1992 Rolling Stone Feature

With a movie and a new album, John Mellencamp branches out

By Elysa Gardner
Rolling Stone, 2/6/92

"I HAD A KID WALK UP TO ME ON THE BEACH,'' JOHN Mellencamp recalls, gazing through a conference-room window in his manager's Manhattan offices, "and say, `You know, John, you're getting awfully serious with these songs.' So I said, `Yeah, you're right.' '' It was 1989, and Mellencamp, who is presently in New York to do a promotional acoustic set for radio station WNEW-FM, had recently released Big Daddy, an album that - like its closest predecessors, 1985's Scarecrow and 1987's Lonesome Jubilee - was palpably haunted by events in the singer's personal life. In particular, Daddy reflected Mellencamp's angst in the wake of his second divorce. "I've heard the word dark used to describe it,'' he says, "but I think sober is more like it. That record was based very firmly in my reality - if reality is dark, then I'm sorry.''

Still, Mellencamp sought a less grave approach for his new record, Whenever We Wanted. He admits that "Get a Leg Up,'' the first single off the album, was deliberately written in a sophomoric fashion - "or else it would have been another sobering song from John Mellencamp.'' Songs like "Crazy Ones'' and the title track also use a lighter touch to address what Mellencamp calls "the trouble between men and women.''

"It's a huge problem,'' he says. "Men and women do not communicate well; women are more emotional and much more in tune with their feelings. We're as different as our physical features - at birth - and society just takes it further.''

Mellencamp hasn't limited his examination of these differences to musical projects. This February will see the premiere of Falling From Grace, a film written by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove), in which Mellencamp makes his debut as an actor and a director. Mellencamp, who says he has been working for eight years to bring the story to the screen, describes it as "a character study of two women and a guy and how they react to each other.'' He stars as a successful singer who, well, marries an L.A. darlin' and brings her to the small town in Indiana where he grew up. Sound familiar?

Think again. "Get it out of your head that this film is about me,'' Mellencamp says, chuckling. "For one thing, John Mellencamp never left the small town.'' (Mellencamp lives in Bloomington, Indiana, which is forty-five miles away from his native town of Seymour.) His character in the movie, however, brings his wife - played by Mariel Hemingway - to Indiana to celebrate his grandfather's eightieth birthday. At least, that's the initial idea. Things get complicated, however, when country star Bud Parks feels increasingly drawn to his roots - and to the love he left behind, who is now his sister-in-law, played by Kay Lenz.

While emphasizing that his role is in no way an autobiographical sketch, Mellencamp does admit that "there are certain cliches that happen to all of us in the music business'' and that he tapped into aspects of his own personality for the role. "What else can you understand as an actor except your own emotions?'' he says. "It wouldn't be real for me to go act like James Cagney.''

In directing his first movie, - he previously directed a music video, Bob Dylan's "Political World'' - Mellencamp also drew on personal experience. "Being a director was a lot like being on tour with the band, because it has a lot to do with problem solving,'' he says. "When you go on the road, you've got like forty road-crew guys, and then you've got your talent - the musicians - and everybody pretty much comes to me and says, `What do you want to do about this?' It's the same with directing a film: How do you want to move this camera? What's the lighting design? Then there's the talent, which are the actors and actresses.''

If Mellencamp is reluctant to describe Falling From Grace as a "small-town film'' - "It takes place there, but it's really more about the people and about the way they live and think'' - he is as solicitous as ever about the image of rural America. "People who have never lived in small communities don't understand what it is that goes on there,'' he says. "It's no big deal to live in the city, as far as I'm concerned; if you're prepared to pay the high prices, go ahead. But you sacrifice a lot. Because people don't even know who they are in a city. It's easy to get lost. But in small towns, you're held accountable - can you imagine?''

Taking a break from the road, Mellencamp spent much of the past couple of years at home with his family, including two daughters, ages six and ten, from his second marriage and a twenty-one-year-old daughter from his first. ("That's what happens when you get married when you're seventeen,'' he says.)

But now Mellencamp and his band - guitarist Mike Wanchic, bassist Toby Myers and drummer Kenny Aronoff - are back on tour, for the first time since 1988. "The thing that pulls me through is the audience,'' Mellencamp says. "The people who come to see John Mellencamp are the greatest audiences in the world.'' He admits, though, that "I don't wanna get on another fuckin' airplane as long as I live. Young guys, you know, they get in their hotel rooms, and they tear up the rug and throw the TV out the window. Once you've done that, what's the thrill?''

Mellencamp seems likely to do his tearing up onstage, since the material from Whenever We Wanted features hard, guitar-heavy textures to offset the folk and country strains that ran through Scarecrow and Jubilee. "When we released Lonesome Jubilee in '87, you weren't hearing a lot of violins or accordions or fiddles in pop music,'' Mellencamp says. "Now they're everywhere, so I decided to change to a more guitar-oriented sound.'' The addition of guitarist David Grissom seems a sure step in that direction.

Meanwhile, Mellencamp isn't ruling out future forays into acting, and the singer still paints - every day, he says. "Acting, writing songs, playing onstage, painting - all of these things are so connected. If you have an opportunity to try something a little different, you should do it. I don't want to say no to anything.''

Not anything? "Well, I don't think you should be a fuckin' high-wire walker if you don't want to,'' he says, laughing. "I could be in the circus, but I'm not sure I wanna do that.''