Epic 1986 Article

Back Home In Indiana
May 11, 1986

By Robert Hilburn

Well, I was born in a small town

And I can breathe in a small town

Gonna die in this small town. And that's prob'ly where they'll bury me.

-- Lyrics by John Cougar Mellencamp

There's not much traffic during a Monday lunch hour on Chestnut Street, the main drag of this small town of 16,000 located mid-way between Indianapolis and Louisville. A turtle could cross the street to get to the other side.

Two waitresses are serving a single customer at the dim, no-frills Ritz Cafeteria, where a faded neon sign outside suggests the place was once a happening spot.

Next door at the Station Restaurant and Bar, one wall is covered with snapshots of everybody who ever stopped in for a beer. But only two of the dozen tables are occupied.

Down the street at Pearson's Barber Shop, you can get your hair cut for $5 (long hair $1 extra), but owner Gene Pearson stares at three empty chairs and waits for the after-school rush.

Things weren't a lot different in the 1960s. Until he was 16, John Cougar Mellencamp lived here with his parents, two brothers and two sisters in a tiny, five-room house on 5th Street.

But he spent most of his time over on Chestnut--leaning for hours against the parking meters or driving around the six-block area known as The Lap, looking for girls . . . or a fight.

"Seymour was a very tough town," Mellencamp recalled during a visit here the day after his "homecoming" concert at the University of Indiana football stadium in Bloomington.

"I fought a lot. I usually got my butt beat, but it was something to do . . . a way to get rid of the frustration and boredom. At night in the summer, kids come from all the little towns around here and just ride around. If someone looked at you wrong, you were ready to fight."

The parking meters are gone; Mellencamp suggests the town council just got tired of the kids loitering. But he believes the frustration level and tension remains high.

Some of the high school kids here say that Mellencamp overdramatizes when he talks about the frustrations and brawling, but a lot of them say they have the same goals that Mellencamp had when he was their age. They want the excitement and opportunities found in a bigger town.

"Seymour isn't like Mayberry or nothing," said one high schooler. He was wearing a Motley Crue T-shirt and jeans and smoking a cigarette. "John may be telling everyone how much he loves it here, but I bet you he wanted to get the hell out of Seymour when he was my age. There's nothing to do--except get in trouble. You notice he doesn't live in Seymour anymore."

The sign on the front gate of Mellencamp's gray, two-story home just off Highway 46 isn't the friendly salutation that you'd expect from someone whose songs celebrate the virtues of small town life:

NO SOLICITING. NO TRESPASSING. IF NOT INVITED, DON'T PUSH THE BUTTON.

Mellencamp, 34, says he didn't want to put up the sign . . . or the imposing iron gate . . . or the expensive electronic monitoring system so he can see who's coming up his driveway. But too many fans were showing up outside and he was worried about his wife and three daughters during the weeks that he's on tour.

But he didn't have any reservations about putting 45 miles between himself and Seymour, the town where he was born.

Sure, Mellencamp often returns to Seymour on Sundays to play touch football with band members and old high school chums, like Weasel and Bo. He'll even probably be buried there--near his grandfather, Speck Mellencamp, whose plot is on a cemetery slope overlooking the family home.

Until then, however, Mellencamp will only be a visitor in Seymour. He left that small town for a reason and that reason still applies.

"It just got too weird in Seymour . . . too suffocating," he said flatly, sitting at his kitchen table. "When you are making records, you got people in the town who either love you or they hate you. I could never go back there (to live). It's too small . . . too busy-body."

But what about the lyrics to "Small Town," his recent Top 10 single?

"What I tried to get across in that song is the importance of keeping in touch with your roots ," Mellencamp said. "It's more about feelings than a physical place.

"That's why I can say to the audience, 'It's nice to be in your small town when I go to places like Los Angeles or New York.' As long as you keep in touch with your family and friends, you can carve out a small town anywhere."

Educated in a small town

Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town

Used to daydream in that small town

--Lyrics by Mellencamp

It's a theme you read over and over in rock bios: the misunderstood kid in the small town who saw rock 'n' roll as a way to escape to a bigger, more exciting world. Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen all have sung their own variations of the tale.

But the "in" thing now is for rock stars to celebrate their roots. Springsteen's "My Hometown" and Mellencamp's "Small Town" both spoke about the virtues of family, friends and community ties.

Mellencamp, especially, makes a big point of the fact he still lives in a small town--though Bloomington is more than triple the size of Seymour.

But living in a small town is the same as being part of the small town.

There is reason for a skeptic to have doubts about Mellencamp. His career was launched in the mid-'70s with an unusual amount of calculation and hype. He seemed to race after success with such a thirst that he alienated almost everyone who came in contact with him.

Mellencamp was touted as the Next Big Thing a decade ago by manager Tony DeFries, best known for another "big sell" promotional blitz for David Bowie. DeFries gave Mellencamp a new name ("Johnny Cougar") and billed him as the voice of the American Heartland.

Mellencamp eventually broke away from DeFries and reclaimed his own name, but the experience left him bitter. Arrogant and obnoxious were words frequently applied to him by both record executives and critics. His stance was that of a tough, hard-bitten rebel.

Even after he caught on commercially with his "American Fool" album in 1981, critics continued to dismiss songs like "Jack and Diane" and "Hurts So Good" as shallow and contrived.

Yet suddenly, Mellencamp began to change.

He exhibited more depth in socially conscious songs like "Pink Houses," an ironic, 1983 look at the blemishes in the American Dream, and "Rain on the Scarecrow," a 1985 song lamenting the disappearance of the American farmer.

Mellencamp also reached out to his audiences on his latest U.S. tour with a generosity and warmth reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen. He co-organized last fall's Farm-Aid concert.

In one of the most dramatic turnabouts in rock, Mellencamp has become a good guy.

But is it strategy?

Did he adopt a more positive attitude after seeing how well it worked for Springsteen? How does he really relate to the people back home? Does he just live in a big house on the edge of town and never even see anybody in town?

Or are we now--finally--seeing the real John Mellencamp?

One way to find out is to go to Bloomington and Seymour--and the "Little 500" weekend seemed an ideal time. Besides the annual marathon bicycle race that was saluted in the film "Breaking Away," Bloomington was hosting Mellencamp's first stadium concert. All 43,000 tickets were sold almost instantly.

"Hey, are you ready for a ride in the Ultimate Cruising Vessel?" Mellencamp yelled, pulling up in front of a Bloomington motel in a fully restored, white '58 Chevy Impala convertible.

It was a beautiful sunny day--just right for a convertible, so Mellencamp--wearing his trademark T-shirt (this one white), jeans and rough-out boots--naturally had the top down.

As he car pulled into traffic and headed down the highway to his recording studio, eight miles away, several motorists recognized Mellencamp. They honked horns, waved or just pointed.

"One thing you can't do in this car," he joked, "is hide."

Cars are a passion with the 5-foot-7 Mellencamp. He estimates he has owned 36 cars (and several motorcycles) since high school, ranging from several Corvettes to Porsches. The Chevy, which he bought a few weeks before for $10,000, was his latest favorite.

The rock group R.E.M. was recording in the studio when Mellencamp arrived, so he got a Coke out of the cooler and sat on an outdoor patio.

Photos of James Dean, another Indiana teen idol who was a rebel, are all over the walls of the studio--which was built in an old house. But Mellencamp rejects the idea that Dean was a role model.

"The truth is, I didn't even who James Dean was until I was out of high school," he said, lighting one of a series of cigarettes. "Everybody talked about how great this movie 'Rebel Without a Cause' was, but I thought it was the worst movie I ever saw.

"The first movie star I liked was Paul Newman. I saw 'Cool Hand Luke' over and over. I guess I was intrigued by the whole thing of this guy who was really at war with the system."

It's easy to see why Mellencamp related to that movie. He recalls having run-ins with every type of authority: police, school, parents.

"I don't want to make it sound like what happened to me was something real dramatic," he said. "When I look back, I don't really think of it as that different from thousands of other kids. In many ways, I had a real happy childhood and there are things about Seymour that I'll always love."

Still, there were times when he would have given anything to get out of Seymour. One of the things that attracted young Mellencamp to rock 'n' roll was that it was a passport to a bigger world.

Mellencamp was in and out of several bands during high school, but his ambitions were slow to develop. During his final year of high school, Mellencamp married Priscilla Esterline, who was two months pregnant at the time. He finished school and thought vaguely about a musical career before studying communications at a local two-year college.

His musical interest was revived by the arrival of David Bowie, the New York Dolls and the glitter movement. Mellencamp even formed a band, called Trash, and started adopting the rock 'n' roll trademarks of heavy eye makeup and platform shoes.

"It was a great way to get attention," he said. "It's like a lot of the punk movement now . . . just some kid writing his name on the side of a wall as a way of saying I'm alive. It's the same reason I used to hang out on Chestnut Street and get in fights all the time. It was important to have people say, 'Yeah, he's a wild guy.' "

In a wild moment of frustration and daydreaming, he went to New York in 1975 to interest Tony DeFries in managing him. To Mellencamp's shock, DeFries liked what he saw and secured a record deal. He also put Mellencamp on a $250 a week allowance so that he could have time to work on the songs for the album. Titled "Chestnut Street Incident," the LP dealt a lot with small town imagery--though most of the songs stressed youthful frustration.

DeFries' promotional campaign underscored the American heartland angle--which struck many observers as an echo of the theme of another rocker who was on everyone's mind at the time: Springsteen.

Mellencamp now says those hard-sell tactics were embarrassing. At the time, however, he was so eager for a contract that he went along with everything--even the Johnny Cougar Day Parade in Seymour.

"You talk about wanting to crawl under a rock," he said "It was so stupid. I hadn't done anything to deserve a parade, but Tony came in and bought the town. He gave the Chamber of Commerce 50 grand. Hell, the Chamber of Commerce would give anybody a day for 50 grand."

Lots of people in Seymour remember the Johnny Cougar Day Parade--including Tim Elsner, a high school buddy who now does accounting for Mellencamp.

About the Day, Elsner said, "I think people around town just thought someone was throwing a big bunch of money behind John. And given Midwest attitudes, no one was about to bow down to John just because of that. It wasn't hostility toward him, more ambivalence."

Scott Correll, who owns the Small Town Music record store on Chestnut Street in Seymour, was in junior high school at the time of the parade. His store used to be called Virginia's, but Correll renamed it a few months ago in honor of Mellencamp's hit.
"When John first started out, everyone kicked dirt in his face here," Correll said, standing behind the store counter. "No one thought that he would make it.

"He was considered a bum by most of the adults . . . but he wasn't singled out. They tended to think everyone who hung out (on Chestnut) as a bum. It took a long time for him to change their minds."

Mellencamp eventually broke with DeFries, but his career was in a shambles. He was without a record deal and his prospects of finding another one appeared slim. He had already alienated almost everyone in the industry. Billy Gaff, who managed Rod Stewart, finally signed him and released Mellencamp's next album on Gaff's own Riva label.

Despite the second chance, Mellencamp still seemed to have the chip on his shoulder. "I was so angry back then I couldn't even stand to be around myself," he recalled. "It's no accident I came across on stage as obnoxious or whatever. I was angry at myself for being so stupid to get into a situation like the whole Johnny Cougar business.

"But I think anger was pretty common to people of my age in those days--at least it was among my friends. We used to have a joke, 'We've been beat up and lied to our whole lives' . . . beat up by the school, kicked off the football team, cheated at our jobs . . . you name it."

Mellencamp vented his disappointment and anger by playing bars and clubs nearly 300 days a year, driving himself deep into debt. Because these clubs were now his world, his writing strayed from the personal, autobiographical edges of his first album.

"As far as I can tell, I turned into a guy in a band in a bar," he explained. "I related only to things that went on in those bars.

"When I wrote 'Hurts So Good' and 'Jack and Diane,' those songs weren't trying to be anything more than something guys and girls in bars could dance to or sing along with. No one was more surprised than I was when people all over the Midwest began writing, saying how much the songs meant to them . . . how they told their story. That's when I began thinking about what I really did want to say in a song . . . something a little more serious."

Mellencamp's commercial breakthrough was "American Fool," the 1981 album that sold more than 3 million copies thanks largely to the radio success of "Jack and Diane" and "Hurts So Good." His key artistic advance, however, was in last year's "Scarecrow" LP, which finished third in the Village Voice's annual poll of the nation's pop critics.

The material is uneven on the album (now past the 3-million mark), but there is a warm, personal, socially conscious tone to many of the songs, including "Rain on the Scarecrow." Co-written by George Green, the song includes these lines:

Well, there's ninety-seven crosses planted in the courthouse yard.

Ninety-seven families who lost ninety-seven farms.

I think about my grandpa and my neighbors and my name

And some nights I feel like dyin' . . like that scarecrow in the rain.

More than the album, the live show is the most dramatic evidence of the New Mellencamp. At the "homecoming" show at the University of Indiana football stadium here, he was even more uplifting than he was a few weeks ago in his Southern California swing.

Though uncomfortable headlining for the first time in the large stadium setting, Mellencamp performed with such joyfulness and genuineness that he turned the evening into an evening of rich celebration and inspiration.

While thousands in the stands wore Mellencamp T-shirts, the prized T-shirts were the ones that identified Seymour residents. These red shirts proclaimed, "Seymour: The Small Town."

The affection for Mellencamp spread beyond the concert. Wherever you went in town, someone--from the security guard at the hospital to the video salesman in the mall--had a story about the time he met or at least observed Mellencamp around town.

For several days before Mellencamp's homecoming concert, the portable marquee in front of Eddie and Eric Bowlen's American Tire Co. here read, "Welcome John Mellencamp."

The Bowlen brothers, ages 28 and 22, are more than fans. They also work on Mellencamp's cars.

"To me, people like David Bowie and the Rolling Stones are almost fictional characters," Eddie Bowlen said. "They're not anyone you would meet in regular life. I mean, could you picture Jagger bringing his car into the station and telling you he needed something done? Those guys ride around in limos."

People over in Seymour also spoke well of Mellencamp.

Dave Farris, owner of the Station restaurant and bar, remembers Mellencamp as a teen-ager and is proud of Mellencamp's success.

"I went to school with his dad, Richard," Ferris said, sitting at a booth at the Station. "When John was in his 20s, he was something else. He and his dad would clash. John used to work as a housepainter for my wife, who was a subcontractor on a lot of house and apartment house projects.

"I'd go would go out on the job and I think what kind of a kid is this. His hair would be long and he looked kinda flaky. But my wife said, 'Don't worry. He is just going through a stage." And it was true. He has grown up. The whole town thinks the world of him now."

The high school and college crowd here both seemed to identify with Mellencamp, but they have different views about living in a small town. The older the student, the more satisfied he was with small town life.

At the White Castle fast-food restaurant, where you can get bite-size hamburgers for 30 cents, there were so many high school students in the booths that it looked like a hatchery.

"I like the fact that someone famous lives in town, but his life isn't like ours," said one student. "He gets to go on the road all the time and see things. If he had to stay here all the time, he probably wouldn't be as thrilled with small towns."

Over on fraternity row, several of the Indiana State fraternities had made elaborate signs saluting Mellencamp and the "Little 500" race.

"You know, it's funny," a chemistry major said. "South Indiana is filled with small towns and almost everyone I know couldn't wait to get away. But now that we've been able to learn more about life in big cities, the small towns are looking better and better to us."

Mellencamp seemed as genuine off-stage as he did on stage. He lives in his spacious two-story house in Bloomington with his second wife Vicky and three daughters (one from his first marriage). He met his wife in Los Angeles, where she had done some modeling and TV work--including photo doubling for Farrah Fawcett during the "Charley's Angels" period.

The house itself is modest by Los Angeles rock star standards. However, the grounds--more than 12 acres, including a tennis court and swimming pool--would push it into the million-dollar class in the high real estate market of Southern California.

There was a steady stream of friends and family members at the house during the concert weekend. Mellencamp was a gracious, relaxed host. Unlike many celebrities in a similar situation, he didn't show anxiety when a reporter talked to the friends--even out of earshot

"It is very safe here for me," Mellencamp summarized. "There is the security of picking up the phone and saying, 'Mark, what are you doing? Let's get together.' I know these guys and I like 'em. Friends are important to me.

"I think it's real sad to be old and alone. You see these pictures of famous movie stars living in these one-room apartments, occasionally watching themselves on reruns and no one in the world cares about them. Let's face it. I know I won't be doing this forever."

Mellencamp had a free day following following his stadium concert, so he drove over to Seymour to show some visitors around the town.

He stopped in front of the plain five-room house in a sleepy, faded neighborhood. "This is where I used to live," he said. "I haven't been inside in 20 years. I wonder what it looks like now."

The current tenant recognized Mellencamp and was so enthused that he phoned his wife to rush home so she wouldn't miss meeting him. Inside the house, Mellencamp delighted in pointing out the basement window that he used to sneak out of late at night and the house's sole "touch of luxury": two sinks in the bathroom that his father, an electrician, had put in. One was for the parents, the other for the kids.

Later, Mellencamp drove over to Chestnut Street. "Hey, that building used to be a bowling alley . . . just looks vacant now," he said. "Right down there used to be the most beautiful theater."

He slowed down when he came to the Chestnut Motor Lodge. "Now there was the place you would go if you had a little bit of money and found a girl who was willing. I remember asking if I could get the hourly rate one time and the guy said, 'No, but we could give you a minutely rate."

Mellencamp's last stop in Seymour was his grandma's house, a more comfortable suburban tract home. She already had dinner waiting: deer, cottage cheese, peaches and home-made biscuits.

As a youngster, Mellencamp was probably even closer to his grandparents than to his parents. His grandma even joined Mellencamp on stage at the stadium concert the day before, singing the same acoustic number ("Grandma's Theme") that she sang on the "Scarecrow" LP.

'I like it when he talks to the audience about the need to help farmers," said Mrs. Speck Mellencamp, 81. "I always felt he was going to be special.

"I was never worried that he would get into trouble. He was always a good boy. They all go through a rough period, but we just have to make them know we love them and still want them."

On the way back to Bloomington that evening, Mellencamp was waiting at a traffic light when he noticed a convertible pull alongside with five bare-shirted kids crowded in it. One of them, sitting on top of the back seat, recognized Mellencamp and shouted.

"There, you go," Mellencamp said. "That was me 20 years ago . . . sitting on the back seat of a convertible, being cocky, not knowing where he was going . . . I feel really lucky. I got myself into the deepest hole anyone could dig in this business and made it out. Lots of people around here really do kind of have an attitude that the odds are really stacked against you, but life's hard on everybody. Once you realize that, you can start doing something about it."