John Mellencamp: the Rust Belt Rumbler
Listening to the albums of John Mellencamp’s commercial peak reminds me of what a gifted songwriter he is.
Listening to the albums of John Mellencamp’s commercial peak reminds me of not only what a gifted songwriter he is but how prescient these songs remain.
John Mellencamp, the outspoken and earnest Indiana export, has sold over sixty million albums, made his way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame the only way one does…with the songs.
For all of the ‘80s and most of the ’90s, Mellencamp’s brand of populist rock and roll was inescapable. To be fair, his type of rock was de rigueur in those days. Where Tom Petty was the pied piper of the brokenhearted and Bruce Springsteen the voice of the common person, John Mellencamp is the chronicler and the voice of a larger contingency — every person.
Mellencamp sang about, and for, the people that the policies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush marginalized.
As manufacturers shuttered and farms dried up, the Midwest in the ‘80s was beginning its slow descent and Mellencamp who was there to chronicle it.
At that time, he was the musical Ken Burns, documenting the Midwestern decay with song.
My exposure to Mellencamp began blindly. I heard Pat Benatar’s version of “I Need A Lover” and I was both smitten and beguiled by the hook and the chorus — “I need a lover that won’t drive me crazy.”
Unbeknownst to me “I Need A Lover” would come to define much of my romantic life — still.
However, it would be another three years, as I was beginning to wade into John Mellencamp’s music that I discovered he was the author. In fact, the song is on his first album.
Of course, if you’ve been to a dentist, you know his hits. Those songs weren’t hits just because radio and MTV played the piss out of them. They were hits because they were damn good songs. Period. They still are.
But the real joy in listening to that peak period of John Mellencamp goes beyond those songs. It’s the songs that didn’t get played on the radio or had videos shot. As good as he was at writing hits, Mellencamp even better at documenting that moment in time.
Beginning with his self-titled 1979 album, songs like “The Great Midwest” and “Pray for Me” showed a guy who wrote something more than just a hook. More importantly, they showed that he had something to say. Considering Mellencamp was on his ascent at the tail end of the singer-songwriter era of the ‘70s, that was no easy task.
Nothin Matters and What If It Did followed in 1980. Produced by Stax Records and Booker T & the MG’s alumni Steve Cropper, this album was a flagrant stab at commercial success. The album falls short but that’s not to say it didn’t show the upward trend of his songwriting — “Make Me Feel” is a nice companion piece to “I Need A Lover” — the song is about what happens after you find the lover who won’t drive you crazy.
AMERICAN FOOL
The one with “Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane” — the album that opened the floodgates. It proved the Midwestern rock was more than just Bob Seger. In addition to the usual suspects, Mellencamp amassed a team that would help propel him to stardom.
He started writing songs with childhood friend George M. Green (“Hurts So Good”), teamed up with producer Don Gehman (Hootie & the Blowfish, R.E.M.), and hired drummer extraordinaire Kenny Aronoff. Everything lined up. It didn’t hurt that John Mellencamp was an attractive guy and it was the dawn of MTV.
American Fool became the monster hit it deserved to be.
That album proved quite the contrary — John Mellencamp was anything but an American fool.
UH-HUH
A shitty name for the follow-up to a number one album but it remains one of my favorites. This is the first album in a three-album cycle that would com eto chronicle the heartland of America in the 1980's.
Although, considering that Billy Squier’s dancing in the video for “Rock Me Tonite” set his career into free fall, watching the video for the album’s first single, “Crumblin’ Down” makes you wonder how Mellencamp salvaged his. Despite the lyric, John Mellencamp is not a fine dancer. But the song still kills.
And “Pink Houses” begins to highlight Mellencamp’s prescience:
Well there’s a young man in a T-shirt
Listenin’ to a rock ’n’ roll station
He’s got a greasy hair, greasy smile
He says: “Lord, this must be my destination”
And there’s winners, and there’s losers
But they ain’t no big deal
’Cause the simple man baby pays the thrills,
The bills and the pills that kill
Indeed, those are great songs but its “Warmer Place to Sleep”, “Play Guitar” and “Golden Gates” that raise the album a few notches. Despite the album’s dismissive title, Uh-huh highlighted that John Mellencamp was a songwriter not to be dismissed and people were beginning to recognize this.
It’s also here that his band and sound coalesced.
With Gehman’s production (Mellencamp co-produced) Kenny Aronoff created a drum sound that would define and drive the band and shape its sound. It’s the sound on Uh-huh that would lead him to worldwide success.
Even after his success, Mellencamp stayed in Indiana. This allowed him to witness firsthand the 80’s era of “greed is good” and its impact on his community.
SCARECROW
The second album of the three-album cycle that showed an unparalleled artistic growth from Mellencamp and company. Simply put, everyone, including Mellencamp, was firing on every god damn cylinder.
Yes, “Small Town” and “Lonely Ol’ Night” are great songs…but they’re not the best songs on the album. Not by a long shot.
The best song honor for me belongs to “Minutes to Memories.” This is the opus that captures the soul of the Midwest, unlike any other song on the album…or song at the time. It highlighted two things Midwesterner’s pride themselves on — independence, realism and mettle:
I worked my whole life in the steel mills of Gary
Like my father before me I helped build this land
Now I’m seventy-seven and with God as my witness
I earned every dollar that passed through my hands
My family and friends are the best thing I’ve known
Through the eye of the needle I’ll carry them home
Days turn to minutes
And minutes to memories
Life sweeps away the dreams
That we have planned
You are young and you are the future
So suck it up and tough it out
And be the best you can
“Justice and Independence ‘85”, an allegorical song about the increasing imperialism of America during the Reagan regime, was very relevant then and perhaps more so now:
He was born on the fourth day of July
So his parents called him Independence Day
He married a girl named Justice who gave birth
To a son called Nation
Then she walked away
Independence would daydream and he’d pretend
That someday him and Justice and Nation would get together again
But Justice held up in a shotgun shack
And she wouldn’t let nobody in
So a Nation cried
When a Nation cries
His tears fall down like missiles from the skies
THE LONESOME JUBILEE
The crown jewel of the three-album cycle. He added fiddle player Lisa Germano and multi-instumentalist John Cascella that resulted in a much more layered and textured sound for his songs. However, this is the album that took Mellencamp as far as he could go with his “heartland” sound.
But don’t be misled, this isn’t just “heartland rock” — it’s much more than that.
The Lonesome Jubilee is the lyrical maturation and confidence of a songwriter unafraid to speak his mind. There were hits, of course— “Paper in Fire” and “Cherry Bomb” — a less jubilant counterpart to Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days.”
The sardonic “Check it Out” was the perfect marriage of hook, intelligence and universal lyrics with a serious bite. It’s why it’s one of his biggest hits.
However, the lyrics on “Down and Out in Paradise” again prove the importance of Mellencamp as a songwriter. If you don’t think these lyrics are still relevant today then you’re not paying attention:
Dear Mr. President
I live in the suburbs
It’s a long way from Washington, D.C.
Had me a job
Working for wages
And they forgot about me
Can’t draw unemployment
For some unknown reason
My kids are hungry
I’ve got four mouths to feed
I go out everyday lookin’ for suitable
Employment
Do you think, there’s something
You could do for me
BIG DADDY
The aftermath of the Reagan era is what’s chronicled on this album. It’s the same band as The Lonesome Jubilee but producer Don Gehman had moved on and that’s reflected in the albums sound. The self-produced Big Daddy is a more mature sounding record in every way.
The social commentary Mellencamp had embraced on both Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee was now unabashedly front and center. The album’s first single, the sarcastic “Pop Singer” proved that the aging Mellencamp had lost none of his pugnacity:
Never wanted to be no pop singer,
Never wanted to write no pop songs.
Never had no weird hair to get my songs over.
Never wanted to hang out after the show.
Pop singer writing pop songs.
Here again, it’s the deeper cuts on Big Daddy that shine. In particular, the sequential trifecta of “Martha Say”, “Theo and Weird Henry” and “Jackie Brown” that paint the brutal picture of the Midwest in 1989. These songs, and the album as a whole, solidify John Mellencamp’s place as an important American voice.
Mellencamp continued exploring his craft as a songwriter and musician by expanding his creative horizons. Working to modernize his sound by partnering with musicians like Me’Shell Ndegeocello on Dance Naked and getting Junior Vasquez (Madonna, Brittany Spears) to co-produce his 1996 album Mr. Happy Go Lucky.
This all worked with varying degrees of success, both commercially and artistically. But it worked well enough that he was still charting hit albums into the late ‘90s.
But as it is with these things and despite his best efforts, tastes change and Mellencamp’s particular brand of rock had been officially usurped by grunge and then teen pop.
It should be noted that throughout his career, a cavalcade of side players has cycled through his band…except for one, rhythm guitarist Mike Wanchic — John Mellencamp’s apparent Rock of Gibraltar.
While his commercial peak may be behind him, Mellencamp remains a formidable artist. His visual art is well regarded and shown in galleries around the globe as he continues to record albums and tour.
He’s even branched out into musical theater. Mellencamp partnered with Stephen King and T-Bone Burnett on their musical Ghost Brothers of Heartland County and is currently working with three-time Tony winner director Kathleen Marshall and writer Naomi Wallace on an untitled musical based on “the American dream and the men and women on its underside in small towns around America” — in short, his songs.
While his music career may have peaked, at least as far as sales figures go. But he is still a formidable artist who is very far from being sent out to pasture.
It’s too reductive to simply say that John Mellencamp is a “heartland rocker” because he’s proven time and time…and time again that he is much more than that.
Years ago I recall seeing an illustration (I wish I could find it now) at the back of Rolling Stone that showed a classroom with Woody Guthrie teaching and sitting in the first seat was Bob Dylan, sitting behind him was Bruce Springsteen looking over Dylan’s shoulder and sitting behind Springsteen was Mellencamp looking over Springsteen’s shoulder. Just as it did then, it seems fitting. He is without doubt just as significant an artist of any of his contemporaries.
The worst part of John Mellencamp’s career?
The fact that Farm Aid, conceived as a one-off event with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, is still operating, still relevant and still needed.
Much to mine, yours and I would argue the songwriter himself, his characters like Jack & Diane, Martha, Jackie Brown, Theo, Weird Henry, et al, are probably now Donald Trump supporters.