John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp
John J Mellencamp, also known as John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American musician, singer-songwriter, painter, and actor. He is known for his catchy, populist brand of heartland rock, which emphasizes traditional instrumentation. He rose to superstardom in the 1980s while "honing an almost startlingly plainspoken writing style that, starting in 1982, yielded a string of Top 10 singles," including "Hurts So Good," "Jack & Diane," "Crumblin' Down," "Pink Houses," "Lonely Ol' Night," "Small Town," "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.," "Paper in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth7 October 1951
CountryUnited States of America
I've never had anybody produce my records. I've always produced my own records. I've worked with a guy for a while who was an engineer who helped me produce records, but I've always made my own records. I'm a control fanatic. I've got to control everything.
I've just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn't qualify as a hit record-but it's really the best single I've ever had.
If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.
What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible.
Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.
People didn't listen to the song; they just heard the word Baghdad. They got angry. I was commenting on his economic position, not the war.
If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed, and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems.
We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at.
Wait a minute, guys, I have always been on your side. I have always spoken for you, always tried to put on a good face for the state of Indiana. All of a sudden, some of you people think I'm a bad guy?
Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll.
My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious.
It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.
I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.
As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine.