JM in Rolling Stone's Best Albums of the '80s

In the November 16, 1989 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, the best 100 albums of the 1980s were listed. John had two entries on the list. They are below:

No. 95, Scarecrow:

"We were basically in a pretty mean run at that time," says Larry Crane, guitarist with John Cougar Mellencamp's band. "We were going in and getting things done, and the band was clicking."

Scarecrow consolidated the band's rugged, roots-rock thrash and the ongoing maturation of Mellencamp's lyrics. The album is largely about dreams and illusions in America and how the essential character of the nation was being twisted in a government-supported climate of corporate greed. The most visible manifestation of the problem, from Mellencamp's perch in central Indiana, was the rash of farm foreclosures across the Midwest.

Despite the bittersweet, reflective tone of songs like "The Face of the Nation" and "Minutes to Memories" and the sentimental cast of his ode to rural America, "Small Town," the rehearsals that led up to the recording of the songs were nothing but pure fun. The group spent a month, at Mellencamp's insistence, learning a hundred classic rock & roll songs from the Sixties. "We got a bunch of those tapes you see advertised on TV with all the old songs on them," Crane says, chuckling, "and God, we learned everything." They rehearsed behind Mellencamp's house inside what had been a dog kennel. When a cousin opened up a bar nearby, Mellencamp christened it by playing an entire evening's worth of cover versions, from "White Room" to "Lightnin' Strikes."

When it came time to cut Scarecrow, the band members employed the lessons they learned from their Sixties studies. The idea, according to producer Don Gehman, was "to learn all these devices from the past and then use them in a new way with John's arrangements." Mellencamp would make comments like "I want this to be like an Animals record.... And I want the overall record to have this kind of a tone, like maybe it was a modern-day Dylan record." Indeed, Dylan himself hadn't been that bitingly topical in years. "You've gotta stand for somethin'/Or you're gonna fall for anything," Mellencamp sings, and on Scarecrow, he dug in and made a stand.

No. 32, Uh-Huh:

By 1983, John Cougar was a smash with the public — his multiplatinum American Fool, the biggest-selling album of 1982, saw to that — but was still scorned by critics. With Uh-huh, he turned a corner, winning over even hardened skeptics who thought he would never escape the shadow of the heartland-rocker triumvirate of Seger, Springsteen and Petty. Not only did he surmount his influences, he upped the ante with insightful and incisive songs about life in working-class America such as "Pink Houses" and "Authority Song." And, in a move consistent with the no-nonsense, back-to-the-roots flavor of Uh-huh, he even reclaimed his real surname, becoming John Cougar Mellencamp. Suddenly other artists were being compared to him.

A rough-hewn gem, Uh-huh was "written, arranged and recorded during a sixteen-day blowout at the Shack," according to the liner notes. The Shack, in fact, wasn't a studio at all but a half-finished house standing in the middle of Indiana farmland. It belonged to a friend who couldn't afford to finish building it, so Mellencamp agreed to do so for him — provided Mellencamp could rehearse and record there for a year.

Before recording Uh-huh, Mellencamp produced a Mitch Ryder record, Never Kick a Sleeping Dog, at the Shack. Working with a Sixties icon like Ryder helped gear Mellencamp and company for a leaner, more aggressive sound when it came time to do their own record.

Ironically, one of Uh-huh's most memorable songs, "Pink Houses," isn't a rocker at all but a ballad about the contentment to be found in leading a modest life. Inspiration struck Mellencamp on a highway overpass. "I looked down and saw this old man, early in the morning, sitting on the porch of his pink shack with a cat in his arms," he says. "He waved, and I waved back. That's how the song started."

"The first time we ever played it is the way it stayed," says guitarist Larry Crane. "We said, 'Well, we got that one,' and we didn't bother it after that."