What is the title of the johnny cash song just before john goes on?

"God's Gonna Cut You Down"

Mellencamp looks back, sometimes with disinterest
By Joshua Klein, Special to the Tribune

John Mellencamp is resurgent. Not commercially, mind you – on that front his glory days are likely behind him. But for a guy who has spent years complaining about the foibles of fame, he finally seems to have gotten his wish and receded from the fickle pop realm. Free from the constraints of selling records, he's found a way of making records interesting again.

While Mellencamp and his band played a few hits at the Chicago Theatre Friday, the first show of a two night stand, he spent much of the set supporting his latest, "No Better Than This," an album recorded (with the producer T-Bone Burnett) with just a single microphone, in mono, with no overdubs and a devil-may-care attitude meant to recall the early days of folk, blues and rock and roll. Of course, it still sounded like Mellencamp Friday night, more or less (he was also fighting a cold), but the atmospheric material was met with only mild enthusiasm and mostly patience from a crowd clearly there to hear the familiar.

The new album's simple, even primitive conceit could have translated better than it did, had Mellencamp found a way to balance the retro cool of songs such as "Right Behind Me" and "The West End" with his cache of populist anthems. Instead, most of the new tracks, as well as several selections from 2008's somewhat likeminded "Life, Death, Love and Freedom," came off affected, even mannered, heightening the incongruity of Mellencamp's formalist detour compared to his meat and potatoes métier. The result felt like the obligatory "stripped down" breather sandwiched between the bombast and bluster at an arena show, but stretched out to full-show length.

To be fair, good ideas are no match for great songs, which Mellencamp demonstrated with an a capella rendition of "Cherry Bomb," his wistful classic that even as an unadorned sing-along drew the intermittently seated crowd back up to its feet. Similarly, a note-perfect new track like "Easter Eve" might have conjured the epic dread of a murder ballad, but "Rain on the Scarecrow," "Check It Out" and "Paper in Fire" carried with them an intrinsic gravitas that peak Mellencamp once summoned up on a regular basis.

For a guy whose current work draws so strongly on the distant past - the roots of his roots, as it were -- Mellencamp couldn't quite disguise his disinterest in revisiting his own past. While it was admirable that warhorses such as "Authority Song" and "Jack & Diane" were somewhat rearranged to suit his current tastes, their presence in the set felt like perfunctory (if proficient) sops to the folks who paid for more than Mellencamp's personal nostalgia trip.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-live-1129-john-mellencamp-review-20101128,0,66542.story

Review: John Mellencamp embraces the past, in all its forms
By Rob Hubbard
Special to the Pioneer Press

"I'm not nostalgic."

So said John Mellencamp early on his first of two nights at Minneapolis' Orpheum Theatre on Monday night. He said it as part of a story that seemed designed to discourage requests for songs from early in the heartland rocker's career.

But Mellencamp demonstrated throughout the two-plus-hour show that he wasn't being totally truthful with that assertion. He is nostalgic, but it's not for the days when he created all those songs that still show up on "classic rock" stations with regularity. It's for the days when rock and roll was in its embryonic form, when acoustic blues and country were laying the groundwork for the style that eventually would make Mellencamp a star.

It's not a surprising choice for an Indiana native who has long been singing about his rural roots. And it's natural for a 59-year-old artist to think about turning down the volume a couple of notches. But that doesn't mean that Mellencamp and his six-piece band didn't rock. They just saved it for the end of the evening, thundering forth on the last eight tunes of a 25-song set. That's when they sealed the deal on a very satisfying show, treating the enthusiastic audience to versions of '80s hits that sounded closer to the originals than anything else performed all night.

Despite more than a third of the set coming from Mellencamp's last two albums, much of the music sounded considerably older. And the familiar was usually refashioned into something far more rootsy. The
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opening "Authority Song" sounded like slicked-back vintage Eddie Cochran, "Walk Tall" became a honky-tonk ramble with fiddle and barrelhouse piano, and "Jack and Diane" was a sprightly country shuffle.

Back when the latter came out in 1982, Mellencamp delivered the thesis statement his lyrics would follow for the next almost-three decades: "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." There's a stark darkness to a lot of what he's written, and it really came out in the stripped-down acoustic setting he employed every few songs. But the mood was invariably enhanced by the ghostly echo-laden electric guitar of Andy York, who would take a tune to Bakersfield here or the swamps of Creedence Clearwater there. And Miriam Sturm's fiddle soared on every solo.

By the end of the show, 11 songs from the '80s had found their way into the set, so perhaps Mellencamp isn't just attached to a past from way before his career began. But it was a generous show, giving the fans what they wanted, but also allowing the leader to indulge in a more old-school style.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at [email protected].

Who: John Mellencamp

When: 6:45 p.m. today

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis

Tickets: $125-$43, available at 800-982-2787 or ticketmaster.com

Capsule: A well-played mix of old songs and new ones that sound very old.

http://www.twincities.com/entertainment/ci_16688321

Not enough Mellencamp R.O.C.K.
It was tough to find the real John Mellencamp until late in his Orpheum performance.

By JON BREAM, Star Tribune

John Mellencamp has always been a proud contrarian. A chip on the shoulder kind of guy, a rebel with a cause but not a clue, a self-deprecating outsider who likes to be different for the sake of being different.

Now that he's ensconced in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 14 years past his last radio hit, he's doing it his way. Good-bye arenas, hello theaters. Adios classic rock, welcome roots rock. It's time to make art, not radio music.

Mellencamp called his concert Monday at the sold-out Orpheum Theatre "a vaudeville show." It featured a documentary movie, and then three distinct live music sets: stripped-down roots rock, laid-back acoustic music and full-tilt classic rock. It added up to a curious, challenging and ultimately unsatisfying evening.

Freed of the arena albatross, Mellencamp opened with what could be his theme song -- "Authority Song" ("I fight authority, authority always wins"). Ah, the likable contrarian. With a slapping upright bass player and a standup drummer on a small kit, it felt like a Buddy Holly classic. In fact, for the next 90 minutes, Mellencamp came across more like a rootsy Texan than an Indiana rocker.

In the first set, he sounded like an amalgam of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Leon Redbone. During the acoustic segment, he seemed like John Prine, only with more oomph and less humor. In the electric closer, he became the John Mellencamp the fans had come to hear. But, for many, it seemed too little, too late.

At 59, he sounded in good voice but he didn't really push himself. Although he looks as buff as the Boss and he waved his arms, he wasn't a physical performer who worked the stage. Despite the intimacy of the Orpheum, he didn't really connect with the fans.

Although Mellencamp's 127-minute performance lacked momentum until the electric set, there were many rewards along the way by the singer and his excellent six-member band: Son House's "Death Letter" full of cool bluesy attitude; the haunting, seething "The West End" (an urban answer to "Rain on the Scarecrow"); the sweet and poignant "Save Some Time To Dream"; the a cappella "Cherry Bomb"; "Jack and Diane" recast as an island stroll; and the slashing "Rain on the Scarecrow" and the fiddle-sparked "What If I Came Knocking."

Mellencamp's unconventional opening act was an hourlong documentary "It's About You" by photographer-turned-first-time-filmmaker Kurt Markus who followed Mellencamp on his 2009 tour with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, during which he recorded "No Better Than This," his stark, rivetingly rootsy new album. In typical Mellencamp fashion, he instructed Markus to make himself, not the rock star, the focus of the movie. A hodge-podge travelogue and rock doc, "It's About You" is more indulgent than enlightening, with Markus trying to make profound comments, but sounding like the guy in the Motel 6 commercials.

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/110016584.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUycaEacyUs

Mellencamp at the Orpheum: Dishing the details

Posted by Jon Bream

John Mellencamp’s No Better Than This Tour is his equivalent of  Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions Tour.

Rather than playing his familiar arena rock, he’s dialing it down with a reconfigured band for recent old-timey tunes and reimagined rootsy versions of old favorites. 

To put it in radio terms, Monday’s 127-minute performance at the Orpheum was more NPR than KQRS. Not that there was anything wrong with that aesthetic.  The concert was curious and often rewarding, but it could have been much better with more thoughtful pacing, more passion and commitment from Mellencamp and no indulgent documentary to open the show. That hourlong movie by rookie filmmaker Kurt Markus was more off-putting than entertaining. It did not exactly “warm up” the audience.

My review in the newspaper gave an overview but here’s a more detailed look at Mellencamp’s music:

The first set, featuring a small combo with an upright bass and small drum kit, would have fit nicely into Lee’s Liquor Lounge.

1.       Authority Song. Done kinda Buddy Holly style, driven by the slap bass and tom-tom drum.
2.       No One Cares About Me. This twang-abilly gallops along like vintage Johnny Cash. Should we call this old-school country singer Johnny Cougar?
3.       Deep Blue Heart. Sounds like Dylan from “Time Out of Mind.”
4.       Death Letter. A Son House tune from Mellencamp’s 2003 blues collection. He sings it with a cool attitude. His nicotine-stained growl is perfect for this old Delta blues.
5.       Walk Tall. Recast as a country stroll with Dylanesque phrasing and some barrelhouse piano.
6.       The West End. It’s his urban answer to Rain on the Scarecrow – just as seething and haunting.
7.       Check It Out. Very rootsy but it feels more like a conversation than a celebration.
 
Next comes the acoustic set, which felt like it should have been at the Fine Line because so many concertgoers could be heard talking over the relatively quiet music.
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8.       Save Some Times To Dream. This sweet, poignant song was inspired by a comment by his father. Done solo on acoustic guitar, this suggests John Prine.
9.       Cherry Bomb. Done solo and a cappella. A real crowd pleaser.
10.   Don’t Need This Body. Sounds like a bluegrassy Bon Jovi, with a cool surf guitar solo by Andy York.
11.   Right Behind Me. After a silly introduction about the Devil (Mellencamp’s patter sounded pat and he never had a sense of place. Could he mention Minneapolis?), he got the vaudeville blues. He sounds like Leon Redbone without the slyness.
12.   Jackie Brown.  He starts solo acoustic and Miriam Sturm arrives later for a fine fiddle solo.
13.   Longest Days. After a cute and sometimes funny story about his 100-year-old Grandmother, he sings with an affected Western drawl.
14.   Easter Eve. He gets political on this Irish-flavored banjo/mandolin/fiddle folk tune that echoes Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”
15.   Jack and Diane. Borrowing a vibe from the Zac Brown Band, he starts country and ends up as an island stroll. This ditty sounds as cheery as a theme to a kid’s TV show.
16.   Small Town. Solo acoustic and very effective.
17.   New Hymn. A fiddle/accordion  instrumental seems like an opportunity for Mellencamp to go have a smoke. But it really is a palate cleanser between sets.
 
The third set was the full electric band (a full drum kit for the first time) that could have been played at the X or Target Center. Time to put in your earplugs.
 
18.   Rain on the Scarecrow. Long one of my favorite Mellencamp tunes, this is booming -- and slashing.
19.   Paper and Fire. He keeps rocking like our old hero. That’s what so many of the fans came for.
20.   The Real Life. The show finally has momentum. But it’s too little too late.
21.   What If I Came Knocking. Great tension between fiddle and electric guitar.
22.   If I Die Sudden. Swampy and haunting, with a hot fiddle solo.
23.   No Better Than This. The title track of his fine new album is a blues-abilly triumph.
24.   Pink Houses. Wow pink lights – for you and me.
25.   R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. He starts this one like he started the show – with a Buddy Holly beat. Could you believe he had trouble convincing a female fan to come onstage and dance with him? One woman finally made it and even sang when he placed the mic in front of her face.
 
I don’t know how much the set will change for Tuesday’s return engagement at the Orpheum. But I do know this: the movie starts at 6:45 p.m. and Mellencamp takes the stage at 8:30.

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/blogs/110084449.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUdcOy_nc:DKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUoD3aPc:_27EQU

Mellencamp's come far since the '80s

Concert at the Embassy shows clearly how he has developed as a musician.

By James Grant

“Good evening, I'm John Mellencamp. We came 1,000 miles to see you tonight,” John Mellencamp told the nearly sold-out crowd Tuesday night during his concert at the Embassy Theatre.

Mellencamp, who last played Fort Wayne in 2007 at Memorial Coliseum, gave a powerhouse performance for an enthusiastic audience that lasted more than two hours.

Mellencamp, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, showed why he is not only a member of that esteemed hall but why he was also a recipient earlier this year of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association.

The night began at 6:45 with a documentary movie that chronicled his 2009 tour of minor league baseball parks with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson as well as the making of his latest album, “No Better Than This.”

The film seemed to capture perfectly who Mellencamp is now as a musician – more of a folk troubadour along the lines of Bob Dylan than the young man who penned “I Need a Lover,” his first hit from 1979.

The movie also seemed to capture the feeling of a lonely, desolate late night on a rural country road that seems to envelop the music that Mellencamp has recorded in the past few years.

As luck would have it, sitting next to me was someone with a unique perspective not only on the film but on Mellencamp himself – his Seymour Senior High School classmate Nancy Wright Eikenberry from the Class of 1970.

“Pure John, laid back, black and white – just like him,” Eikenberry said of the film. “I've followed his career over 35 years. What you see is what you get. I like the new songs (in the film), but I was glad they blended in the old songs as well.”

Coming onstage at 8:30, Mellencamp and his band opened with “Authority Song” from his 1983 album “Uh-Huh.”

The song took on a more rockabilly feel that, while sounding familiar, was given new life in a stripped-down arrangement that sounded more 1950s than 1980s.

From rock to folk to country and honky-tonk, Mellencamp effortlessly glided between genres to create an engaging show.

Much like the late Johnny Cash, Mellencamp is able to take the force of rock music and combine it with country, blues and themes of the American everyman to form a unique blend that is real and raw.

The first third of the show consisted of Mellencamp and his band playing in this rockabilly/roots style. The second third consisted of Mellencamp either playing solo on his acoustic guitar or with his band also playing acoustic instruments. The third and last part was a full-out rock 'n' roll assault.

Fans of the early 1980s John Cougar Mellencamp era may have been a little disappointed, as the show was filled with a lot of his recent material, such as “No One Cares About Me” (from his new CD “No Better Than This”) and “If I Die Sudden” and “Don't Need this Body.”

These songs are more direct and less sunny than, say, “Hurt So Good” from 1982, but more rewarding for people like me who find his newer material more engaging.

Early in his career, Mellencamp's music was good but not that different from the many other acts crowding the airwaves and MTV of the early '80s. Starting around 1985, his music seemed to take on much more serious and poignant overtones.

Songs like “Rain on the Scarecrow,” about a man who loses his family farm to foreclosure, and “Minutes to Memories,” where a 77-year-old steelworker from Gary reveals the simple truths of life to a young man riding beside him on a Greyhound bus, gave Mellencamp's music a uniquely Midwestern perspective, with an urgency and passion that made him stand out from many of his contemporaries.

Tuesday night, Mellencamp brought that same feeling to his performance. Yes, old favorites like “Cherry Bomb,” “Jack and Diane,” “Pink Houses” and “Small Town” were played, but many took on a more informal, country-influenced feel that made them sound fresh.

The highlights of the evening for me were the song “Jack and Diane” being reinvented with a country hoedown feel, the blistering full-out rock of “Rain on the Scarecrow” and Mellencamp's solo guitar acoustic numbers as he exchanged humorous quips with the audience.

It was a great night of music – and a testament to how much Mellencamp believes in his songwriting and his willingness to change.

He may not be the same songwriter or performer he was in the 1980s, but that's certainly not a bad thing.

http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101117/NEWS/11170392

John Mellencamp Puts a Fresh Spin on the Hits In Latest Show

The Oakland Press By GARY GRAFF

DETROIT -- About a third of the way into his concert Friday night (Nov. 19) at the Fox Theatre, John Mellencamp informed the crowd that, "This ain't no rock show anymore. This is a vaudeville thing. Me standing up here playing those hit songs is over."

Those would be fighting words from some artists. But for Mellencamp it was par for the course, part of four decades of refining and reinventing himself -- and still leaving 'em R.O.C.K.ing in the U.S.A. by the end of the night.

Friday's 25-song, just over two-hour show offered the Indiana troubadour's latest permutation, promoting his rootsy latest album "No Better Than This" alongside highlights and choice deep cuts from his catalog in a variety of contexts and ensemble variations of his crack six-piece band. Two-thirds of the night was stripped-down in some fashion, from the rowdy, semi-unplugged kickoff of "The Authority Song" to the twangy rockabilly of "No One Cares About Me," the folky soul of "Deep Blue Heart" and earnest grit of "Death Letter," "West End" and "Don't Need This Body."

Mellencamp took a solo turn on "Save Some Time to Dream" and received late-song accompaniment on songs such as "Jackie Brown" and "Small Town," while "Jack and Diane" was rendered as a country shuffle and "Cherry Bomb" was delegated to an a capella first verse and chorus singalong. He also threw down a gauntlet to any youths in the audience while segueing into "Don't Need This Body" and delivered a humorous rap about a supposed encounter with the devil when he was 15 at the start of "Right Behind Me."

The last 40 minutes, however, rewarded the fans with exactly what they wanted -- a set of charged electric rockers starting with a pounding "Rain on the Scarecrow" and a twisted arrangement of "Paper in Fire" before rolling through "The Real Life," "What If I Came Knocking," "If I Die Sudden" and a rave-up rendition of "No Better Than This' " title track. The anthems "Pink Houses" and "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." finished the night on a high note, showing that Mellencamp wasn't necessarily "over" playing the hit songs -- as long as he could indulge in his own creative whims first.

The evening began not with an opening act but with a movie, a 75-minute documentary by Kurt Marcus about Mellencamp's 2009 tour and the recording of "No Better Than This" at three historic locations in the U.S. It was modest but entertaining, propelled by Marcus' gentle narration, but the film too often got lost in the hubub of the arriving crowd -- so here's hoping for the inevitable DVD release at some point.

http://theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/11/20/entertainment/doc4ce815c70db9f657081542.txt?viewmode=fullstory

Mellencamp finds another gear with inspired show
Sunday, November 21, 2010

By Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The documentary that played before the concert Saturday night at Heinz Hall showed John Mellencamp recording last summer at Sun Studio, standing in the spot where Elvis did.

He seems to have gotten more than a new album out of it. While he was on that hallowed ground, he clearly absorbed the spirits of??rock 'n' roll past, because if his game was an eight before, he's taken it up to a 10 on this tour.

The multi-dimensional show opened with a quirky documentary, "It's About You," about the recording of the stripped-down "No Better Than This" and the 2009 summer tour that had him playing the hits for hotdog-eating fans in minor-league ballparks, like the one in Washington County, with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.

What came next was a trek through American roots with an array of styles and moods and more instrumental pairings than you could shake a pick at. He and his crack band, led by ridiculously talented guitarist Andy York, took the dynamics up, down and every which way, not even kicking in with the full drum kit till the 18th song.

It began in rockabilly mode, the band churning through "The Authority Song" the way Eddie Cochran would have done it, and putting extra punch into the new song, "No One Cares About Me."

The perfect visual accompaniment was a sepia-toned backdrop of classic architecture behind a string of blue and yellow light bulbs along with the spots.

Four songs in, the dark "Death Letter" had a streak of Delta blues running through it, and introduced the dynamic pairing of fiddler Miriam Strum and accordion player Troye Kinnett. "Walk Tall" was a gem with the fiddle winding through a Kinnett's boogie-woogie piano. The swamping, lurching blues of "The West End" showed that Mellencamp has been listening to Tom Waits and taking notes.

Over the years he's nurtured that image of the cranky aging rocker, but Saturday night he was chatty and in good spirits. "Well, you guys sure seem like a nice bunch of folks tonight," he said, breaking the ice, and promising "Songs you can dance to, songs you can cry to."

The rousing "Check It Out" fell into the former category, while "Jackie Brown" -- introduced with a talk about the powers-that-be not looking out for the well-being of the people -- fell into the latter, and was performed beautifully with just fiddle and guitar.

A tender solo-acoustic "Save Some Time to Dream" was paired with an a cappella sing-along of "Cherry Bomb." For all the cigarettes he's smoked, his voice has held up surprisingly well. He took a moment to make fun of his own musicianship, saying that in the early days of the band, they used to unplug his guitar 'cause he was so terrible.

"Easter Eve" was a rollicking country ballad that led into a honky-tonk version of "Jack and Diane." He was solo acoustic once again for "Small Town," seguing into the gorgeous fiddle-accordion duet of "New Hymn."

Having wooed us with this rootsy cocktail of rockabilly, blues, folk and country, Dane Clark stepped behind the full kit and the band went full-blown into the old arena favorites "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Paper in Fire." Having joked early on that he'd gone from "dangerous young man" to "dangerous old man," Mr. Mellencamp demonstrated that point on a menacing "What if I Came Knocking?"

Mr. York, brilliant all night with his twangs, snarls and feedback, repainted "Pink Houses" with a slide guitar before they took it home with "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A."

It might be so 1987 to rave about John Mellencamp, and I never thought I'd say this, but Dylan and Springsteen would be wise to get a DVD of this tour or better yet seen it in person. His best is nowhere near theirs but he showed how you can do it all -- all sides of your craft, quite seamlessly -- in a two-hour set. The fans who were game for this experiment may have seen the best concert of the year.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10325/1105092-388.stm#ixzz15vzcxrRE

If you missed it last night, click here to watch it: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/nightline-playlist-john-mellencamp-12198581

The interview was done in August of this year. You can find Q Magazine at most Borders locations. Green Day is on the cover of the December issue.

Click here to watch: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/nightline-playlist-john-mellencamp-12198581

[Crazy Heart]

Q Magazine -- December 2010

Crazy Heart

One of America’s 10 greatest songwriters, according to Johnny Cash. Others have simply described John Mellencamp as “ornery, mean and hateful…”

Written By Paul Rees - Pictures By Robert Gallagher

John Mellencamp’s recording studio, Belmont Mall, speaks volumes of its owner. Tucked off a rural back road 20 minutes’ drive out of Bloomington, Indiana (the college town where Mellencamp has lived most of his adult life), from the outside it is rustic and unscrubbed. Its green clapboard buildings are arranged in a dogleg around a pebbled courtyard. A basketball hoop hangs out front. A black sign in the car park reads: Reserved for Elvis Presley.

Inside black and white portraits of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and, in the toilet, of James Dean pissing, hang from white walls. There are many citations and a framed pair of handwritten commendations, one each from Barack and Michelle Obama. The gold and platinum discs that occupy one room tell of the 40 million records Mellencamp has sold.

Q meets Mellencamp at his estate, 10 minutes further along the road and set amid 63 acres of pine forest on the shores of Lake Monroe. An accomplished painter since his youth, he has his art studio here. A corrugated steel structure like a space-age barn, its interior consists of high beams, dark wooden floors and antique furnishings. Art tomes and faded photographs of four generations of Mellencamps fill one glass-fronted cabinet.

The sound of heavy work boots on steel steps announces Mellencamp’s arrival. Long perceived of as Bruce Springsteen's rougher sibling, this is precisely how he appears as he sweeps into the room carrying a battered acoustic guitar and a Victorian walking cane. He is a short, bullish man; his eyes hidden behind aviator shades, his arms as thick as slabs of meat. His face, once boyish, is now more crumpled but still handsome. His head is crowned by a pompadour of hair. A hacking graveyard cough testifies to the fact that he still smokes like a chimney.

He squints at Q’s photographer. “You’ve got 30 fucking minutes,” he says by way of introduction. This noted, he pulls a three-foot blade from top of his walking cane and swishes it about.

John Mellencamp is notoriously unimpressed with the business of having his picture taken. The last photographer to visit, an unfortunate gentleman from an American magazine, was laid out with a single blow when he attempted to manhandle his subject into position.

But then, Mellencamp’s firebrand reputation precedes him. Ask locals in Bloomington about their famous son and they will tell of his charitable contributions to local causes, but also speak more darkly of his apparent surliness. Many record label executives and collaborators have felt the force of his fists or temper. Not for nothing did he christen himself “Little Bastard” in the ‘80’s.

“Back then I was highly strung and very angry,” he says in a deep, husky drawl. “Always mad at someone, fighting and screaming. Not a pleasant person. I think it’s in my DNA. I grew up around a bunch of men who were angry. My grandfather, my dad, my uncles…I resolved to be a better man. I found out in my 30s that maybe I wasn’t.”

John Mellencamp was born 58 years ago in the industrial town of Seymour, and was fronting bar bands around Indiana aged 14. At 18 he eloped and got married to the first of his three wives. His recording career began in the mid–70’s under the name of Johnny Cougar (his first manager stopped him from using his “difficult” given name professionally – he wouldn’t do so exclusively for 15 years). In his own words he made seven albums of “stupid pop songs” and then, in the mid-80’s he got good, mining a rich stream of blue-collar rock anthems. He and his band became the hottest ticket in America, rivaling his two contemporaries, Springsteen and Tom Petty, without ever attracting the same critical acclaim. He would always appear the outsider.

His hot period lasted through to 1993’s downbeat Human Wheels record. Enraged at his record company’s perceived failure to promote it, he confronted the label president at a party and punched him. A year later, aged 42, he suffered a heart attack, having smoked four packs of cigarettes a day for years. Since then he’s gradually repositioned himself as an American folk singer, the appeal of his records becoming more selective as exponentially they are heralded.
He doesn’t enjoy being interviewed any more than being photographed, but over two hours he warms to conversation. When he does, he laughs often in a rasping wheeze that invariably turns into a coughing fit. On more than one occasion he will admonish: “Talk up. I’m completely fucking deaf.”

He is reflecting upon how he soldiered for a decade before “learning how to write songs” and becoming a superstar in the U.S. with 1985’s Scarecrow record.

“My grandfather gave me the greatest advice,” he says, “He told me, John if you’re gonna hit a cocksucker, kill him. That was his way of saying there’s no point in trying to do something in life that you’re not going to commit yourself to. That was where I was at: you’re going to have to kill me to stop me. During that period, from Scarecrow to [1989’s] Big Daddy I felt bulletproof. Then I had a heart attack.”

How did that feel?

“Didn’t know I was having one,” he says. “But when I found out, man, I was pissed. I cussed that doctor from one side down the other. Then I had to get catheterized. Having a camera shoved up through your groin… That’s when you realize how vulnerable you are.”

He lights another cigarette.

“You know, they may have mentioned something about stopping smoking a couple of times back then. I’ve just accepted that cigarettes will probably kill me and that’s that.”

His new album, No Better Than This, is his 21st studio set and was produced, like its predecessor Life Death Love and Freedom, by T-Bone Burnett, who has done the same job in piloting Mellencamp deep into American roots music as he has with another veteran rocker, Robert Plant. Mellencamp learnt from the album’s stand-up bassist David Roe that Roe’s previous employer Johnny Cash thought him one of the 10 greatest American songwriters. He takes a more circumspect view of his status.

“I feel like Jeff Bridges,” he says. “Wonderful actor but he never got his due credit. There was always someone a little slicker, a little smarter. But he was always solid.”

Mellencamp’s house is a mile up a dirt track from the studio and he drives to it in his small green John Deere jeep at teeth-rattling speed. It’s a sprawling stucco building, one part Mexican ranch house to one part Mediterranean villa. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto the expanse of Lake Monroe.

He and his third wife Elaine, a former model, live here with their two sons, Hud, 16 a state boxing champion, and Speck, 15, a budding musician (Mellencamp has three daughters from his two previous marriages). At weekends locals often boat past the house, blaring out his music (he says he’s rarely at home then - he also has two houses in Georgia and “a bunch of properties” in Indiana).

He recalls a more caustic response from this staunchly Republican state to his 2003 song To Washington, one of the first to protest at America’s invasion of Iraq. He was driving with his eldest son listening to a talk radio station when a caller rang into say he couldn’t decide who he hated more – Mellencamp or Osama Bin Laden.

Political activism, he says, is ingrained in the family. He has a picture of his mother, aged 19, picketing a local cannery. Perhaps his own most lasting legacy will be Farm Aid, the annual charity gig and organization he co-founded with Neil Young and Willie Nelson in 1985, which has raised $37 million for America’s embattled independent famers. “I’m very liberal, almost radical,” he says. “First time I met Barack Obama I told him, Man, you’re too conservative for me.”

He points out a clearing in the tree line on the far shore of the lake. A few years back he bought an old cabin over there to do up and use for family vacations. Once he’d paid for the place, he says, the previous owner sent him newspaper clippings, explaining how three people had died there in the ‘30’s. Two brothers got in a fight over a girl; one killed the other with a poker, before panicking and driving off with the girl, only to crash his car into the lake, drowning them both.

“The place was haunted,” he says. “I stayed in it for two nights, couldn’t stand it. You’d hear things, shit would move. Sounds crazy, but it’s true.”

He and his friend, the horror writer Stephen King, have been working on a musical play based on this story since 2000. Titled The Ghost Brothers Of Darkland County, he expects it to finally be staged next year. The veteran Norwegian actress Liv Ullman has been hired to direct. “It will,” he notes, “either be so fucking good that you can’t stand it, or the worst piece of shit your ever saw.”

He sold the cabin on years ago. Did he mention anything to the guy who bought it?

“Not a fucking word.”

The following morning we catch up wit him at a local airfield. For the past two summers he has toured the U.S. with Bob Dylan, playing minor league baseball parks and state fairs. Tonight’s show is in Bend, Oregon, a former logging town of 52,000 people. The private plane he hires for such trips, a nine-seater jet, idles on the runway.

On the three hour fight, Q sits opposite Mellencamp and Mike Wanchic, his guitarist of 35 years. They talk about various ailments afflicting mutual friends in the offhand manner of men who’ve known each other a long time. “I said to Elaine, “Sister, I’ve only got 20 years left,” says Mellencamp. “I said, What I want is for you to lay my body out on a cooling board in the living room like they used to, and people who want to come and see me lying dead can do so. After that I don’t care what you do. Just get rid of me somehow. Elaine’s still beautiful,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “She could do better than a cranky old man.”

The vibe at Bend‘s Les Schwab Amphitheatre is more village fete than rock gig. This picturesque venue on the banks of the Deschutes River amounts to an expanse of grass with room for 4,000 people to sit on deckchairs and picnic rugs, drinking wine.

Mellencamp and his band take to the stage as the evening sky turns to pink. They play for 65 minutes. The crowd responds most vocally to 20-year-old hits Paper In Fire and Authority Song. But it’s more recent songs such as the folk hymnal Save Some Time To Dream that he sings with most conviction. Early in the set a security guard tries to forcibly seat a couple in the front row. Mellencamp wanders to the lip of the stage and jams the neck of his guitar into his head. “Only way to get the motherfucker to quit,” he determines later.

Afterwards he sits outside the silver Airstream caravan he has towed from gig to gig. He is dressed in baggy tracksuit bottoms, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. He looks like someone’s bookish uncle.

“Bob panders to no one,” he is saying, nodding towards the stage where Dylan and his band have begun playing. “He takes no shit, never has and never will. I really, really admire that in him.”

His assistant brings him a plate of barbecued food. “What makes you think I’m going to eat that shit?” he asks her. She ignores him. He recalls that her predecessor, who lasted 20 years, habitually referred to him as mean and hateful. In a speech inducting him into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2008 his friend Billy Joel implored him to: “Stay ornery, stay mean - we need you to be pissed off.”

“Billy called up a bunch of people who’d worked for both of us,” he says. “He said, John they all said they loved you, but they don’t like you. My conclusion is I’m hard headed but soft hearted.”

He laughs, coughs, and laughs some more. And then he bids us goodnight and stalks off to his caravan. A gaggle of people from the tour party is gathered about it.

“Get the fuck way from my trailer,” he barks. And then he’s gone, cackling to himself.

In a fantastic interview with Howard Stern on Tuesday, Billy Joel revealed that he, Sting, Don Henley, Mellencamp and Springsteen nearly formed a supergroup years ago, but after discussing the idea and deciding to start writing a few songs, nothing ever progressed further. It would have been incredible had that gone down.

Read here: http://www.howardstern.com/rundown.hs?d=1289883600

Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD0QRFBZLgs (six minute mark)

John Mellencamp goes 'vaudeville' in exhilarating concert at Palace Theatre

By John Soeder, The Plain Dealer John Soeder, The Plain Dealer

“This really isn’t a rock show anymore,” John Mellencamp mused.

“This is a vaudeville show. We’re a song-and-dance band.”

Rock show or not, this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer from Seymour, Ind., gave the best performance I’ve witnessed from him yet Wednesday night at PlayhouseSquare’s Palace Theatre.

With some 20 albums and more than 30 years in the music business under his (loose) belt -- he kept hiking up his pants -- it would’ve been easy for Mellencamp to phone in just another gig.

Instead, he belted out new material and old favorites alike with an exhilarating sense of purpose and devil-may-care passion, starting with his 1984 hit “Authority Song.”

These days, he’s fighting not only authority, but also the dying of the light.
Mellencamp, 59, contemplated mortality to the tune of “Death Letter,” “Don’t Need This Body,” “If I Die Sudden” and other songs that reduced those chili dogs behind the Tastee Freez to a distant memory.

Still, the occasionally heavy subject matter didn’t preclude Mellencamp from snapping his fingers and dancing carefree around the stage, beneath strings of multicolored lights.

And speaking of “Jack & Diane,” our favorite high-school sweethearts got a twangy makeover with a fresh arrangement.

Guitarists Michael Wanchic and Andy York, violinist Miriam Sturm, keyboardist Troye Kinnett, bassist John Gunnell and drummer Dane Clark provided solid accompaniment.

Nonetheless, some of the most gripping moments found Mellencamp flying solo with an acoustic guitar.

“Save some time to dream
/ ’Cause your dream could save us all,” he sang during “Save Some Time to Dream,” a new ballad inspired by a conversation with his father. Bob Dylan himself couldn’t have delivered a more Dylanesque gem.

Mellencamp performed six tunes from his latest release, “No Better than This,” a profoundly rootsy affair. T Bone Burnett produced the album, although it sounds as if Mellencamp would like us to believe Alan Lomax came across him playing these songs in a field somewhere.

Mellencamp channeled Woody Guthrie for the homespun social commentary of “The West End.” Other new tunes such as “Right Behind Me” and “Easter Eve” also held their own alongside the usual crowd-pleasers, including a no-frills “Small Town.”

After dabbling in numerous other genres, from bluegrass to folk to gospel, Mellencamp was ready to rock out toward the end of the evening with full-throttle renditions of “Rain on the Scarecrow,” “Paper in Fire” and an especially powerful “What If I Came Knocking.”

More than two hours after it began, the show culminated with the one-two knockout punch of “Pink Houses” and “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” During the latter song, Mellencamp cut the rug with a woman from the audience.

In lieu of an opening act, we got to watch “It’s About You,” a new cinema-verite documentary about Mellencamp. The film was entertaining, even if screening it before a Mellencamp concert bordered on too much of a good thing.

Then again, try telling that to the self-proclaimed “dangerous old man” who was the star of both shows.

I dare you.

SET LIST

Authority Song

No One Cares About Me

Deep Blue Heart

Death Letter

Walk Tall

The West End

Check It Out

Save Some Time to Dream

Cherry Bomb

Don't Need This Body

Right Behind Me

Jackie Brown

Longest Days

Easter Eve

Jack & Diane

Small Town

New Hymn

Rain on the Scarecrow

Paper In Fire

The Real Life

What if I Came Knocking

If I Die Sudden

No Better Than This

Pink Houses

R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

http://www.cleveland.com/popmusic/index.ssf/2010/11/john_mellencamp_goes_vaudevill.html

Actually, the movie starts around 7 pm or a few minutes before. They hold the doors until the movie starts, so it will be running as you enter the theater.