His critical appreciation has grown with this broader, more Americana/roots based projects. He also barely mentions one situation that surely had some stories behind it: the MTV-run “Pink Houses” contests-one of the channel’s most famous-where the winner received an actual pink house in Indiana at which Mellencamp and band played a housewarming concert.įor the past two decades, John Mellencamp has stopped making records for general audience and instead released projects that appealed to himself or hardcore fans. John Mellencamp made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, but Rees skips lightly over the event itself. “At one point, a shit-eating grin on his face, John yelled out to the audience: ‘I don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m having a hell of a good time tonight.’ Like nothing as much as a kid in a candy store,” Rees writes about the show in Houston. His 45-minute set included his early hits and covers of the Rolling Stones and Humble Pie. Pulin/Courtesy of Atria Books Interestingly, one of the few places Mellencamp finds happiness in the book is a Novemshow at the Summit while opening for Heart and right on the heels of his first success.
to the cops is to go right back out – with a Tupperware bowl on his head. As a young man when he gets into a very bad motorcycle accident while speeding and without a helmet, his idea of an F.U. Then again, this is the stubbornness level of a guy who didn’t drink or drug, but inhaled coffee, chain smoked up to 80 cigarettes a day (even after having two severe heart incidents) and once consisted on a diet of mostly fried food. Happiness is a very small commodity and the idea that we live to be happy is just fucked up. “If you see some guy who’s happy all the time, there’s something fucking wrong with him. “Well, happy is not a normal way to be,” Mellencamp offers. He hates being a nobody, he hates being world famous, and he hates being forgotten. Nor is Mellencamp the man ever satisfied. It’s one thing to be demanding in the pursuance of artistic excellence in art, another when you’re physically assaulting your own band members in the studio or regularly belittling them in front of others. In these pages, John Mellencamp is alternately rude, difficult, argumentative, angry, temperamental, aggressive, vainglorious, insulting and bossy beyond belief. And there’s plenty of interview subjects here to back him up, some of whom worked with the performer for decades.Īnd that’s consistent behavior whether the artist was a struggling neophyte or world-famous troubadour. It’s a fascinating twist to Rees’ work that he’s so brutally honest in the book about what a, well, jerk his subject is. Many of his songs chronicle blue collar, working class life and dreams. Rees also discusses Mellencamp’s “side gigs” as a painter, visual artist, screenwriter, actor and a driving force behind the long-running Farm Aid shows and organization. When record company advisers said there’s no way that would get played on the radio, Mellencamp rewrote, taking out any racial references.Īlso, the young lovers were originally suckin’ on cigarettes outside the Tastee-Freez instead of chili dogs.
Interestingly, “Jack and Diane” was originally written as “Jack and Jenny” – and as an interracial couple with Jack being Black. It’s easy to forgot how many hits there are, among them “Hurts So Good,” “Jack and Diane,” “Pink Houses,” “Lonely Ol’ Night,” “Rain On the Scarecrow,” “Cherry Bomb,” “Check It Out,” “Authority Song,” “Crumblin’ Down,” “Small Town,” “Paper in Fire,” “R.O.C.K. Mellencamp first came briefly into consciousness with 1978’s self-penned single “I Need a Lover” (released under the management-driven name “Johnny Cougar”), and then hit big success starting with 1982’s American Fool album. Mellencamp (out September 14) is the first major biography on the pride of Seymour and Bloomington, Indiana. Though if you invited them all to a dinner party, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out which one would want to start a fight, even with the host.Īuthor and music journo Paul Rees has penned books on Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and the Who’s John Entwistle, while ghostwriting the memoirs of Toto’s Steve Lukather and UFO’s Pete Way. Book cover His tough-as-nails/loud-as-a-motorcyle-engine persona and songs have helped define an image and put him on the same shelf as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger and Tom Petty.
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