, five kids, one heart attack, and countless temper tantrums.

Not that he has become a model of gentility; Mellencamp is still a playfully confrontational sort. He'll start an argument just for the the heck of it (hint: Don't mention O.J., unless you're in the mood for a lengthy diatribe about how he was framed), and his conversation is liberally sprinkled with profanity. Says Irwin with a laugh: "I try to teach the kids to be nice and polite. John teaches them to spit and swear."

Even so, his rough edges aren't nearly as abrasive as they have been. Mellencamp's career took off in the early 1980s, when he topped the charts with "Jack and Diane" and "Hurts So Good." During the next few years, he turned himself from a derivative, critically dismissed rocker into an acclaimed artist of real substance with songs like "Small Town," "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Pink Houses." Times should have been good, but they weren't: Robbed of the underdog status that had long driven him, he refused to take pleasure in his success.

"I turned into a bitter, hateful guy," he says. "I blamed everything that was wrong in my life on my job: 'I'm getting divorced because of my job. I'm unhappy because of my job.' But when you get right down to it, it was all really me. I could not enjoy anything."

He still had that attitude in 1991, when he asked for a model to pose with him for the cover of his Whenever We Wanted album. The photographer hired Irwin, one of Elite's hottest, with several Vogue covers and Victoria's Secret catalogue under her slim belt. Irwin remembers that John took one look and "yelled, 'Who the hell hired her? She looks like she could be my daughter! What are you trying to do, make me look old?' And I thought," adds Irwin, 'He's a big ol' loudmouthed thing.'"

A few months later, in early 1992, she went to see him when he played at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. This time, she found him sweet and vulnerable. He remembers thinking, "'Is this the same girl that's on the album cover? She's awfully mature--and pretty.'" Weeks later, they had a lunch date in Detroit. Then she took an overnight bag, flew to Los Angeles to see him, and never returned home. In true rock form, they made a commitment: his-and-her tattoos. On her wrist is a charm-bracelet tattoo bearing his initials; her initials are inside his elbow. "Not exactly a fair deal," she says. "His is a little tiny scrubby one you can't even see." After a whirlwind courtship, they married in September 1992, a year after they first met, just months after their first real date.

For Irwin, being with Mellencamp meant living in small town Indiana, the heartland he champions in his songs. He grew up in Seymour, then moved to Bloomington, home of Indiana University, as an adult. "This was a great place for a womanizer," he says. "Every September, 45,000 girls coming here to get even with their moms and dads, and I was just the guy to even with."

It took more than the right marriage to reform this bad boy. It took a heart attack, which he suffered on tour in 1994. "I had to rearrange my life," says, Mellencamp, who insists that he's now in his best shape ever. "In the eighties, I lived like an animal." He ticks off the symptoms: incessant womanizing that destroyed his marriages, no sleep for days on end, a fried- and fast-food diet, four packs of cigarettes a day. The only real vice that's left, he says, is smoking. He's down to 10 cigarettes a day and hates the fact that he can't quit. ("Biggest mistake that I ever made in my life, smoking.")

"I don't know if slowing down is the right word," he says, "but I'm definitely trying to learn how to live." That includes lots of time with sons Hud and Speck, who are only 12 months apart. He sees his three daughters--25-year-old Michelle from his first marriage, and 15-year-old Teddy Jo and 11-year-old Justice from his second--less frequently. "A monkey could have been a better father than I was to the girls," he says softly. "It's kind of bittersweet, because the boys are really going to reap the benefits of my past mistakes. Same way with my first two wives [Priscilla Esterline and Vicky Granucci]. They didn't really deserve what they got from me. Elaine is really getting the benefit of all those mistakes."

At the cabin, John romps around the yard with his boys, chasing Speck (or "Pecky," as he calls him) and refusing to push Hud on the swing until the older boy gives him a kiss. "He hates kissing," says Dad with a laugh. Mellencamp showers his kids with affection, usually accompanied by plenty of playful roughhousing. With Elaine, he's equally affectionate but less rough-and-tumble: He likes to give her a hard time about nearly everything, but when she sasses him in return he usually backs down. "Anything she does to me," he says with a shrug, "I deserve."

Mellencamp's not the only one who has cleared the decks for this new life. Irwin has all but dropped out of fashion's fast lane. She takes assignments only for fun--and when John can accompany her, as he did on a recent Hawaiian shoot for Giorgio Beverly Hills new fragrance, Ocean Dream. They needn't go to Hawaii to get away; that's why they bought their cabin less than a year ago. The plan is to live in Bloomington during the week and go to the cabin on weekends. So far, they've used it less than that, though it has plenty to lure them. A nearby lake lets them indulge in a new passion, waterskiing. Plus, there's badminton, horseshoes, a shallow swimming pool, and a satellite dish.

The cabin has a huge living room and two bedrooms upstairs. They spent months removing paneling that covered the log walls, installing skylights, and knocking down walls to make three tiny rooms into one large kitchen-dining room. "I took the chimney down, brick by brick," Irwin says. "John was in there with a sledgehammer, though I found him supervising more as the days wore on."

Outside, proudly pointing to a walk he made from recycled concrete, sits the new John Mellencamp, the tamed John Cougar (as he was once called), maybe even a man at peace for the first time. He's a reborn eater--no rich sauces and no red meat--and a committed exerciser: Mondays, the treadmill; Wednesdays, local roads; Fridays, the hill behind his house; and sessions with a personal trainer. "I used to think, 'Who needs a trainer? Can't you work out by yourself, you idiot?' Well, I can't." He's even a newly styled musician. His latest album, Mr. Happy Go Lucky, uses hip-hop and rap-influenced beats alongside his heartland rock and roll. "It was made on a computer," he says, "while all the rest of my records were written on paper."

One song on the album, "The Full Catastrophe," is about his life. "I'm 45," he says, beaming. "I've been making records since I was 23. I've been everywhere in the world. I laughed, I fell down, I cried, and, man, I have lived the full catastrophe. And here I am, still living it." He grins again, and makes it clear that even in this placid, idyllic setting, he's still hanging on to some of the old, cocky Mellencamp. For years, he says, "I thought, 'Damn it, I'll never be more than a footnote to Bruce Springsteen.' Now I don't care. People are going to be f-- and dancing to my songs until the day they die. What more could you want than that? That's as good as it gets. All the rest of that stuff, get it away from me."

LV MUSIC: Review: For John Mellencamp in Philly, oh, yeah, life goes on
By John J. Moser, OF THE MORNING CALL

More than almost any of his stylistic forebears, or contemporaries, John Mellencamp has faced aging not with the sage understanding of a Bob Dylan or a sad searching of a Bruce Springsteen, but with the same defiance that has always marked his music.

That still was the case, perhaps more than ever, during Mellencamp's nearly sold-out show Monday at Philadelphia's Academy of Music.

It wasn't that Mellencamp was trying to fight age — although, by playing 24 songs in a show that lasted two hours and 10 minutes, he certainly was giving it a run.

Rather, Mellencamp was refusing to let age dictate his life.

He knows, for example, that being 59 has brought limitations ("This getting older, hell it ain't for cowards," he sang in "Don't Need This Body").

But he wants to face it his way, saying in a great, heartfelt "The Real Life" that "it don't matter how old you are/Or how old one lives to be/I guess it boils down to what we did with our lives/And how we deal with our own destinies."

Mellencamp did that by confronting his past rather than either embracing or avoiding it. He played most of his hits, but often gave them a more rustic feel, starting with the opening "Authority Song," which he recast as rockabilly.

Late in the show, he played his biggest hit, "Jack and Diane," as folk-bluegrass. He sang a shortened "Cherry Bomb" alone and a cappella.

He was backed by a four-piece band that on other songs would swell to six to add accordion, piano or fiddle. Or, it would shrink to him and another player or two. He started "Small Town," for example, alone on acoustic guitar before the fiddle and accordion joined him.

But none of the changes seemed to faze Mellencamp's crowd, which, because it has aged — or at least matured — with him, seems to also have followed his musical journey, and embraced it.

They shared not only in the emotions of his new songs, but seemed to connect to the maturation of his hits. On the new "Save Some Time to Dream," they cheered such sentiments as "Always question your faith" and "so others will not judge you."

The first third of the show was heavy on songs from Mellencamp's last two discs, 2008's excellent "Life, Death, Love and Freedom" and last year's "No Better Than This." He sang "No One Cares About Me" in a latter-day Dylan growl, his band playing as if in a session at Memphis' Sun Studios (where, not coincidently, some of the disc was recorded).

But it was on bluesman Son House's "Death Letter" that Mellencamp, chewing gum and wearing a whispy gray beard (he's also allowed his hair to go gray) really opened up. Backed by an ominous violin, accordion, mandolin and slide guitar, dancing like James Brown, he forcefully spat out the lyrics: "It's hard to love somebody when they don't love you."

That song and several others through the night were reminders of Mellencamp's recent divorce from Boyertown native Elaine Irwin. In "Small Town," he changed the lyrics to say, "Married a couple of girls and brought them to this small town …"

He closed the first part of the show with a transcendent "Check It Out," which has become more regretful and less soaring. But it still was so good that it raised goosebumps, and the crowd shouted along.

The middle of the show often found him singling alone in a spotlight or telling stories, such as how his 100-year-old grandmother's comment led to his devastating "Longest Days" or a shaggy-dog tale about how he encountered the devil at 15 before the wonderful new story song, "Easter Eve."

But the end of the show was full-bore arena rock — the kind that made Mellencamp famous. "Rain on the Scarecrow" was brooding and ominous. There was no ambiguity on "Paper in Fire," as Mellencamp stood at the edge of the stage firing guitar riffs and swings of his fist with equal intensity.

It was fitting that Mellencamp looked his happiest on "What If I Came Knocking," a song about romantic possibilities, and was so emphatic and defiant on "If I Die Sudden" that he dropped the gum from his mouth.

Perhaps the irony is that, while Mellencamp's confrontation of age seems to resonate so loudly these days, it's what he's been singing about all along: from "holding on to 16 as long as you can" in "Jack and Diane" to "17 has turned 35" in "Cherry Bomb."

And his closing songs — faithful versions of "Pink Houses" and "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A" — demonstrated that.

The former had one of the coolest concerts moments I've ever seen: A guy in an opera box high above the stage was got so caught up, he took off his cowboy hat and threw it to Mellencamp, who not only caught it and put it on his head, but then threw it back. And the guy caught it.

And for the latter, Mellencamp brought a woman on stage to dance, as Springsteen did in his "Dancing in the Dark" video, back when Mellencamp was just starting to hit.

But this was no act of youthful exuberance — it was a celebration.

Celebration that, Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.

http://articles.mcall.com/2011-02-22/entertainment/mc-homepage0222-3-20110222_1_authority-song-john-mellencamp-son-house-s-death-letter/2

Mellencamp: A star despite himself

By Dan DeLuca
Inquirer Music Critic

Toward the end of John Mellencamp's two-hour-plus show at the Academy of Music on Monday, the Indiana rocker led his crack seven-piece band through "The Real Life," a song from 1987's The Lonesome Jubilee, the first album he released that didn't use "Cougar" as part of his stage name.

"My whole life I've done what I'm supposed to do," the 59-year-old, gray-stubbled Rock and Roll Hall of Famer sang with gusto. "Now I'd like to maybe do something for myself / And just as soon as I figure out what that is, you can bet your life I'm gonna give it hell."

"The Real Life" is the song from the Mellencamp catalog that most clearly distills a theme - the quest for authentic, dignified, life-affirming experience - that's run through the career of the heartland hero, who started as a critically disparaged pop singer and has lately been telling anyone who'll listen that he's through being a "rock star."

That 3 1/2-decade quest has taken Mellencamp from the days of John Cougar hits like "Jack & Diane" - which he did in an abbreviated acoustic version - to No Better Than This, his death-obsessed, T Bone Burnett-produced 2010 album. Mellencamp built Monday's rarely dull show around the album.

No Better Than This was recorded in some of American vernacular music's most hallowed locales, including the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., Sun Studios in Memphis, and the San Antonio hotel room where bluesman Robert Johnson recorded.

It's a typically earnest, naively romantic Mellencampian move, as if recording a band in mono around one microphone in a sacred room would not only amount to doing something for himself, but magically sprinkle fairy-dust genius on his music.

It didn't quite work out that way, but No Better Than This is still an upper-echelon Mellencamp album (as is its similarly stripped-down 2008 predecessor, Life, Death, Love and Freedom) largely because doomy songs like "No One Cares About Me" and "The West End" are invested with such unflinching conviction.

The studio versions of songs like the title cut of No Better Than This and "If I Die Sudden" are overly severe. And there's been a depressive tendency in Mellencamp's songs going back to "Jack & Diane," with its then callow-seeming declaration that "life goes on, long after the thrill of livin' is gone."

All that might make it sound like Monday's show must have been a bummer. Not so. No matter how much he fights it, and no matter how much his cigarette-scarred voice makes him sound like Walter Brennan, Mellencamp is still a charismatic front man and a seasoned entertainer.

And yep, a rock star. And while as American rock stars of a certain age go, Mellencamp may lack, say, the poetic grace of Bruce Springsteen, or the pop flair of Tom Petty, he's got his own set of strengths.

For one thing, there's that hardheaded tendency to write populist songs that sometimes awkwardly but always earnestly grapple with life-and-death ideas. "Jackie Brown," from 1989's Big Daddy, was a particularly heartrending example performed in a spare, plainspoken style.

And Mellencamp, more than his white-guy generational peers, has always made music that bears the influence of Motown and other African American '60s dance music. As he put it in the closing "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.": "Don't forget James Brown."

Mellencamp and band play with a bright, rhythmic dexterity that brings the music to life, even when their leader is fixating on his own mortality.

Instead of an opening act, the evening began with a movie: It's About You, a documentary about Mellencamp's 2009 tour and the recording of No Better Than This by Kurt Markus and his son Ian.

Bad idea. The movie, which, predictably, treats Mellencamp as if he were a god, has the deleterious effect of demystifying the concert to come. The first time I heard "Paper in Fire" on Monday, I remembered how much I liked it. The second time, I didn't like it as much.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110223_Mellencamp__A_star_despite_himself.html#ixzz1EonLwLk0
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else

and more: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/NQ2mODB6xzU/John+Mellencamp+Concert+February+19+2011/IMDt_zPcgDU/John+Mellencamp

John Mellencamp at Radio City Music Hall
by Jim Bessman

The last time John Mellencamp played Radio City Music Hall, he was still John Cougar. It was also his first headlining show in New York, following his pop chart breakthrough in 1982 with “Hurts So Good.”

He and his then band came out in tuxes and blasted their way through a good half-hour of choice 1960s cover songs, including an unforgettably pretty “Pretty Ballerina.” Then the tuxes came off and he did a set of his own then-small song catalog.

We learned later, of course, that he never really wanted to be a "Pop Singer." In Saturday night’s show at Radio City (the second of two nights) he was way more than a pop star, as he's been ever since Scarecrow came out 25 years ago and defined the ensuing Americana roots-music category--more so with the release last year of No Better Than This. The acclaimed latter disc is an acoustic blues-styled album fashioned after the vintage recording processes and procedures employed by the likes of Robert Johnson (indeed, it was partly recorded in Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where Johnson had recorded in 1936).

When Mellencamp and band emerged after a screening of photographer Kurt Markus's It's About You documentary of the No Better Than This production, it was in the mostly acoustic format of the album, beginning with an abbreviated version of "Authority Song" and following with "No One Cares About Me," the first of six songs from No Better Than This. Four others came from the preceding album Life Death Love And Freedom, which also had a folk blues flavor, so he was clearly focusing on new material over big hits.

Mellencamp was also staying in a stripped-down band configuration. Fiddler Miriam Sturm and keyboardist/accordionist Troye Kinnett didn't even join guitarists Andy York and Mike Wanchic and bassist John Gunnell and drummer Dane Clark until "Walk Tall," the fifth song in. Gunnell was playing upright bass, Clark was off to the side with a basic drum set, and Kinnett was playing an upright piano--but even in the folk/acoustic presentation, the band, rightly anointed by the bandleader as "the greatest rock band in world" toward the end of the 25-song, 140-minute set, was stunning.

Then again, Mellencamp has had if not the best, one of a handful of them since his last time at Radio City. The only criticism last night was in his pacing: Like many veteran singer-songwriters, he takes a solo acoustic guitar turn--but when you have such great players behind you, why dismiss them for any reason? Here he sent them out, brought them back, sent them out again, brought one, than two. It was all fine, but messed up the straight-ahead momentum that Mellencamp concerts are known for.

But after his solo version of Scarecrow's hit "Small Town," Kinnett and Sturm came out to play an instrumental hymn (ending with the melody from Scarecrow's "Minutes To Memories"), after which the rest of the band came out and exploded into that album's "Rain On The Scarecrow," now fully electric and with Clark behind a full drum set in the middle. They all slammed through seven more songs including "The Real Life" (also from Scarecrow), "Paper In Fire," "No Better Than This" and "Pink Houses."

There would be no "Hurts So Good," but when he ended with "R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A." (also from Scarecrow), the populist pop non-star brought up a gal from the front row to dance with and warble the last verse. He often does it, and it always works.

http://www.examiner.com/local-music-in-new-york/john-mellencamp-at-radio-city-music-hall-review

For whatever reason, John isn't a fan of his '90s work. He has taken a few swipes at his '90s albums in recent interviews, which is baffling to me, especially since he called "Whenever We Wanted," "Human Wheels," and "Mr. Happy Go Lucky" the "best album I ever made" at the time of their respective releases. Now, he doesn't seem to think those albums are all that good. A shame.