Q&A: John Mellencamp on 'Ghost Brothers' musicalByKerry Lengel, The Republic
John Mellencamp doesn't like to collaborate.
"I don't play well with the other kids. I never have, never wanted to," says the 63-year-old rock star of "Pink Houses" and "Small Town" fame.
He made an exception, however, to work with one of the bestselling authors of all time, Stephen King, to create the Southern Gothic stage musical "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County."
The two started working on the project in 2000, but the show didn't premiere until 2012, at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. A soundtrack album and national tour followed last year, and a second tour will visit the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
The production stars Billy Burke ("Twilight") as Joe McCandless, a Mississippi man who recounts the tragic story of his two older brothers to dissuade his feuding sons from repeating their fate. King wrote the dialogue, Mellencamp wrote the roots and blues tunes and famed producer T Bone Burnett served as music director.
Mellencamp spoke by phone about his 14-year venture into the theater biz.
Question: "Ghost Brothers" was in the works for a decade. How did the project get started?Answer: Broadway had a very big success with "Mamma Mia!," so they started looking around for different artists who had a lot of familiar songs. They contacted me and said, "Would you be interested in doing a Broadway show using your hit records?" And I said, "No. I wouldn't be interested in that, because I'm never interested in looking backwards. I wrote 'The Authority Song' when I was 22 years old. I really don't have any interest in revisiting that in a new fashion. But if you would be interested in news and some new ideas, then perhaps I'd be interested." I said, "I have one real germ of a story, and if someone could get me in contact with Stephen King…" And they said, "Well, he's not a Broadway writer." And I said, "Well that's the whole point. I want to go outside of the box." And it just so happened, I didn't even know it, but my agent was also Steve's agent. And that's how we got started.
Q: If you wanted to get out of the musical-theater box, how familiar were you with the genre?A: Very familiar. When I was 12 or 13, I had a brother who was very talented in high school and college, and he got all the leads in all the local productions. So when your big brother has the lead in "Kismet," guess what, your parents say, "You gotta go see your brother in 'Kismet.' " So at first it was by force, and then the more parts Joe got, I would start asking him about how he was going to approach a part or what he was doing.
Q: Do you have a favorite musical?A: As laughable as you may think this is, probably "My Fair Lady." And the reason I like that is because it was originally a play, and then it was turned into a musical, which is very similar to what Steve and I did.
Q: What was your collaborative process?A: I was allowed to do anything I wanted to do. There's a song in this show called "Tear This Cabin Down" that Steve did not call for. But a lot of times Steve would call me and go, "John, I am in the part of the story where Anna is being approached by the devil and he's got her by the throat, and she's got to sing a song of sympathy, why she's in this position and why Satan has got such a hold on her." That was my assignment, so I wrote that song. There was a lot of give and take.
Q: How has the show changed since the first tour?A: The show is in motion. You might see it one night and then see it the next night and go, "What happened to that section?" Well, John and Steve decided to take it out because they didn't think it worked. Not only are we the writers, but we are the producers of the show, so we have our fingers in everything.
Just this morning I was trying to convince the guy who plays the father to wear an eye patch. When you're creating a character, you want to create a character that is memorable. Anybody can go up there and say the words, but if you wear an eye patch onstage and there's no explanation for it, it would be like walking onstage with a monkey. If you and I were doing a scene together and I had a monkey in my hand, who the f--k is the people gonna look at? Me. I got the monkey.
Q: Any more substantial changes?A: When we started this thing, the father was too nice. If you listen to the record, Kris Kristofferson is playing it, he's forlorn, he's sad. Well, what you're going to see, the father's not going to be that way. He's going to be aggressive, he's going to hateful, he's going to be more of a Stanley Kowalski grown-up type of father and you'll understand why the kids don't want to be around him. That's how things get developed. And the mother's the same way. The mother was always supposed to be colorful and a drunk, but we had a Broadway gal that just couldn't bring herself to be falling down onstage. She just couldn't see the part that way. So now Gina Gershon is playing the part, and she sees it that way. So I'm expecting Gina to be a lot more vulgar, a lot more rough around the edges.
Q: Are you getting any outside critiques as you work on the show?A: We don't really care. Time will tell. The worst reviews ever written in
Rolling Stone magazine were written about me and Led Zeppelin when we put our first records out. You couldn't be more cruel. I was a ready-made pop star named Johnny Cougar that we'll be lucky to see him next year. And here it is 40 years later. So there's no critic that means a damn to me except time.
Q: What's the biggest thing you will take away from the experience? What has been the most fun?A: Life is made of memories, and I will always have a great memory of Steve and I being together for 15 years trying to get "Ghost Brothers" to look like we want it to look. "Ghost Brothers" is already successful for Steve and I, because we set the bar pretty low for us. Steve and I both said, "This thing will be successful in our minds when you and I are sitting in a dark theater watching somebody perform this," and that's happened hundreds of times already. Now we're trying to figure out if we can actually take something this different to Broadway, and if we can we will, and if we can't we won't. This was an adventure we took together.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/arts/2014/11/27/qa-john-mellencamp-ghost-brothers-musical/19367373/
