John Mellencamp's long haulRocker's career marked by growthJeffrey Lee Puckett | The Courier-Journal
For years, John Mellencamp was something of a joke in music circles, a skinny Hoosier kid with a glam-rock fixation and more drive than focus. It didn’t help that he was talked into calling himself “Johnny Cougar,” a move that severely affected his street cred.
That was in the mid-’70s, a time when even smallish record labels could afford to stick with a young songwriter, and by 1980 Mellencamp (now calling himself a somewhat more subdued John Cougar) was hitting his stride as a rock ’n’ roll romantic with a streak of greaser toughness. Turned out that was just the beginning, with much better to come.
Point being: If he had come along in today’s microwave society — where “What have you done for me lately?” has become “What have you done for me in the last five minutes?” — Mellencamp may never have become such a beautifully surly, undeniably significant artist. He would have quickly disappeared, and we would have missed a rare thing in rock ’n’ roll: a career.
Mellencamp has been making records for 35 years, 21 in all, with last year’s “No Better Than This” being the latest. Some remain vibrant, while others sound undercooked or, thanks to the benefit of time, like passing fancies. All but the earliest sound like the work of the same man, even when they veer into the wilds, and that’s what makes his body of work so worthwhile.
The beauty of Mellencamp’s career is its grand arc of reckless youth, growing awareness, middle-aged gravity and hard-won wisdom, all of it delivered by the native of Seymour, Ind., with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude more endearing than off-putting.
Mellencamp, 60, performs Sunday at the Louisville Palace, returning to Louisville on the fifth leg of his No Better Than This Tour. It’s a show that could be appreciated as a career retrospective, but with the kind of twist typical of the always independent Mellencamp.
“If you’re coming to hear the greatest hits, don’t even come,” Mellencamp told Rolling Stone when the tour started last year.
The show begins with a documentary, “It’s About You,” which chronicles the making of “No Better Than This.” Mellencamp and producer T Bone Burnett traveled the country to make the subdued, folkish album, recording at a variety of iconic sites: Sun Studios, the Texas hotel room where bluesman Robert Johnson cut a few sides, a church in Atlanta that was part of the Underground Railroad.
A rootsy, almost rockabilly set with a small combo kicks off the performance, followed by a mostly solo acoustic set and then an appearance by the full band. You’ll hear some greatest hits — Mellencamp was just being cantankerous with Rolling Stone — although a lot of his most familiar songs are given a fresh spin. Expect to hear “Pink Houses,” “Rain on the Scarecrow,” “Small Town” and “The Authority Song” along with the best of his new songs.
It will certainly be different from the Mellencamp shows in the 1980s and ’90s, which were always a taut, thrilling run through two dozen crowd-pleasers. No one put on a better show then, but what’s worth noting is how many of Mellencamp’s contemporaries have since faded, either unable or unwilling to adjust to age and expectations.
But Mellencamp has always been in it for the long haul, and the experience and context he’ll bring to the Palace are built on a lifetime of music and the kind of career that is still the exception rather than the rule.
Top 5 essential Mellencamp recordsNo one is claiming these are the best five, but they represent Mellencamp’s full range.
“Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did,” 1980. Sweetly romantic angst, where a hand in your back pocket means the world.
“Uh-Huh,” 1983. The first appearance of his real name, and the first inkling that he had something to say.
“The Lonesome Jubilee,” 1987. “Scarecrow” had a bigger impact, but this has a bigger heart.
“Human Wheels,” 1993. If only for the wholly remarkable “What If I Came Knocking.”
“No Better Than This,” 2010. A record Mellencamp made for himself, with no apologies.
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