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 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.
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.
I'm not a nostalgic person. I'm not nostalgic about much of anything.
Now I do have a choice, and I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do.
Hanging out is a waste of time. The only time I would hang out was when I was a kid, I would hang out in the streets. But once I started making records, I stopped hanging out.
The Internet is the wrong direction for music.
I remember the first time I saw a CD, a technology guy brought one to my house and said we will be able to sell millions and millions of players, and people will have to restock their record collections. It was all about money. It was all about how much money we would make, "we" being "him."
As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine.
Sound quality was supposed to be one of the big selling points for CDs but, as we know, it wasn't very good at all. It was just another con, a get-rich-quick scheme, a monumental hoax perpetrated on the music consuming public.
The Legacy label is a Sony company that deals in their old catalogue. They put out the Robert Johnson collection and tons of reissued material.
All I'm doing is painting. It's my hobby. And that's that.
I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.
For me or a Bruce Springsteen to sit up in our ivory towers and make comments about racism, well, were not really in it, are we?
I'm wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it's MTV and radio, well, they're great things, but can't be the only thing. I don't know that it would work even for the Beatles.