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John Mellencamp Community
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March 28, 2024, 04:16:55 pm
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 1994 Entertainment Weekly Article
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on: December 31, 2010, 02:36:40 am
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Modern Maturity After nearly twenty years in the business, the musician's new album could put him back on top
July 15, 1994 edition of Entertainment Weekly
John Mellencamp is already barking out orders. No matter that on this sweltering afternoon it's only sound-check time at Tipitina's, the New Orleans nightclub. Stalking the stage in black Levi's and a plain white T-shirt, he points out the spotlights he wants doused. He halts his band after a shaky start on ''Crumblin' Down,'' fires up a Marlboro, and calls for take 2. He vetoes the idea of setting up chairs on the dance floor for tonight's gig, a cable-TV industry bash hosted by MTV Networks. And when he spots talk-show host Jon Stewart adjusting the MTV and VH-1 banners on the balcony, Mellencamp rasps jokingly, ''Make sure you get those logos looking right. Why don't you just put a picture of your face right over [the band] while we're playing?''
Leaning against the bar later that night, before the doors are opened, Mellencamp is more understanding. ''Look, if it was my show, none of those banners would be up there,'' explains the man who has spent a good part of his 18-year career fighting the corporatization of rock & roll. ''But I'm doing a favor for a guy [friend and former manager John Sykes, who runs VH-1]. It's his show.''
Actually, it's not a bad idea for Mellencamp to ingratiate himself with MTV. In the early '80s, high visibility on the burgeoning channel helped make him a superstar. But musical times have changed, and Mellencamp, 42, no longer dominates the airwaves or automatically sells millions of copies of each release (although both MTV and VH-1 have put his version of Van Morrison's ''Wild Night,'' a duet with Madonna protegee Me'Shell NdegeOcello, into heavy rotation, which is bound to boost sales of his new album, Dance Naked). Then again, Mellencamp himself has changed, even matured. Cantankerous as ever, he knows he's had a good run and is genuinely thankful for it.
''I always figured I'd make one or two albums,'' he says. ''But I didn't have any intention of doing it this long. When you're 21 years old, your vision isn't that long. F---, you don't know what you'll be doing at the end of the day.''
The next day, Mellencamp is settling into his oceanfront house on South Carolina's Hilton Head Island. His third wife, supermodel Elaine Irwin Mellencamp, 24 (who met him when she was hired to appear in the 1991 video for ''Get a Leg Up''), is grilling fresh swordfish on the rear deck that overlooks the Atlantic, while the couple's month-old son, Hud (named after the title character of Paul Newman's 1963 antihero movie), exercises his healthy young lungs. Although this placid resort town seems an unlikely spot for Mellencamp, he's been coming here for 10 years to escape the constantly ringing phones at his primary home and recording studio on the outskirts of Bloomington, Ind.
His compact 5'7'' frame trim and toned, Mellencamp now sports a goatee, lending his boyish face a more menacing, devilish mien. Dressed as simply as always — black Converse low-tops, blue jeans, black T-shirt — he leads the way to the garret-like workroom where he writes songs on a black acoustic guitar with skull-and-crossbone inlays and creates his dark, moving Expressionistic oil paintings.
Mellencamp's success has afforded him luxuries like this beachside sanctuary. That success is more a result of gritty determination than dumb luck, and his need to control his own destiny is in part a reaction to a time early in his career when he ceded that control. The son of an electrical contractor and the 1946 Miss Indiana runner-up, Mellencamp was born and raised in Seymour, Ind., a small agricultural town near Bloomington. When he was fired as a telephone installer in 1975, he used his unemployment checks to finance the demo tape that hooked him up with manager Tony DeFries.
That association proved to be a false start — DeFries branded the 24-year-old songwriter ''Johnny Cougar'' and devised a ludicrous image of singer as surly young rebel. But starting with 1982's American Fool and its top 10 hits, ''Jack & Diane'' and ''Hurts So Good,'' his career kicked in. He sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and became almost as wealthy as many of the corporations he railed against. Along the way, Mellencamp (who reverted to his real name in 1983) became a champion of the common man, helping to launch Farm Aid, organizing charity concerts for Midwestern flood victims, and giving voice in his songs to the ordeals of blue-collar Americans.
By the late '80s, though, Mellencamp had peaked commercially. After four consecutive multiplatinum releases, 1989's Big Daddy sold less than 2 million copies, and his next two albums, Whenever We Wanted and Human Wheels, sold even less. Perhaps he'd left some fans behind when, on 1987's The Lonesome Jubilee, he augmented his sentiments — ''hard times for an honest man,'' as one song put it — with such traditional instruments as Dobro, fiddle, and mandolin. Or perhaps Big Daddy, recorded during Mellencamp's devastating second divorce, was too somber a work to top the charts.
But more than likely the record-buying audience picked up on Mellencamp's attitude, which he clearly expressed in his Big Daddy single ''Pop Singer'': ''Never wanted to be no pop singer/Never wanted to write no pop songs.'' ''I committed public suicide with that song,'' he says proudly. ''It pissed everybody off, and was probably intended to piss people off. We had just played like 160 shows, and it just made me literally sick to walk into an arena. At that point, I figured anything was better than that.''
Anything, it turns out, included trying his hand at moviemaking: He directed and costarred in Falling From Grace, a 1992 feature film that didn't even recoup its $3 million budget. Recalls Mellencamp, ''You make a bad movie or you make a bad record? So what? Big f---in' deal. They don't take away your birthday for it.''
Mellencamp claims to have no regrets about putting the brakes on his celebrity. ''I don't want to be famous,'' he says. ''I already don't like having to sign the autographs I gotta sign. Hey, I'd be happy selling half a million albums.'' Along the way, he has butted heads with record executives, producers, managers, band members, and wives, leaving several of each trampled in his wake. He'll be the first to take the blame for temper tantrums, selfishness, and philandering — this is, after all, a man who only half-jokingly nicknamed himself Little Bastard — yet many of those who have been on the receiving end of his wrath maintain that his admission of guilt doesn't exonerate him.
''He's the kind of artist who doesn't appreciate anything,'' recalls an ex-employee of Mercury, his label since 1979. ''He's really difficult, really demanding, and just not a nice person.'' But, says another former company executive, ''he's a really good person deep down inside — he just doesn't realize when he's being an a--hole.''
To this day, Mellencamp continues to operate without interference from Mercury. (''When I gotta start making demo tapes and telling people what I'm gonna do — and I'm sure it's gonna happen sooner or later — it'll be a sad day for old John,'' he says.) In fact, he shocked the label when he delivered Dance Naked a mere five months after the release of Human Wheels last September. An even bigger surprise was ''Wild Night,'' Mellencamp's first-ever duet. NdegeOcello, a surprisingly avid Mellencamp fan given her urban-gay-woman image, was particularly impressed with the down-home nature of the recording session. ''We've all been at photo shoots that are catered and there's all this food you can't even pronounce,'' she says. ''When you go to Indiana to hang out with John, it's like, 'Make your own damn peanut butter sandwich.'''
And Mellencamp's cockiness is now tempered with self-deprecating humor. He can joke about kicking musicians out of his band, especially since the dismissals rarely last more than a few days (''It's part of being in the family''). And lately he's shown a new respect for their other commitments. Last winter he fired Kenny Aronoff, his drummer of 14 years, when the much-in-demand studio musician couldn't make three days of a recording session. But a few weeks later, Aronoff recalls, ''John called and said, 'Why don't you come on over? I want to take a look at your schedule.' That was the first time he'd ever said anything like that to me. He's still got an aggressive edge, and at any moment that s--- can come back. But he's mellowed a bit.''
Most significantly, Mellencamp may have curbed the compulsive womanizing that has been both the creative spark and the dynamite in his life. At 18, he eloped with his high school sweetheart, Priscilla Esterline, who was pregnant at the time (their daughter, Michelle, was born in December 1970). But Mellencamp's wicked on-the-road ways were hard on the marriage, and 10 years later, by the time Mellencamp met his second wife, Vicky Granucci, at a Hollywood party, Esterline was willing to grant him a friendly divorce.
Mellencamp considers adultery an occupational hazard. ''How many guys you know in rock bands that have been divorced?'' he asks defensively. ''There's a reason for that. I don't care who you are or who you think you are, you're gonna fall into the pitfalls of that sooner or later. It's rock & roll. I mean, what other reason would a guy ever pick up a guitar as a teenager?''
When he starts his Dance Naked tour July 29 in St John's, Newfoundland, things will be different, he says. ''It's just like anything: Once you make enough mistakes, you understand what the penalties are,'' he says, referring to the departure of Granucci and their two daughters, Teddi Jo, 13, and Justice, 8, in 1989. ''Back then I had the best of both worlds. I'd come home to Indiana, had two beautiful kids, a nice wife, the whole bit. Out on the road I was still 19. And (Vicky) just got sick of it. Can't blame her. So I lost my kids. I thought, man, what have I done?'' (These days he spends as much time as possible with the kids. They and Granucci live a few houses down the beach on Hilton Head.)
It's past midnight. Outside, a storm is brewing, the crashing waves depositing seaweed and driftwood on the wide beach. Watching Nick at Nite in the sitting room off the kitchen, Elaine hands little Hud over to her husband, who tries to calm the still-restless infant. Lest you think Mellencamp's mellowed too much, however, he'll happily tell you the story about how he started strangling the production designer on Falling From Grace for being obnoxious. He'll readily admit he still fights with his record company about the quality and quantity of its promotional efforts. But, as he puts it, "I've redirected my anger at different things. Into my music. Into my paintings. And into people who need a kick in the ass to do something. I don't want to fight with anybody, but I will if I have to."
Begrudgingly, the man who wrote "Pop Singer" has come to terms with his chosen profession. "I mean, it's nice to sell records, and I like people telling me my songs are on the radio. But basically it's somethin' to do. Beats the f--- outta pouring concrete."
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 2007 MySpace "Freedom's Road" Interview
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on: December 22, 2010, 05:44:20 pm
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Interview with John Mellencamp - January 15, 2007
This was my first interview with John Mellencamp, who is releasing an album, "Freedom's Road" on Jan. 23. He has a reputation for a short temper, so I was on my best behaviour when he called me at home on Monday morning. Turns out he was quite the chatty charmer, who handily managed to dodge a few questions amid the frequent laughter. He interrupted the interview a few times to fire some questions at me about New Zealand, which he visited in 1976, "and it was fuckin' great! ... The TV set just had two buttons, and that was your choices. It took me back to the '50s." He was even thinking of moving down there to make good on a vague promise if Bush got re-elected, and contacted a realtor, but nothing came of it. He also loves the OMC novelty song "How Bizarre."
QUICK RECAP. WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO IN THE THREE YEARS SINCE "TROUBLE IN MIND" (COLUMBIA, 2003) AND THIS RECORD COMING OUT?
A lot of things. It took almost a year just to write these songs. And I've been working on a musical with Stephen King which has got, like, 17 songs on it! So I've been writing that. We were in New York and we worked on that. Plus, I'm a painter, so I've been painting. And I've done maybe 70 shows. Is that enough?
WELL, YOU DIDN'T MENTION THE DOMESTIC CHORES, RAISING A FAMILY AND ALL THAT STUFF
That all comes with it. I forgot that I had this interview, and the guy that works for me came up and said, "John, you've got an interview." Oh yeah, I forgot about that. And I was refereeing a basketball game between my two boys, and I was glad to get out of that, because they were killing each other!
HAPPY TO HELP. WERE YOU SERIOUS ABOUT WANTING TO GIVE UP THE MUSIC BUSINESS AFTER YOUR PROBLEMS AT COLUMBIA?
Oh, I've always been an outsider in the music business. Always. Ever since I was a kid. I'm 55 years old now and I've done kinda things the way that I wanted to and sometimes they're not always what the record companies have wanted, or what was considered cool or not cool. I've always been kind of an outsider. I'm used to it.
AND YOU'VE GOT THIS REPUTATION FOR BEING INTENSE, SO MAYBE COLUMBIA MIGHT HAVE A DIFFERENT VERSION OF EVENTS?
I don't know what you're talking about! What kind of reputation?!
YOU SAID THE SONGWRITING PROCESS TOOK ABOUT A YEAR. BUT THE ACTUAL RECORDING WAS FAIRLY QUICK -- ABOUT JUNE TO AUGUST -- ALTHOUGH MAYBE NOT AT "UH-HUH" SPEED?
Actually, the recording started probably in May, and rehearsals started in May. But we didn't know we were recording. We thought we were rehearsing and arranging, but some of these songs have, like, 30 or 40 hours of arrangements on 'em. And when musicians play a song that many times, that many days in a row, and then you record it and call it a demo tape, and you come back to re-record it six months later, you're never gonna get that vibe again. You just can't recreate that. So we just decided, after about the first two or three arrangements, I said to the guys, "Hey fellas, these recordings could be the record, so be cognizant of that as we go along." And we all kind of were, and we all kind of weren't, because we didn't really know where we stood until we went in the studio and recorded a song, and it just wasn't as good as the demo. So we went back to those demos and they became the record.
SO WHAT I'M HEARING ARE THE DEMOS WITH A FEW OVERDUBS HERE AND THERE TO TAKE OUT THE KINKS AND THAT'S BASICALLY IT?
You're exactly right. The vocals and the background vocals were all overdubbed, and a guitar part here and there, maybe a tambourine part. But other than that -- after 30 hours in a garage -- while you guys in Los Angeles were basking in the sun, I was in that stinky, little sweaty garage all last summer!
AFTER SPENDING 30-40 HOURS ON A SONG, YOU MUST ALMOST BE SICK OF IT, RIGHT?
Not "almost" -- totally sick of it. But what happens is when you do that, you know every note that's in the air, and everybody in the room knows every note that's in the air. The drummer knows what the guitar player's doing. The guitar player knows exactly what the organ player's doing, and all the way around the room, so everybody knows everybody's part. And that very rarely happens. If you go into a studio and you're making a song up, which is what I've done since about the '90s -- I had just gone into the studio and the guys in the band had never heard the songs until that day. We recorded 'em, we did an arrangement and that was it. So the whole damn thing took 10, 12 hours. This process was totally different. This was the old, beginner's way of doing stuff.
WAS THERE ONE SONG MORE THAN ANOTHER THAT WAS A PAIN IN THE ASS?
You identified it! They're all problems. There was a couple of records that I wanted to make sure ended up on the record, and one of 'em, which sounds a little different than the rest of the songs, is the song called "Rural Route." And the reason "Rural Route" sounds different is that we never could really get the right arrangement for that song, so we ended up doing it just me with an acoustic guitar and then building on it. And there was another song called "Ernest Hemingway" that we just couldn't get an arrangement, but the thing had 14 verses, so it was rough.
"ERNEST HEMINGWAY" DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT?
Ernest Hemingway didn't make the cut, but it might appear on another record somewhere along the line. Or as a much shorter version down the line!
WHAT'S THE LYRICAL GIST OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY?
"I boxed Ernest Hemingway last night in a bar down in the Keys. He was old and slow, and he beat the hell out of me."
HMM, VERY CUTE. AND "RURAL ROUTE," IT'S ONE OF THE MORE SPARSE SONGS ON THE RECORD. I GUESS IT'S PARADOXICAL THAT IT WOULD TAKE THE LONGEST TO GET TOGETHER?
Oh yeah. Arrangement after arrangement after arrangement. Five and six days on that song. And the band never really got anything that worked, so that just is basically an acoustic performance with overdubs.
THAT DRUM OUTRO AT THE END IS INTERESTING
Ahh, well, it's interesting that you would notice that because that drum intro in one of the arrangements, it happened in the middle of the song, and that's like a drum kit with maybe 20 marching drums, like they have on marching teams. We had this beautiful drum section, and I thought, "Well fuck! We can't waste this." And that's why it's at the end of the song. The original drum section was maybe a minute and a half, so we only used about 10 seconds.
ARE THERE LOTS OF MELLENCAMP STUDIO BOOTLEGS THAT COME OUT SOON AFTER A NEW RECORD COMES OUT?
I don't think so, because I own my own studio. And when those bootleg things come around it's when guys are in studios that they've rented. And I've had my own studio since 1983, and have recorded almost exclusively at that studio.
I'M PROBABLY THE ONLY PERSON ON THE PLANET WHO DOESN'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH YOUR CHEVY AD. BUT WHY ARE YOU PUSHING A GAS GUZZLER FOR A CORPORATE DINOSAUR? WHY DIDN'T YOU HOOK UP WITH VICTORIA'S SECRET, OR APPLE?
That Victoria's Secret worked out good for Bob (Dylan), didn't it?
WELL, HIS LAST RECORD WENT TO NUMBER ONE!
Yeah, but it wasn't because of that commercial. I don't even understand why people are even talking to me about it. I answer the question, but I don't understand what they're talking to me about. I don't see that commercial half as much as I see (sings) "I'm Free!" (for a Chase Bank credit card). That commercial's on everywhere, and that's the Rolling Stones.
WELL, I DON'T THINK THEY DON'T HAVE CONTROL OVER THAT SONG. THAT'S ALLEN KLEIN'S DOING. ALL THE STUFF PRE-72 IS OUT OF THEIR CONTROL
I thought they got all that stuff back?
NO! HELL NO! WELL, I THINK THEY'VE REACHED AN AGREEMENT WHERE THEY AGREE TO DISAGREE.
That's the problem with the English is that they used to have a thing there that the manager was also the publisher and was also the agent. They would tie these bands up totally. That's what happened to me. My first two managers were English. I remember when I signed away my publishing. It was 1977, I was in London, I had no money, I had six guys with me that were in a band. We were all living together in a house. And my management company said to me, "John, have you thought about your publishing?" And I said, 'No.' I didn't even know what it was. So I go to this place, and this attorney goes, "Billy (Gaff)'s worried about your publishing, and he would like to --." These were the exact words, man. "He would like to relinquish you of the responsibility of having to worry about it. Here's 30-grand." So for $30,000, I sold some songs. I tried to buy it back in 1984 at $7 million, but he wouldn't take it.
WHAT SONGS DO YOU OWN, FROM WHAT PERIOD ONWARDS?
From '84 on. (laughs)
IT'S NOT LIKE YOU'RE TOTALLY BEREFT OF COPYRIGHTS. BUT IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE EVERYTHING
I think in 2012 everything reverts back to me. So I get it back eventually. But when you sign away that stuff when you're 22 years old, that's 1976-77, 2012 seems a long way away.
YOU HAVE TAKEN A LOT OF FLAK FOR CHEVY. I THOUGHT GAS GUZZLERS WERE ANATHEMA TO ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS LIBERAL TYPES?
My plan is to use up all the fossil fuel in the world, and that makes 'em go somewhere else!! (Huh?) No, actually, I think the reason people are giving me grief about it is because I ... I still don't think people should sell their songs for commercial use, but things have changed dramatically. For a guy my age, there's no place -- it's not just me, it's Petty, it's all of us guys -- there's just no place for our music to be heard. These records take too long. They're too hard to make, and they're too hard to do, and why would you want to do 'em unless people are going to hear 'em? I've said this before: Chevrolet actually has been a better record company to me than Columbia ever was. At least they were honest. They said, This is what we're going to do, and this what they did. I never got that kind of honesty from Columbia. And quite honestly, anybody that's ever signed a major record deal knows when they're signing that deal, they have sold out. So let's just call a spade a spade. When you sign a record deal, you have sold out.
I GUESS OLD SONGS LIKE "JACK AND DIANE" OR "HURTS SO GOOD" WOULD BE OFF-LIMITS? YOU WOULDN'T SELL THOSE?
I don't want to say this, but I probably never will. I don't see any point. I think also that's another reason why people are so confused. This is kinda uncharted territory. Most people will sell old songs, but won't sell a new one. This is a brand new song that's on a record. And if you hear the CD and you hear the content of "Our Country" inside the CD, it's a whole different song inside that album.
DID CHEVY HAVE ANY SAY OVER THE LYRICS?
Oh, no, no, no. That song is three years old. I was playing that song live, and that's how they heard that song, opening up those 70 shows I was telling you about. I did shows in places like Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, towns like that, and I was opening the show in these arenas with that song. They heard the song, and that's how the whole thing came about.
SINCE YOU OWN MOST OF YOUR PUBLISHING, WHY DON'T YOU BE MORE AGGRESSIVE ABOUT PLACING SONGS IN FILM AND TV? MAYBE A MELLENCAMP- THEMED EPISODE OF "COLD CASE"? IS THAT SOMETHING YOU'RE PURSUING?
Y'know, I don't know what TV show it was, but they did an entire episode and used my songs. I don't know what show it was.
YOU DON'T FOLLOW THE INS AND OUTS OF YOUR PUBLISHING VERY CLOSELY?
No, no, I do. But I always say no, so it's easy. It's easier just to say no, and not have to worry about arguing with somebody about the way they use it. If you go back to Chevy, that first commercial, they said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "If you're going to show 'Our Country,' show our country. Show the good, show the bad, show the people who've achieved, show the people who have betrayed." That's how that commercial ended up like it did. Actually, when you see the very first commercial, it's like seeing a video and they roll a truck out at the end. And they did exactly what they said they would do. Unlike some record companies I've been on.
YOUR WIFE DRIVES AN AUDI. WHAT DO YOU DRIVE?
She has an Audi. You know, I have 50 cars. My favorite car to drive right now though, unless it snows, is a 1956 Nomad station wagon, a Chevy station wagon, that I've had for years, that barely has a front seat in it, doesn't have a back seat, doesn't have a headliner, doesn't have carpet, doesn't have any of that stuff. But it does have XM Radio.
UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC RECORDS PRESIDENT MONTE LIPMAN PUBLICLY EXPRESSED CONCERN ABOUT THE RISK OF OVER-EXPOSURE. HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT HIS LITTLE STATEMENT?
I think that's goofy. If there was such a thing as over-exposure, Madonna would never sell a record. I've had No. 1 records before, and although this commercial is seen by a certain segment of the population, I have friends that have never even seen it. If they don't watch sports, they've never seen it.
YEAH, I'VE SEEN THE "I'M FREE" AD MORE OFTEN THAN YOUR AD BECAUSE I DON'T WATCH SPORT
Yeah, if you watch sports, they'll cluster those spots, and you'll see it 4 or 5 times in a row, and then you won't see any more. I'm sure if you're sitting there you think that's a lot. But I know a lot of women who've never seen it. One of my best friends is a French guy. He doesn't even know what I'm talking about!
DO YOU THINK IT GIVES UNIVERSAL AN "OUT" IN CASE THE RECORD DOESN'T DO WELL, AND THEY CAN SAY, IT'S ALL HIS FAULT. HE FLOGGED OFF THE SONG TO CHEVY AND SCREWED UP THE WHOLE PROCESS?
I don't think they're going to do that. Besides, my deal with Universal, I was very cognizant of the fact I will make one record. I'm not signing any long-term record deals any more. So I'll make one record with you guys, and if they want another record, then they'll have to be successful. If not, I'll do something else. But I'm not interested in any long-term commitments at this point in my life.
IN "THE AMERICANS," YOU MAKE THE POINT THAT YOU TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE CULTURES OF THE WORLD, WHICH I THOUGHT WAS VERY ADMIRABLE. BUT DO YOU THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT MORE AMERICANS PROBABLY RELATE TO THE ALAN JACKSON SONG ("WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED TURNING?") WHERE HE PROUDLY SAYS HE DOESN'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IRAN AND IRAQ?
When I was writing these lyrics, songs like "Ghost Towns Along the Highway," those songs were written on two different levels. It seems like there's a lot of geography going on in this record. But actually "Ghost Towns" is about things that each individual leaves behind, the way that you thought you would go in your life, and the turns that have taken you from New Zealand to Los Angeles, how did that happen? And the people that you've hurt or the people you've loved. That is what that song is about. It's two levels. The song "The Americans," this is not who we are, this is who we say are, this is what we're striving to be, this is who we wish we were, but it's not who we are. Each verse is really addressing a geographical part of the country, and it talks about the West Coast "with our agriculture and beautiful movie stars." Well of course the agriculture that you're bragging about on the West Coast is all corporate farming, and it's all factory farming. And beautiful movie stars? Well, perhaps. You can't take these songs at face value. I wrote a song a long time ago called "Pink Houses" (from 1983's "Uh- Huh") where the chorus went, "Ain't that America." And it was the biggest slam on America that you could ever write, but so many people just only heard that chorus. I think "The Americans" is a positive song. It's who we would like to be. It's who we say we are. But it's not really who we are now, is it?
SO YOU'RE ACTUALLY BEING A WEE BIT IRONIC?
Well, I live in a town (Bloomington, Indiana) that is the most liberal town in what people would refer to as a red state. There's a college here, and a lot of my friends are that way. But a lot of my friends are not that way. So, like I said, all the cultures of the world? Yeah, if you would ask a couple of guys that are professors here that I know, and are coaches here, they would say, "Yeah, I know all about it." I also have some other friends who would say, "Let 'em rot!"
HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF THE REPUBLICANS, OR EVEN THE DEMOCRATS, CO- OPTED "THE AMERICANS" IN MUCH THE WAY AS RONALD REAGAN DID "BORN IN THE USA"?
Here's the thing. I am a very liberal person. I'm liberal-minded and I'm for people doing well. I'm always for Tom Petty. Do good, Tom, because if you do good there's an opportunity for me to do good. Do good, Bruce. If there's an opportunity for Bruce to do good, there's an opportunity for me to do good. I'm for people doing well. But I have found with politicians -- and I am more Democratic-leaning than Republican -- when you take their pants down they all have the same underwear on. So I'm always a little skeptical of what will happen, and what won't happen when you commit to... Nothing in this world is as it seems.
FOR ME "FORGIVENESS" RANKS ALONGSIDE "HUMAN WHEELS" AS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MELLENCAMP TRACKS, HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?
Since it's right in the middle of the record, it's sorta the theme of the entire record. All of the things that we've done, and all of the things that we will do. I've been married 15 years to my wife, and if she wasn't so forgiving, I probably wouldn't have been married that long. It's her ability to forgive, and in a marriage it's always kinda nice to have somebody that's got a big heart, and can forgive and also is a little blind. I think that probably works pretty well in government too. If we were a little blind and had a little forgiveness and a little bit more diplomacy, perhaps we wouldn't be in the problems that we're in here. I've always been against this Iraq War from the fuckin' get go. Never saw the sense in it. Never was one of those people who wanted to get revenge at any cost: "Let's just be revengeful for whatever reason. Whoever's close." And now look at the mess we're in. It's a terrible thing.
ALL WARS ARE PRETTY MESSY AREN'T THEY? WORLD WAR II WASN'T GOING VERY WELL FOR A LOT OF IT, AS FAR AS AMERICA WAS CONCERNED?
Listen, I'm not a religious guy, but there's a big rule. The bible -- all those stories and all that stuff -- may or may not have happened. It is an instructional way of living. A biggie in the bible -- thou shalt not kill. And it doesn't say, Unless this guy did this. None of that crap.
BUT DOESN'T THE BIBLE SAY A WHOLE LOT OF WEIRD STUFF TOO? YOU CAN GO AROUND KILLING GAY PEOPLE?
No! No, no, no. You've been took in. That has never ever. They mention gay stuff one time in the fuckin' Old Testament, and I think it's Leviticus, mentions man-on-man relationships, for a second. It's like three words. The rest of the bible there's no mention of homosexuality. Zero, none.
WHAT ABOUT PEARL HARBOR? IF YOU'D BEEN PRESIDENT WHEN PEARL HARBOR WAS BOMBED, WOULD YOU HAVE SAID, "OH WELL, NEVER MIND, LET'S MOVE ON" -- OR WOULD YOU HAVE DECLARED WAR?
I probably would have got the Japanese guy who was sitting in front of me in a headlock, and said, "Motherfucker! What are you doing?"
AND WE'D ALL BE SPEAKING JAPANESE NOW! THAT'D BE GREAT!
(laughs)
I NOTICED AT THE END OF THE END OF "FORGIVENESS," YOU APPEAR TO SEGUE INTO THE YOUNGBLOODS' "GET TOGETHER"
When we made that record, when we made "Freedom's Road," we learned every San Francisco -- before we even started -- we learned every San Francisco song, and I made the decision that anything that had ever been recorded became mine. There was no, "Hey, does this sound too much like the Youngbloods?" I didn't care. It's mine. It was theirs 50 years ago; it's mine today. If you listen to "Forgiveness," the part that makes it sound that way is the bass part, and we had struggled with that song for about three days and if you put your headphones on and listen, you can hear me go, "Finally! Great!" It's on the track. If you put headphones on, you can hear other vocals going. We had to turn them down, but they're still bleeding into the guitars, bleeding everywhere! You can hear me talking and giving instructions throughout the entire record, if you listen real close. I know where it's at. Right when that part starts, that was the first time the bass player had played it, and I said, "Great! Finally!" And we couldn't get it off the record. It was just embedded too much, because I was screaming it, and I was talking into a PA system! It's a just a real moment, and we wanted to use that track because that track felt great, but that part was on there. So I said, "The hell with it, just leave it on there."
ONE THING THAT BUGS ME ABOUT THE RECORD IS THE HIDDEN TRACK. I THINK THE RECORD'S ENDED AND I GO TO THE OTHER END OF THE HOUSE AND GET A SHOCK WHEN I HEAR THIS UNEXPECTED VOICE BLARING OUT OF SOMEWHERE
I think it's great, because the same thing happened to me. That's how the song ended up there. "Rodeo Clown" really didn't belong on the record, but it was something that I wanted to say. At first we thought about all kinds of clever ways -- advance and then it would go to the front of the record and you could hear that song. And I thought, "That's too much. Let's just wait about 4 minutes, and then have the song come in. People will think it's over." It's kind of like a little P.S. Don't forget about this.
IS GEORGE BUSH THE RODEO CLOWN?
Absolutely
IS HE ALSO THE DEVIL ON "FREEDOM'S ROAD"?
No, no. That's different. Every time you try to do something, "Oh this will make a positive response," there's always something there to fuck it up. No matter what it is. If it's a personal thing, or a big thing, every time I try to put my best foot forward there's always something there to trip me up. I think that's true in life, in general. So if you're going to make a statement -- it says in the song, "Freedom's Road is a promise to the people" -- OK, that's a big promise. So you're gonna have to go through hell to even remotely come close to finding that freedom that we speak of in this constitution that we hold so dearly.
"SHE HAD BLOOD ON HER FACE SO SHE HAD TO GET EVEN" -- THAT'S ABOUT AMERICA'S POST 9/11 RESPONSE?
Yes.
YOU'VE ALWAYS HAD A SOCIO-POLITICAL BENT. WOULD IT BE FAIR TO SAY THIS RECORD IS THE MOST OVERTLY POLITICAL OF YOUR CAREER?
I wouldn't say it was political at all. I'd say it was very social. It's a very social record. I don't think it's political at all, other than "Rodeo Clown" which, as I said didn't belong on the record. And "Rodeo Clown" is probably more social than political. I've written some political songs. I wrote a song called "To Washington." That was very political. It's on "Trouble No More." He goes to war, he's doing it for oil and he sends out the National Guard, he wants to fight with many. That's a political song. It's very direct. All of these songs, like I said, I was very cognizant of having two levels to these songs. There's the level, "Hey, we're the Americans." And if you read between the lines, "Well, maybe not." No, I don't think it's political, but I would agree that it's a very socially and individually minded album.
THERE AREN'T ANY LOVE SONGS ON THIS ALBUM. YOU'RE ALL TAPPED OUT?
I'm not very good at those. I never even wrote any in the first place, and the ones I did write weren't that great. So I just kinda stay away from it, let somebody else do that.
YOU MENTIONED YOUR WIFE BEFORE, THAT YOU'VE BEEN MARRIED FOR 15 YEARS. DOES IT AMAZE YOU THAT YOU'VE HELD IT TOGETHER SO LONG ON YOUR THIRD ATTEMPT?
Well, like I said, she keeps my life civilized. It's her. Elaine has been a very civilized force in my life. We can't even believe we've been married 15 years. I met her when she was 21. She's 37. It's been, like, wow! But here's the bad news. I got uglier than fuck, and she still looks the same. I aged like a son of a bitch and she looks the same.
YOU MENTIONED TOM PETTY A FEW TIMES. ARE YOU FRIENDS? DO YOU CHAT OVER THE PHONE?
No, but Petty had a lot to do with the Chevy commercial, and he doesn't even know it. As I was making this record this summer, is when Chevrolet started talking to me about using this song, and I was kinda on the fence about it. But at the same time, Petty had just released an album called "Highway Companion," that had this beautiful song on it, which was the first single. It had a kinda Bo Diddley- type vibe to it. I heard it one time. I said to the guys in the band, "Oh, this is gonna be big for Tom!" And I was pulling for him. I never heard that song again. Well, I did hear it one other time. I had to go to his Web site to hear it. As I'm talking to Chevrolet, I'm thinking, "Y'know? Nobody's playing this Petty record." People that go to his concerts are probably hearing the song, but the general public's not hearing it.
IT'S A PITY. HE GROSSED $30 MILLION ON THE ROAD LAST YEAR, BUT WHAT PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO SHOWED UP WENT AND BOUGHT HIGHWAY COMPANION? IT'S KINDA LAME THAT HIS AUDIENCE OF 30- AND 40-YEAR-OLDS DON'T SUPPORT THE ARTIST
But here's what happens, and I think it's a pretty general thing that happens to people. Most people think they've got the best Rolling Stones record ever made already. "I don't need to buy any Rolling Stones records. I already got Sticky Fingers. I already have Exile on Main Street. They're not going to make a better record than that." "Oh, I don't need to buy any more Bob Dylan records. Bob already made the best record he was gonna make." And I think people have that attitude towards any artist that has a long career, and the only way that you bust out of that is by having something that is really big.
SO WOULD YOU LIKE SOME SORT OF SANTANA-STYLE RESURRECTION WHERE YOU DO SELL 10 MILLION COPIES?
Yes, yes. That's the only way that people respond to artists who have got 20, 30, 40 albums out. I'm not even sure that we should be writing songs other than for ourselves at this point in our career. If you're going to release a song to radio, then you would hope that the record company would work it. Of course they're not going to. Then you have to go look for other means, like Chevrolet or Chase Manhattan Bank.
DO YOU HAVE ROCK-STAR FRIENDS?
I have guys that I talk to periodically, in the music business. But basically, I talk to the guys in my band, and I talk to business people, and I have a couple of actor friends.
OH REALLY? WHO?
I don't want to get into that. I always like talking to them because they're crazier than I am ... They're (actors in general) the nuttiest people in the world.
GIVE ME A COUPLE OF ROCK-STAR FRIENDS
I don't even want to get into that. Just a couple of guys who write songs. I will tell you, one guy is like the best guitar player in the world. So I talk to him.
JIMMY PAGE? (STEVE CROPPER MIGHT HAVE BEEN A BETTER BET)
No!! I'm not getting into it. We're not playing this game! Move on!
WE TOUCHED BEFORE ON THIS ISSUE. THERE ARE RELIGIOUS REFERENCES IN ABOUT FIVE SONGS. IS THAT A SIGN OF YOUR INCREASING SPIRITUALITY, OR THAT WE SHOULD ALL BE PREPARING FOR THE IMPENDING APOCALYPSE?
No, I just think it's a matter of good judgment. Listen, I don't think a person has to be religious, or has to attend church. But there does have to be a spiritual side, and there is a spiritual side in all of us, whether we want to call it that or not. I have found people who are not spiritual to be kinda boring. They're just not interested in anything. They're negative all the time. I've got a couple of friends who would probably say they were spiritual, but they're just not. They're just bland.
BUT THEN YOU GET PEOPLE WHO ARE OVERLY SPIRITUAL
Then you want to kill yourself. There are people that are over spiritual, that use religion and use the bible to be judgmental. "I can be more judgmental by throwing this shit at you." Which is wrong, wrong, wrong. I have an old girlfriend who I still talk to, and I'm going to quit talking to her because I just said, "This new religion that you have found in the last 10 years, you're just so judgmental about everything." I always tease her, "It's not really the Christian way, is it, baby?"
THAT'S THE GOOD THING ABOUT HARDCORE CHRISTIANS. YOU CAN THROW THEIR WORDS BACK AT THEM: "HEY! WHERE'S THE FORGIVENESS?"
They have none. It's be like me, or got to hell.
THERE'S A COUPLE OF SONGS WHERE YOU TALK ABOUT CRYSTAL METH. YOU'RE PROBABLY ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE WHO TOUCHES ON ONE OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS FACING AMERICA. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH IN INDIANA?
Well, you can see it around here. It's sad. It's a very vicious drug addiction. It's really sad when it gets its needles into younger folk. You can see 'em age right in front of you. I don't understand. I say in that song, in "Rural Route," prison is not the place for these people. Jail is not the place for this. They're not criminals. These people are lost, sad people. I don't think it shows much dignity the way that we treat our drug-addicted and mentally ill in this country. It shows little or no dignity at all. We would just as soon throw 'em away and hide 'em. Let's just put them in prison, or kill the sones of bitches. That's the kind of attitude we have.
SPEAKING OF DRUG ADDICTION, HOW MANY CIGARETTES ARE YOU SMOKING THESE DAYS?
Is that addiction?! I thought that was a habit?!
I INTERVIEWED OZZY OSBOURNE ONCE, AND HE SAID HE'S DONE EVERY DRUG ON THE PLANET, BUT THE HARDEST ONE TO KICK WAS NICOTINE
I don't even try anymore. I've just surrendered that I am a confirmed smoker, and I know what the consequences are, and I'm sure that I'll be fuckin' crying like a baby when I get lung cancer. As a matter of fact, I'm walking through the house right now to grab a cigarette.
YOU DO HAVE HEALTH ISSUES, SO I GUESS YOU HAVE TO BE PRETTY CAREFUL?
I had a ... heart problem a few years ago (a mild heart attack in 1994). Got that straightened out.
AS LONG AS YOU'RE NOT SUING THE CIGARETTE COMPANIES. IT WILL BE A PITY...
But I don't like seatbelt laws either.
SO, FINALLY, THIS RECORD. ARE YOU GOING ON TOUR? DO YOU HAVE BIG COMMERCIAL EXPECTATIONS?
I have no expectations as far as commerciality goes. I've already succeeded with "Our Country." People know the song, which is what I wanted people to do. I wanted people to hear the song. They've heard it. I don't know if it was the best way to present the song to them, but at least they heard it. I'm not sure "Jack and Diane" was presented in its best way either, a young John Mellencamp with $5 in his pocket to make a video. It's hard to say, but people do know the song ... In the fall, I'm going to try to put together the Freedom's Road show, which will be me, and hopefully get (album backing vocalists) Little Big Town to play, and get ("Jim Crow" duet partner) Joan Baez, maybe a couple of other acts, and then we'll all go out and all play together. Something different.
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798
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / Song-by-Song Breakdown of the Self-Titled '98 Album
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on: December 22, 2010, 05:27:05 pm
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Mellencamp's songs convey moral message
By David Lindquist, Star/News Staff Writer 10/6/98
Recording sessions for John Mellencamp took place from early April to late July, with breaks occurring only on weekends.
John Mellencamp produced the album. Paul Mahern and longtime Mellencamp guitarist Mike Wanchic are credited as co-producers.
Mellencamp says Mahern was hired in the role of engineer, but cited the Bloomington resident's diligence, humor and fruitful suggestions as crucial contributions in the making of the album.
In sequencing the order of songs, Mellencamp became frustrated with the single-side format of the compact disc. Having recently rediscovered an appreciation of vinyl, Mellencamp says he approached John Mellencamp as a two-sided LP -- an exercise that is reflected below.
Side one
Fruit Trader -- Mellencamp says this is his favorite song on the album. It begins with an argument between biblical brothers Cain and Abel. It closes with cries of a person lacking purpose, direction and morals. "I think that's the way we are now," Mellencamp says. "For whatever reason, we're in the wind. America is in the wind."
Your Life Is Now -- When Mellencamp shipped the first single from John Mellencamp to rock radio stations, electric guitars replaced a violin segment that permeates the album version. Mellencamp says he did so at the urging of Jim DelBalzo, Columbia's senior vice president for rock promotion. "'I love the song, but those violins are going to scare (radio programmers) off,'" recalls Mellencamp, who has known DelBalzo for 24 years. "'To be honest, you've been scaring them off with these violins since The Lonesome Jubilee (Mellencamp's 1987 album).'"
Positively Crazy -- Mellencamp says he encouraged the members of his band to write material for this album. Guitarist Andy York penned the music for this bittersweet love song, while Mellencamp and lyrics collaborator George Green came up with the words over the course of a day. "I just loved (York's) chord progression," Mellencamp says.
I'm Not Running Anymore -- This upbeat meditation on faded youth most likely will be John Mellencamp's second single. Mellencamp's sons Hud and Speck are the mischievous focus of the second verse: "They are the hoodlums of my third wife. / Whatever I say they will oppose." Mellencamp admits to laughing out loud as he composed the verse. "It's really good when you can write songs that entertain yourself," he says.
It All Comes True -- In this song about sealed fates, Mellencamp portrays a disadvantaged African-American man from East Chicago and a restless woman who wants more from life. "I'm a reporter," says Mellencamp, who wrote the song with Green. "When we wrote "Rain on the Scarecrow," George and I didn't make that up."
Eden Is Burning -- After 16 years, the fabled characters of "Jack and Diane" return. "For years, people have suggested to me that I write about these people again," Mellencamp says. "It never made sense to me. ... But when I looked at (the completed "Eden Is Burning"), I thought, 'I don't feel funny or weird about this.'" Listeners shouldn't, however, expect happily ever after.
Side two
Where the World Began -- Mellencamp says the first line of this rocker succinctly captures his feelings about making records for his former label, Polygram: "I'm tired of being grateful for the chance to take a dive."
Miss Missy -- This is a rescued artifact. In 1991, Mellencamp convened a recording session with his bass player, Toby Myers, and two guests -- drummer Stan Lynch (then a member of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers) and guitarist Izzy Stradlin (then a recent ex-member of Guns 'N' Roses). "There were three or four sessions," Mellencamp says. "I thought nothing had come of it." During the making of John Mellencamp, however, Mahern came across the long-shelved tape and asked Mellencamp about "Miss Missy." "I had forgotten I had even written or recorded that song," Mellencamp says.
Chance Meeting at the Tarantula -- "I've done my share of running around with girls," Mellencamp says during a discussion of this song, which involves a pair of ex-lovers who have differing thoughts about the old days. Mellencamp says he believes the narrative has a quality reminiscent of the work of playwright Tennessee Williams.
Break Me Off Some -- Keyboard player and loops guru Moe Z. MD co-wrote this modern R&B workout with Mellencamp and Green. It was in the running to be the first single, but Mellencamp said the funk-flavored track wouldn't be a fair representation of the album.
Summer of Love -- Co-written by York, this song's lyrics were inspired by Mellencamp's Los Angeles adventures during the '70s. He and a friend would camp out Sunday mornings on Sunset Boulevard with the sole purpose of watching people -- primarily women -- return to their homes after one-night stands. "I see everything in that song very vividly," Mellencamp says. "I see the guy. You know these people don't know each other. There's no commitment involved here."
Days of Farewell -- Myers co-wrote this song that's propelled by a Talking Heads-esque rhythm. The sister of Moe Z. MD provides additional vocals that prompted a debate between Mellencamp and Green, who believed her intense spiritual monologue didn't fit on the album. "George and I had hundreds of conversations about whether that should be on the record," Mellencamp says. "Of course -- since it's my record -- he lost.
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799
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 2001 Rolling Stone Interview
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on: December 16, 2010, 10:44:42 am
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Inside the Head of John Mellencamp Veteran singer-songwriter muses on blues, jeans and the Weather Channel
By Christina Saraceno October 17, 2001
"All right, you wanna have a joke?" John Mellencamp asks. Mellencamp, whose nineteenth record, Cuttin' Heads was released yesterday, is reflecting on how it all began. "Go back and read the first review ever of my records written in Rolling Stone. Oh man, you'll go, 'Why did this guy even continue to make records?'"
In 1976 Mellencamp posed that pride-swallowing question to himself when Chestnut Street Incident -- his debut album featuring covers like the Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe in Magic?," the Doors' "Twentieth Century Fox" and Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" -- was credited to one "Johnny Cougar," the doing of his then manager. "I knew that those records were terrible but I was a twenty-two-year-old kid," he says. "I'd never really written songs. I'd never been in the studio before. I was in a band and we did cover songs in bars, and the idea of writing songs was really foreign to me. So you know, I think that from my humble beginnings to be able to still be here is a real success story."
He's right. Nearly twenty-five years after Johnny Cougar made his debut, John Mellencamp has become an icon for a brand of hard-won success. The prototypical heartland rocker, a label Mellencamp eschews, the Indiana native used his perseverance and self-determination to surpass the expectations of his small town and of his critics to gain commercial success. And while hit singles like, "I Need a Lover" and "Hurts So Good" essentially bought him back his real surname (which he added to his stage name in 1983), mainstream popularity did not garner him the critical credibility he continued to seek. Not satisfied, Mellencamp pushed on; musically, exploring American roots music, and, socially, drawing attention to the struggle of heartland farmers and becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry and corporate America.
His latest release continues in the tradition of the civic-minded singer-songwriter, exploring race issues on the title track with a guest spot from Chuck D, and contemplating a "Peaceful World" by dueting with newcomer and unfailing idealist India.Arie. At fifty, with plenty of album sales and rave reviews to his name, Mellencamp still manages to be the working man's rock star.
Do you feel like you're still learning as a songwriter?
I think you never stop learning how to write songs. I never understood guys who said they had a writer's block. I always thought, "Man, look out your f---ing window. There's so much to write about." So, yeah, I think you're always continually trying to get next to the truth somehow. And it's hard to shed old clothing, try to find something you haven't done before, looking around for a different kind of sound -- at least not put so much music on the record.
What do you mean by "music"?
There's so much music on my last few records, I thought. I hear these records on the radio, and I think, "What the f--- was I thinking about putting all that music on there?" There's too many melodies, too many violin parts, too many guitar parts -- where's the melody at? Where's the melody of the song? Too many drum parts. It's easy to do today with all these tracks and all the technology. And we've been making records so long, and I have such great musicians around me and thousands of ideas and it just seems like a good idea at the moment. If I go back listen to the records that inspired me to get in this in the first place, there's no music on those records, just some guy's voice and a guitar, and that's about it.
So do you listen to your old stuff?
I don't really listen to my records very much. The only time I hear my records is when they play them on the radio . . . When I finish my paintings I just give 'em away or sell 'em. They don't really mean anything to me once they're done. I think it's the making of them . . . I'm always rolling the rock up the hill. Once you've seen the Grand Canyon you've seen it -- "Ok, let's get rolling that rock back up the hill."
There's a great narrative voice in your lyrics. Is that something you set out to do?
No, never. If they do, then that's what they do, but I never really sit down to do anything in particular. I always just try to let the song go where it needs to go and not dictate to the song where it needs to go. Let the song kind of have its own space to go on. You really don't want to get into that "moon," "spoon," "June" thing. I really hate hearing songs of mine from the past or anybody's for that matter when I've never heard the song before and I hear the lyric and I know what the lyric is gonna be before it gets there just because they're gonna use a cliche rhyme.
So how would you describe this record? Sounds like you're going for a simpler sound.
Simple would indicate people are going to go "one, two, three, four," now you have to be smart about it. You have to have a performance and you have to do something that's not so generic and cliche. You know, I hear so many records today that [I think], "I've heard this, I've heard it a million times. Play something else, play it smart. Turn the beat around, you know, something." So no, I don't think it's simpler. The truth of the matter is it's much harder and that's why I worked on this record for months. Because it's hard to make it sound like a bunch of guys walked in and fell down and played this song. All you got to do is put that in your own life. Every time you think something's going to be a walk in the park, it's brain damage. That's the way everything is. Anything appeared that it just kind of fell off the log, that didn't happen.
So what do you listen to now to inspire you? Is it some of the same music you listened to when you were starting out?
Oh sure. I mean I suppose I sound silly saying this, but that's when rock music was a person's life. It's not like it is now. Music really meant something back then, and there was a lot of optimism about what music could do and how it could change things that were reflected in the songs of the time and by the people listening to the songs of the time. I have teenage daughters and these girls they don't give a s---. As long as they think the song's cute in the moment, that's all they care about.
Any concerns about putting out an album right now with music leaning towards pop and rock/rap?
I don't really know what the future will hold for music, so the only thing I can do is not concern myself with trends. And, you know, what's on the radio now, you're really talking about money there. That's money songs. There's nothing wrong with money songs. I think they're OK. Somebody's gotta make money . . . My wife said it to me ten years ago. When I dropped out of the music business for awhile, I was confused when I came back and all this new music and rap and stuff, and she just looked at me and said, "John, you're a pair of blue jeans. Stay a pair of blue jeans. Jeans will come in and go out and you wear 'em sometimes, but they're always comfortable." So that's pretty much sound advice. I've been very fortunate. I've been making records twenty-five years. How many people can say that they've been able to do that? But it's my nineteenth album, godd---!
So where did the album title come from?
Cuttin' heads is what the old blues guys used to do to each other. On a weekend or a hot summer night, they would get on a street corner and start playing. And down the block would be another blues guy playing for change, and whoever drew the crowd would be the winner, and they called it cuttin' heads. Sometimes you'd get down in a town, I guess in Mississippi and there'd be seven guys on the street playing, each trying to outdo the other guy. Robert Johnson was the king of cuttin' heads. He always cut everybody's head 'cause when Robert Johnson showed up everybody was [saying], "F--- that guy! We quit. He's gonna get the crowd." It's really kind of one-upmanship.
So, in titling the record that, are you throwing down the gauntlet and saying, "This is what a rock & roll record is supposed to be."
Well, I hope that's what I'm making. It's really hard though when you know the industry. This music today is being made from the top down, and that's not the way music is intended to be made. Music that I enjoyed and grew up listening to came from the street, from the gutter: Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones -- they were all playing songs from the street, all black songs. That's why I always loved black people so much, 'cause, man, they gave me every f---ing thing. They gave me this music to listen to. The music today is made by these guys sitting up there, my age, saying, "Wouldn't it be good if this girl looked this way and did this kind of ad." And that's OK, but it can't be all that there is. My gut feeling is that maybe rock's dead now, I don't know, because it's been here so long and money is so important. I mean, as long as I've been in the music business, I've never seen money be so premier in music or in movies. I mean, the movies, you've got one week to open big, and if you don't the movie is a flop. The music business is becoming the same way. And they all want to enter high . . . When I was a kid, the East Coast was quite a bit different than the West Coast, and the Midwest was different too. People looked different, they spoke differently, the South had it's own image, people from Boston looked and sounded differently. Now, you know, it's all pretty Gap. I think it's funny that myself and my kids -- I have a seven-year-old boy and a six-year-old boy -- these f---ing guys dress just like me. I mean, that's ridiculous isn't it? [Laughs] It's funny. When I was a kid, I didn't look nothing like my dad. He had a whole different set of clothes that he wore, but we all look the same. We all watch CNN, we all watch the Weather Channel, we're all from the same town now, and I think it's sad. You know, I've been yelling about this since I've been making records: Corporations are absolutely going to steal our identity. And it's happening.
Do you think you've been able to maintain your identity, even though you've been on big labels?
Not really, because I have forever been cast to the idea of a Midwestern rocker. I don't know what the f--- that is. Is that REO Speedwagon? I don't know. I'm from the Midwest. Bob Seger is from the Midwest, Dylan is from the Midwest, are we all Midwestern rockers? I don't get it. So it's hard to have an identity, I think. I feel lucky that people even remember my name, to be honest.
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800
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 2003 Classic Rock Magazine Article
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on: December 16, 2010, 12:17:51 am
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24/7 A WEEK IN THE LIFE John Mellencamp
He's handy with an artist's paintbrush, a fan of 50s and 60s movies, and although he's planning on writing a book, he tells Jerry Ewing, reading one is about the last thing you'll find him doing.
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"A kind of a good thing about being John Mellencamp is that I can come and go as I like, and every day is similar but always different. I have five kids - a 33-year-old daughter; a 22-year-old daughter; a 17-year-old daughter; Hud, my eldest boy is nine and his little brother's eight. So I have a lot of kids.
"I'm always writing songs, and it seems like I'm always talking on the telephone about some kind of business. I'm very fortunate, too, that I get a lot of requests. Like next week I'm going to New York to accept the Woody Guthrie Award from the Woody Guthrie Foundation which is a nice thing to receive. So I have a nice life. I can't complain. I do, though, even though I shouldn't.
"I've been painting for quite a number of years. I have an art studio and two or three days I'm up there painting. I could always draw as a kid. About 1987, I'd been making records for quite some time and I wanted to pursue an activity that didn't involve having 50 people around all the time. So I started painting. I went to New York to study how to paint and didn't do any music for three years. Painting's different to what everybody thinks it is. They think it's a leisurely activity but it's not really. It's creation, like writing a song or writing a script.
"With painting, I don't have to worry about record companies, or anybody's opinion, or selling out shows. It's a very personal thing. Every once in a while I'll have a showing, although I haven't had one in eight or nine years. I have thousands of painting and I like the idea of having something to show for my time.
"I live in Bloomington, Indiana, which is home to one of the biggest American universities, Louisiana State. It has 70,000 students. The town only has 150,000 people, with the students, so subtract them and it's a very small town, but with a very diverse culture. There's Indiana basketball, which is huge in the United States, and American football. There's a lot of restaurants and it's very youth-oriented because of the college.
"I lived in London for eighteen months, recording my first album. But I never felt comfortable in London and I was always in some kind of trouble there. It was not a good environment for me and in the long run I think it' s helped me staying here in Indiana. And in some ways it may have hurt me.
"There's such a political underbelly to small-town farm life. And I understand the political side to it better than if I'd lived in New York and just showed up and played at Farm Aid, which I helped set up. I'm getting ready to do a television show next Friday about the farm crisis. Some TV celebrity said on TV that all farmers were welfare ninny pansies. A terrible fucking statement. And I'm going on TV to respond. But the subsidy laws in the United States are wrong. The government pays out billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers but only ten percent receive the subsidies - and they're big factory farms; your average farmer doesn't get a fucking dime. It's wrong.
"I don't really think too much about relaxing. I try to put myself in the moment; I say I 'try' but I can't always do that. I try not to think about how I feel. I try to keep my life on as even a keel as I can because as a younger man and even to this day sometimes, I have tremendous outbursts of anger. They seemed to do me damage as a younger man. I try to put myself in a position where that doesn't happen but I don't really sit there and say, I think I'll take a few relaxing hours.
"I know nothing about new films but I know loads about old films. I think the best film ever made was A Streetcar Named Desire. I think a lot of those films made in the late 50s and early 60s were the greatest ever made - films like Cool Hand Luke and Little Big Man. But as for the new big blockbusters, I'm ashamed they're being made. They're only there to please stockbrokers. But my biggest problem is that the American public doesn't seem to mind. I have a movie theatre in my house and I take great pride in showing people these films. And I'm amazed some people don't know them. It 's like, how do you go through life and not know who Bob Dylan is, or Woody Guthrie?
"I equate it to the same thrill as discovering Robert Johnson in the 60s when I was a teenager. Or the Lovin' Spoonful. Discovering these artists as if these records were made for me and me alone. It gives me great pleasure to share that with other people and now that I'm 51 I have a large circle of friends to share with.
"I don't read much. In fact in my life I've probably read only two books cover to cover. The reason is that I was dyslexic and reading was slow and painful for me. Nowadays I can read great but reading was never really a part of my life as a teenager or in my twenties. I read a lot of magazines but as far as sitting down with a book, I've never really done that. I regret it. But I fully intend to write a book one day, when I don't want to go on tour any more and I've painted all my paintings, and I think that not having read too many will work to my advantage.
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 1986 Tim White Feature
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on: December 16, 2010, 12:10:39 am
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John Cougar Mellencamp R.O.C.K.I.N.G. In The U.S.A. by Timothy White
Illinois Entertainer, March 1986
It was the strife-torn winter of 1966, and black teenagers protesting racist segregation were mounting a second wave of rioting in the Watts section of Los Angeles that would leave two dead and dozens seriously injured, but half a nation away, on the tiny stage at the Rok-Sey Roller Rink in Seymour, Indiana, rock 'n' roll remained the great equalizer.
John Mellencamp, 14, dressed in a Nehru jacket, tight pants and riding boots, was howling out his untempered interpretation of "Harlem Shuffle," the 1965 Mercury hit by Wayne Cochran, Miami's "White James Brown." Beside the puggish white youth stood tall, slim Fred Booker, the 17-year-old product of one of Seymour's 28 black families, who shared co-lead singer credit with Mellencamp in Crepe Soul, their eight-man dance band. As John wound up his frenzied star-turn, Booker leapt into James Brown and the Famous Flames' "It's A Man's Man's Man's World," throwing off a cape ala Soul Brother No. 1 as he mimicked the master's patented sideways shimmy.
"The rest of the country might have been go- ing to hell racially," says the now 34-year-old John Cougar Mellencamp, reminiscing in the cozy kitchen of his secluded ranch house outside of Bloomington, Indiana, "but Booker and I, we were doing just fine together—and the Crepe Soul was pulling in a hundred dollars a week! One night at a bar we played, there was even a black-white knife fight between two guys in the crowd, but as far as we were concerned, there was musical harmony and no hassles whatever, it was my first band, and soul music had been my first love since my daddy gave me a radio in high school as a present."
As a result, he adds, "We didn't do the Beatles or any of that stuff, but I must have sung 'Soul Man' a million times. We broke up after two years of playing my Uncle Joe's roller rink and college frat houses. In fact, I wasn't really in another steady, dependable band until I formed the one I'm playing with right now."
The catalyst for these fond memories is the new single, "R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.," from Mellencamp's million-selling Scarecrow album. Or, rather, the video of the song that John has just directed with producer Faye Cummins, the team responsible (in association with feature director Jonathan Kaplan) for the "Lonely 0l' Night" and "Small Town" videos from his latest LP.
"See, before we went into the studio to record the material for Scarecrow," explains the mus- cled, intense Mellencamp, "I had the band rehearse more than a hundred of the classic old garage-rock and R&B dance singles of the 1960s, from James Brown's "Cold Sweat" to "Mickey's Monkey" by the Young Rascals. And in each case, we discovered that they caught fire because they broke rules and allowed individual strengths and quirks to stick out. In other words, rock 'n' roll works best when it doesn't judge or exclude, only when it's open to letting everybody contribute."
As Mellencamp discussed these notions and recollections with Cummins, he slowly fleshed out visions of a simpler, freshly experimental era. Logically, his thoughts strayed to the video landscape of 1965-1966, when network TV was largely lily-white. Indeed, but for "The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show" broadcasting Friday evenings on NBC, the most reliable places to encounter black talent were the innovative crop of post—"American Bandstand" pop music variety shows, particularly the daytime "Where The Ac- tion Is" and Thursday night "Shindig" on ABC, and NBC's "Hullabaloo" every Monday even- ing.
"These days, everybody takes the musical variety of MTV and the other video stations for granted," says the smirking Mellencamp with a raspy sigh, "but back then, seeing Martha Reeves and the Temptations and Shangri-La's On TV shows meant especially for young people was a major-league breakthrough. And the presence of black acts and white acts performing together seemed real natural."
And so, the idea of recreating that juncture in video history took hold. With "R.O.C.K." as its soundtrack the video segues from John's spoken memories into contrasting, kinescope shots of a fledgling black vocal group of the period (played by John's backup singers. Pat Peterson and Crystal Taliefero, and their friends) and a strug- gling white instrumental group (John's actual band in vintage costume). At the close, the two parallel pop fantasies join together.
"One of the keys to the success of getting that old TV look was finding an actual kinescope," says John. "Before the invention of videotape, they'd put this sewing machine-sized contraption in front of a studio monitor to make a permanent transfer of the live show they were broadcasting, and because they had to film it directly off a TV set the quality was always grainy and fuzzy. We located a kinescope in South America, and this is the first time it's ever been used for a music video.
"As usual with my career," he notes, bursting into laughter, "I had to find the right tool to do the bad job, so I could eventually do the good job."
Mellencamp is referring, of course, to his lavish mistakes of the past. They were engineered by one Tony DeFries, head of the manipulative MainMan Organization that introduced Davey Jones AKA David Bowie to the public in 1972 as painted android Ziggy Stardust. DeFries' second attempt at pop legerdemain was "Johnny Cougar," a Bowie-Springsteen clone the declin- ing svengali fashioned in 1976 from the raw materials a scared and swindle-weary Mellen- camp submitted.
"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 snuck onto the album jackets 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 million-dollar contract."
John, who was then married and virtually broke, found a reputable attorney, signed with Rod Stewart manager Billy Gaff's Riva Records and retreated to London to record A Biography, which yielded a #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 John's second chance at professional respect- ability. "Finally," he allows with an amused 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 guitarist-songwriter-producer, Mellen- camp 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 album, American Fool, completed the comeback in 1982 when it became the bestselling record of the year on the strength of "Hurts So Good" and "Jack And Diane."
Most significant of all, John had awoken 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 in which he was raised, and the humble hopes of the citizens who populate it. In short, he literally won the hearts of millions on 1983's UH-HUH LP with "Crumblin' Down," "Pink Houses" and "Authority Song." And Mellencamp's Scarecrow album and accompanying tour are continuing to celebrate those basic strivings and values.
"A way of life that all of the people around me grew up with—the heritage of small family farms—is swiftly being eroded," says Mellen- camp, now happily remarried and the father of three. "The title song of the record, '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. But the album deals with the per- sonal heritage of my own dreams, too.
"In a way, 'R.O.C.K.' was written to distill all those great songs of my teenage years and com- bine them into one grateful tribute to the people and things that preserved my far-fetched hopes for myself. Also, the group has been through it all with me, and I've recently realized that every night on the Scarecrow tour, we've accidentally manag- ed to fuse elements from all the different kinds of music—soul, R&B, some jazz, and no-frills hard rock—that've literally kept them going."
Anyone who hasn't been exposed to the Mellen- camp band, from the incisive rhythm section of bassist Toby Myers and drummer Kenny Aronoff, to the keen guitar interplay of Mike Wanchic and lead Larry Crane, is in for a stunning treat. Backup singers Pat Peterson and Crystal Taliefero lend their own deft R&B coloration to Mellen- camp's raucous vocals, and John has added keyboardist John Cascella and the violin of Lisa Germano to accent and deepen the overall sound.
For his encore, Mellencamp contributes an ex- hilarating amalgam of Sixties car radio gems. And John says he's taken steps to guard against the frustrating, in-concert sound system snafus that prompted him to offer a full refund to 20,000 ticketholders at his December 6, 1985, Madison Square Garden date (only half the crowd cashed their's in) before launching into two more hours of solid, blow-off-some-steam rocking.
"That was an emotional decision—both the re- fund and the resumption of the show. But, hey, I'm an emotional guy, right?"
Clearly he is. And however grateful John Cougar Mellencamp may be for the rock he was reared on, doesn't he feel just a little bit foolish that he nearly opted not to put "R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A." on the new album?
"Okay, okay," he admits, his broad face red- dening slightly, "it was one of those absolute last- split-second decisions. I was only including it on the cassette and CD copies of Scarecrow as a bonus party track, but my manager loved the energy of it and I thought, 'Yeah! What the hell!' Then, when I decided to release it as a single, I got so charged up I insisted on doing our own country-soulful version of "Under The Board- walk," another of my old favorites, for the B-side. - "I guess," he concludes, grinning slyly, "that every decision I make is an emotional one."
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 2008 London Interview
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on: December 13, 2010, 11:29:02 pm
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London Sun
By SIMON COSYNS
Life Death Love And Freedom
**** 1/2
I’d always put John Mellencamp down as a nearly man, nearly in the same bracket as Bruce Springsteen but not quite.
He’d shifted truckloads of albums in the Eighties. His Jack And Diane were the most celebrated couple in song.
He could sell out vast arenas, write an endless stream of multi-platinum albums ... but something was missing.
We’d seen Johnny Cougar the pop star but perhaps we hadn’t always seen the real John Mellencamp, the uncompromising, searingly honest artist he is today.
His new album Life Death Love And Freedom is, without question, the most compelling work of his 30-year career. It stares life’s big issues in the eye, unflinching and sincere. It rails against injustices and greed in the United States with unerring ferocity. It confronts the passing years and the prospect of death with compassion and grace. It finds salvation in the power of love and freedom.
Produced by the reliably excellent T Bone Burnett (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss), it has a raw, rootsy sound and plenty of reverb to frame John’s seasoned tones.
I met the singer, still sporting his trademark quiff, in london this week on his 57th birthday. I found him with both feet firmly on the ground, a man who tells it straight, just like his songs, but there’s plenty of added charm.
He lights up a cigarette (having asked politely if I mind) and reflects: “I started out as Johnny Cougar and there was nobody in the world, in 1976, gonna take that seriously. And it was an English guy who gave me that name. You guys were big on that stuff. Elvis Costello (real name Declan McManus) and I were talking about how he got the better name last week. I only had one route to take ... to have such big hit records that people would say: ‘Never mind his name, he’s got great songs!’”
Here, John, who lives in his beloved Indiana with his ex-supermodel wife Elaine, talks about the album, politics, religion and why Jack And Diane still have a special place in his heart.
When you were inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, your friend Billy Joel said, “Stay ornery, stay mean, we need you to be p****d off.” What did you make of that?
I don’t know what he’s talking about! I guess that’s what people think because I’m not one of these artists who is accommodating to people, particularly record companies. I don’t have a vendetta against anyone but if somebody says something or does something I don’t think is right, I tell them. In today’s pop culture, artists are expected to get in line and conform. What Billy should have said is, “John Mellencamp is a tough guy with heart”, that’s what I would have preferred! You know like James Cagney.
Your album title pretty much covers everything ...
I wrote what I thought were things that people my age are confronted with but don’t wanna talk about. I was also very mindful of the American songbook, so no topic was off-limits. There’s a danger of having too many hit records, particularly in the United States. I used to deliver an album and the first question was: “How many singles do you have? And I would be like: “Why don’t you listen to the f***ing album?” As time has gone on, I have stepped back from all that. In any case, radio in the United States would never play a song by anybody my age. It’s all geared around people like the Jonas Brothers. It’s almost as if you’re not from Disneyland, they’re not gonna play you. Knowing that has given me a tremendous amount of freedom.
You confront death in a very open way on songs like Longest Days and Don’t Need This Body.
This record is for people who are serious music listeners, serious about their own personal lives and serious about trying to find some kind of comfort. There’s a real famous actor in the United States, you know him here, I won’t tell you, but he’s dying. He called me and I thought: “What the f*** does he want to talk to me about, I don’t even know this guy?” And he said: “Hey John, listen, you’re record has brought me unbelievable comfort.” I said: “Listen man, if you could find one moment of peace through these words, that’s a great success.”
There’s a political aspect to this album. Jena reflects on continuing racism in America.
Hanging nooses in a tree or painting swastikas on a Jewish person’s door is not going to solve any problems. This is not the type of country that America needs to be. Don’t let the fact that Obama has a ten-point lead make you think he’s gonna win this election because people will say: “Yeah, I’m gonna vote for the guy, but when they get in the booth ...”
Who is John Cockers (he’s the title of a song)?
He’s just a lot of people that I see who are so selfish or so ignorant they can’t recognise the value of life. There are a million John Cockers and you’ll see them when you walk down the street, when they cut you off in their car and tell you: “Get the f*** out of my way!’ In the United States, values and respect for other people have dissipated. “I don’t accommodate nobody!” is the first line in the song and a lot of people feel that way.
So, is society very damaged?
I just saw this thing on TV where this cop killed himself here because he was played out. He couldn’t even stand himself. That’s the hungry beast man! It is inside of all of us. It’s in our DNA to be that way but if people just did what they wanted, it would be like Lord Of The Flies. We would just be hitting each other with sticks. I did an interview yesterday with a woman who said: “John, this record is so depressing that I had to listen to it in dribs and drabs. People want to be entertained and happy.” I said: “Listen, when all else fails ...dance! But I don’t think we’re there yet.”
You ask Jesus for “a ride back home.” Are you religious?
I think people use religion in a funny way. I’m not real sure God responds to: “Help me get this new job.” I don’t think he has time for that. If there is a spirit up there, he’s not bothered with you if you’re throwing up because you drank too much. I don’t think you can make deals like that. In the United States, we have a Right-wing agenda. This Palin woman thinks that the Iraqi war is a war of God. No, it’s a war of oil.
What was it like working with T Bone?
He’s the George Martin (The Beatles) of our time. He is so passive and so articulate when you’re in the studio. He’s not like me because I’m all over the place. He knows more about music from 1950 back to 1900 than anybody I’ve ever met.
Does it bother you that you’re best known for Jack And Diane?
That song is 30 or so years old and it gets played more today in the United States than it did when it came out. As much as I am a little weary of those two, I don’t know any other two people in rock and roll who are more popular than Jack and Diane. Some people probably think there’s a place in hell for me because of those two people! But it gave me the keys to do what I want. I’m 57 today. I’ve lived the way I wanted to live, sometimes recklessly and stupidly, but still been able to do that. I’ve been able to live on my whims, that’s what Jack and Diane gave me, so I can’t hate them too much.
Was there ever a point where you thought you would give up?
I’ve never felt like I was at the mercy of anybody. Even at my lowest point, I was never at someone else’s discretion.
Will we see you touring over here?
I gotta work out how to go on stage without my ears ringing so loud. As soon as I figure that out, maybe. But I am happy to say that I have had a very fortunate life.
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / 1982 London, Ontario Concert Tirade Article
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on: December 13, 2010, 11:25:33 pm
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From a 1982 edition of Rolling Stone magazine:
John Cougar turns on fans
John Cougar raised a bit of a ruckus in London, Ontario on August 30th when, in front of 14,000 fans, he reportedly launched into an obscenity-laced tirade against the concert's promoters, flung rented equipment into the packed audience -- allegedly injuring two young women -- and stalked offstage. "It was just unbelievable," said Don Jones, one of the three promoters who had contracted Cougar to play between sets by Del Shannon and the Beach Boys.
All seemed fine until midway through Cougar's set, when, according to Jones, "the guy just snapped. He started into this little preach about how 'the promoter has ripped you off. You've all come to see me. Fuck the promoter, he's an asshole.' He went on and on."
Cougar concluded his set by hurling a $3,200 drum kit, rented by the promoters, into the audience ("A couple of girls were hurt by the cymbals," Jones claimed); kicking in one of the Beach Boys' monitors ("They were disgusted; they wanted to pull the plug on him"); and breaking a mike stand before fleeing.
Later, Cougar said he felt the promoters were "ripping off the kids" by forcing him to play a shortened set on "tickertoy" equipment. "Before I got on the bill, the Beach Boys had sold 2,000 tickets. So here are kids paying fifteen dollars to see me play thirty-five minutes." Cougar says he intends to play a free concert later this year for the Ontario crowd. Jones, however, vows that he will do his utmost to ensure that Cougar never plays in the area again.
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / All About John / Where Was JM When John Lennon Was Killed?
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on: December 08, 2010, 02:53:16 pm
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John Lennon was shot and killed in New York City 30 years ago today -- December 8, 1980. Where was John Mellencamp when it happened?
"I was standing in the underground parking lot in the Chateau Marmont [hotel] in Los Angeles. Some guy that worked for me ran up and said, 'Hey, John Lennon just got killed.' I couldn't believe it. Then it was on the news. Everybody went out and ate sushi and talked about it. We ran into some other musicians at the sushi bar and talked to them about it. One of them was John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful."
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Video & Audio / Mellencamp on Letterman
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on: December 07, 2010, 11:54:06 am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUFnQrkJWzk (interview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjGZiS7cn9A (Save Some Time to Dream) Hours before taping The Late Show With David Letterman Monday night, John Mellencamp soundchecked a cover of Blind Willie McTell's "Delia" and talked to Rolling Stone about his new dark material. "If you look back at American music, like 'Delia,' it was all about death and suffering," he said. "That why they call it blues. In today's world we have so many candy-coated songs that have become popular music." He also shared his views on his longtime friend Willie Nelson's arrest in Texas for possession of marijuana. "It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Mellencamp said. "He had the IRS mess with him a few years ago and lost everything. Willie's always doing good things for people with the American farmers and biodiesel. He's always doing something. We should all aspire to have the kind of kindness that Wilie has. And to arrest him for something stupid..." On Letterman, Mellencamp played a stark, solo acoustic version of his new song "Save Some Time To Dream" (see video above). Before his performance he sat on the couch to talk with Letterman about his refusal to quit smoking despite his health problems and pleas from his doctors and family. He estimated that he's smoked 650,000 cigarettes throughout his life. "I'm toast," he said. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/68404/239883
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / NYE '99 Concert Preview
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on: December 02, 2010, 11:47:31 pm
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Mellencamp discusses future, New Year's concert News
By David Lindquist The Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS (Dec. 31, 1999) -- John Mellencamp planned to spend his summer tackling a 40-date concert tour, but positive vibes and receptive audiences stretched the itinerary to more than 80 performances through December.
After tonight's show at Conseco Fieldhouse, the Hoosier icon says he won't be seen onstage for awhile -- discounting rumors of an acoustic tour in the spring.
"I told my manager the other day, 'When these shows are over, don't talk to me for four months. I'm going to write and I don't want to talk to anybody,'" Mellencamp said.
Disinterested in becoming a perpetually touring nostalgia act, Mellencamp wants to build his song catalog by recording studio album No. 15.
He says he has written one tune worthy of consideration for the project, which is being outlined as a departure from the trademark Mellencamp sound.
"I'm tired of making rock records," he said. "I want to make a different kind of record. I want to work with some people who will make other people say, 'Why is he working with this person?'"
Mellencamp might even record the album in New York or Miami rather than his Belmont Mall studio in Brown County, where he's made every album dating back to 1985's Scarecrow.
Evidenced by his response to a question about oil painting, Mellencamp seems to be focused on the creation of new music.
"I've been living in this new house Elaine and I built for about a year now, and I haven't painted one painting," said Mellencamp, referring to his Bloomington home and wife Elaine Irwin Mellencamp. "I've done a bunch of drawings, but drawings take an hour. Paintings take days. The idea of getting all the (stuff) out, cleaning the brushes ... Then there's my guitar, and it's already been two years since I was in the studio."
An enthusiastic end
While Mellencamp is committed to upcoming songwriting and studio work, his 1999 tour isn't limping to its conclusion.
"Nobody's complaining, everybody's happy. This is great," he said of a consistently light mood among band members and crew.
Mellencamp has sported camouflage pants and a closely cropped hairstyle at recent concerts, apparently signifying the singer's gung-ho approach to finishing the tour.
December performances have included Minutes to Memories and Get a Leg Up, two older songs that weren't on set lists during the summer and fall.
New Year's Eve ticketholders shouldn't hold their breath, however, for a rendition of I Need a Lover or Ain't Even Done with the Night.
"Those songs, for me, are so ancient," Mellencamp said. "That's like me saying to you: 'Hey, how about producing your freshman thesis again?'"
A veteran's perspective
Mellencamp proved to be a healthy concert draw at the end of the century, selling 13,000 tickets per tour stop.
At the same time, he said he's grown weary of reading and hearing about the sales performance of his 1998 album, John Mellencamp.
"Who my age is selling the amount of records they used to?," said Mellencamp, who turned 48 in October. "What did Tom Petty's last album sell? Half a million. R.E.M.? Half a million. John Mellencamp? Half a million. It's just the way it is for people our age."
These days, seven-figure album sales are reserved for the princes of hip-hop, taut teen-agers and self-absorbed metal acts.
"It's either your time or it's not," Mellencamp said. "I'm definitely not in the 'It's your time' business."
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Articles / After Image/IU Commencement Article
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on: December 02, 2010, 11:25:49 pm
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May 5, 2000
'Rock doctor' Mellencamp speaks
By Mike Leonard
By his own reckoning, John Mellencamp has been "working like a dog" the past few weeks, but not, as one might expect, on the commencement address he will deliver at Indiana University on Saturday.
"I'm learning sign language for a movie role I'm playing, and that's about all I've been doing for the last couple of weeks," he explained when reached at his Lake Monroe-area home Wednesday.
The commencement address?
"I haven't written it yet," he confessed. "I already know what I'm talking about. I'll write it tomorrow."
Mellencamp will draw on the experiences of his lengthy career in popular music for his commencement theme. "I'm going to talk about how there's no reward in life settling for something you don't want," he said. "If you don't do that, you don't have to go through 25 years of telling people, 'No, my name is not John Cougar.'"
The Seymour native and Vincennes University graduate was a raw and unknown commodity when he traveled to New York City in 1975, hooked up with the manager Tony Defries and the MainMan management company that also handled "space oddity" David Bowie and soon found himself renamed Johnny Cougar.
"It's a constant reminder that as a kid, I made some mistakes," Mellencamp said.
Not only was the young singer and band leader from Indiana saddled with a name he did not choose or want € ’· he would learn later that he had signed away most of the rights to his early music and that he would continue to pay out a percentage of his income from yet-to-be-created music for the next two decades.
Although he loathes the memory of the derision that accompanied the cheesy Cougar moniker, Mellencamp grudgingly concedes that the name stood out and probably did do something positive for his career. "Yeah," he said, "it was a good thing in a heart attack way."
That was a droll reference to his own heart attack in 1994, a traumatic experience, to be sure, but one that has paid appreciable benefits in forcing him to begin and maintain an exercise program, pay attention to his diet and moderate his three- pack-a-day smoking habit.
The 48-year-old Mellencamp proved both the vitality of his health and his place in popular music last year with an extensive tour schedule that averaged more than 13,000 fans a show. When he finished off 1999 with a New Year's Eve celebration at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, he pledged to take some significant time off.
That time off ended a little more quickly than the Hoosier rock icon expected.
In March, Mellencamp delivered what one reviewer called a "rambling, profane and funny introduction speech for the Lovin' Spoonful" when that band, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and James Brown were among those feted at the 15th annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York.
The movie for which Mellencamp is learning American Sign Language is tentatively titled After Image, and shooting is scheduled to begin in Rochester, N.Y., Wednesday. "The guy I play (a crime scene photographer) falls in love with a deaf girl, which is why I need to learn sign language," he said. "The people making the film are into the deaf community. They don't want me to go up there and look like a piano player who can't play piano."
Oscar winner Louise Fletcher will also star in the film, which will mark Mellencamp's second foray into filmmaking. He also starred in a 1992 movie, Falling From Grace, which was written by acclaimed novelist and screenplay author Larry McMurtry.
It won't come as a surprise if the singer, songwriter, painter and actor makes reference to his upcoming acting challenge when he speaks at IU's 171st commencement ceremony Saturday. "You always have to be ready to reinvent yourself," he mused this week. "I would never have survived 25 years in the entertainment business if I couldn't reinvent myself. If you don't keep moving, you get left behind."
The dual honors of being asked to deliver IU's commencement speech and to be named an honorary doctor of music are not lost on the occasionally dismissive Mellencamp. "The part I like the best is that they asked the students and the students wanted me, that's really the most gratifying part.
"I've been very fortunate, that's all I can say," he concluded. "Fifteen years ago this would have been something I would have never entertained the idea of doing or even imagined the opportunity to do. I think it's great."
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / All About John / The Grammy's are a joke
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on: December 02, 2010, 10:05:53 am
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Well, the Grammy nominations are out and John got absolutely none for "No Better Than This." He also got none for "Life, Death, Love and Freedom" two years ago. What exactly does he have to do to even get nominated for a Grammy, let alone win one? The entire process is a farce.
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MELLENCAMP DISCUSSION / Chicago, IL - (1st Show) / Chicago Sun-Times Review
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on: November 30, 2010, 04:03:06 pm
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Mellencamp charges in new direction November 27, 2010 BY MARK GUARINO Black Friday does not just describe consumption-crazy shoppers on State State the day after Thanksgiving. Inside the Chicago Theatre, it was a realistic assessment of John Mellencamp's two-hour set of weary folk ballads, death-obsessed blues and the catalog hits he reconfigured to match both. Mellencamp spent the first chapter of his career as an ambitious hitmaker and the second chapter running from them to embrace muted folk and country arrangements about marginalized characters slugging it out along the nation's blue highways. His third chapter uses that template and strips the instrumentation down even further, some even to the pre-electric era. "No Better Than This" (Rounder) his new album, is so strict about authenticity, it was recorded in mono. The live show did not add much color past that. No doubt most in the audience were confused about, and sometimes indifferent to, new songs that operated with slower tempos and vocals that were more scowled than sung. Mellencamp had the undesirable job of challenging an audience that didn't like budging. Their loss. Mellencamp's musicians were given license to work outside the margins, creating atmosphere and counter rhythms that gave the songs lasting depth. "Death Letter Blues," a Son House cover, snaked courtesy of just a snare drum, a shaker and a slide guitar. On "Don't Need This Body," guitarist Mike Wanchic delivered ghostly inflections on his guitar while the rest of the band kept time to handclaps, the total effect being getting lost on a highway at night and trying to find the road. Mellencamp stuck to mostly an acoustic guitar, either playing solo or within different configurations of his band. "Easter Eve," an Irish-tinged waltz, allowed the full band to intersperse folk instrumentation while "Jackie Brown" was presented as a duo between Mellencamp and fiddler Miriam Sturm. The songs that were plucked from the past were forced to fit the more versatile setting. With Jon Gunnell's acoustic bass slapping away and Wanchic's guitar in spongy reverb, "Authority Song" was stripped to sound as if Buddy Holly had just left the room. "Jack and Diane" was now a full-blown country stomp, recognizable only by the lyrics and "Cherry Bomb" was a drive-by visit, sung a cappella with the audience doing most of the heavy lifting. Mellencamp dedicated the final half hour to a rotation of past hits; in fact it was the first time drummer Dane Clark even sat behind a proper drum kit. But the familiarity of that section did not seem to fit where Mellencamp is today. His torched vocals sound more suited to the mortality tales that fill his recent albums. Surprisingly, some of those songs helped re-focus the past. "Check It Out" is one of those songs that is automatic sing-along but given the treatment -- it was paired with "Save Some Time To Dream," a solo acoustic new song that stared into the darkness for hope -- the song was unmasked to reveal lyrics that mourned the status quo. Aggressive rock versions of "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Paper in Fire" took the opposite route; the songs never sounded angrier. Wanchic's guitar bled minor chords while Mellencamp almost chanted lyrics that remain relevant more than 20 years later. They delivered the hits the audience was waiting for, but maybe not what they expected. http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/2926400,CST-NWS-mellen28.article
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