While mostly received with polite tolerance by most in attendance, anyone paying attention would quickly figure out Mellencamp, now 67, despises the very industry which now allows him to perform whenever and wherever he wants.
On this night, Mellencamp started “The John Mellencamp Show” with a 20 minute film telling the story of his creative origins and subsequent highs and lows in the music business. This simple descriptor personifies Mellencamp’s musical resume almost perfectly, one which boasts as much mainstream success as it does head scratching yet decidedly intentional left turns creatively.
And in 2008, John Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Billy Joel.Near the beginning of a recent performance in Providence, Rhode Island, John Mellencamp told the theater-sized crowd him and the band were going to play “some songs you know, some songs you don’t know, some songs where you can sing along and some you can dance to.” He acted and directed the 1991 feature film Falling From Grace, and wrote the music and lyrics for the musical The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County in collaboration with Stephen King, who wrote the libretto. In addition to his music, Mellencamp has become an accomplished painter, his works having appeared in several gallery shows (including the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, New York’s ACA Gallery and the Butler Institute of American Art) and published portfolios. Meanwhile, throughout his continuing recording and touring activities, he regularly promoted other songwriters via covers and collaborations (his most recent album Sad Clowns & Hillbillies features Carlene Carter), and influenced new generations of singer-songwriters in rock as well as country, with Keith Urban in particular stating that witnessing his Lonesome Jubilee tour in Australia was an “ephiphany”: Urban has since covered many Mellencamp songs in his concerts, performed Pink Houses with him in nationally televised events, and had a 2015 hit single with John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16. To this end, he joined Willie Nelson and Neil Young in launching Farm Aid in 1985 as an annual music festival geared to generating awareness of the plight of the American farmer. in the U.S.A., Paper in Fire, Check it Out, Cherry Bomb, Pop Singer and Jackie Brown, he developed what became his singular signature sound.Ĭoinciding with that sound was Mellencamp’s lyrical concerns with themes idenitifed by his Steinbeck Award, especially the dignity of the common man. 1 hit Jack & Diane. But with the ‘80s albums that followed ( Uh-Huh, Scarecrow, Lonesome Jubilee, and Big Daddy) and their hits including Crumblin Down, The Authority Song, Small Town, Rain on the Scarecrow, Lonely Ol Night, R.O.C.K. After scoring his first hit, I Need a Lover, in 1979, his fifth album, American Fool, became 1982’s best-selling album on the strength of Hurts So Good and the No. His first album, The Chestnut Street Incident, was released in 1976 under the name Johnny Cougar, his manager thinking his real name might hamper sales. in the U.S.A., they earned him numerous prestigious awards including the Nordoff-Robbins Silver Clef Special Music Industry Humanitarian Award, the Billboard Century Award, the Woody Guthrie Award, the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award, Q Awards’ Classic Songwriter Award, the Americana Lifetime Achievement Award and the John Steinbeck Award (given to those individuals who exemplify the spirit of "Steinbeck's empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of the common man”).īorn Octoin Seymour, Indiana, Mellencamp, who still lives in nearby Bloomington, loved music and was performing in local bars and heading a soul band by the time he was 14. Together with massive Top 40 hits like Hurt So Good and R.O.C.K. After first finding fame as rocker Johnny Cougar, Grammy-winner John Mellencamp gradually reclaimed his real name while staking out his own unique rock sound with self-penned songs like Small Town and Cherry Bomb that embodied the genre of music now known as roots rock, or Americana.
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