Review: John Mellencamp embraces the past, in all its forms
By Rob Hubbard
Special to the Pioneer Press
"I'm not nostalgic."
So said John Mellencamp early on his first of two nights at Minneapolis' Orpheum Theatre on Monday night. He said it as part of a story that seemed designed to discourage requests for songs from early in the heartland rocker's career.
But Mellencamp demonstrated throughout the two-plus-hour show that he wasn't being totally truthful with that assertion. He is nostalgic, but it's not for the days when he created all those songs that still show up on "classic rock" stations with regularity. It's for the days when rock and roll was in its embryonic form, when acoustic blues and country were laying the groundwork for the style that eventually would make Mellencamp a star.
It's not a surprising choice for an Indiana native who has long been singing about his rural roots. And it's natural for a 59-year-old artist to think about turning down the volume a couple of notches. But that doesn't mean that Mellencamp and his six-piece band didn't rock. They just saved it for the end of the evening, thundering forth on the last eight tunes of a 25-song set. That's when they sealed the deal on a very satisfying show, treating the enthusiastic audience to versions of '80s hits that sounded closer to the originals than anything else performed all night.
Despite more than a third of the set coming from Mellencamp's last two albums, much of the music sounded considerably older. And the familiar was usually refashioned into something far more rootsy. The
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opening "Authority Song" sounded like slicked-back vintage Eddie Cochran, "Walk Tall" became a honky-tonk ramble with fiddle and barrelhouse piano, and "Jack and Diane" was a sprightly country shuffle.
Back when the latter came out in 1982, Mellencamp delivered the thesis statement his lyrics would follow for the next almost-three decades: "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." There's a stark darkness to a lot of what he's written, and it really came out in the stripped-down acoustic setting he employed every few songs. But the mood was invariably enhanced by the ghostly echo-laden electric guitar of Andy York, who would take a tune to Bakersfield here or the swamps of Creedence Clearwater there. And Miriam Sturm's fiddle soared on every solo.
By the end of the show, 11 songs from the '80s had found their way into the set, so perhaps Mellencamp isn't just attached to a past from way before his career began. But it was a generous show, giving the fans what they wanted, but also allowing the leader to indulge in a more old-school style.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at
[email protected].
Who: John Mellencamp
When: 6:45 p.m. today
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis
Tickets: $125-$43, available at 800-982-2787 or ticketmaster.com
Capsule: A well-played mix of old songs and new ones that sound very old.
http://www.twincities.com/entertainment/ci_16688321
