Deep Album Cuts Vol. 256: John Mellencamp
Back in January I interviewed John Mellencamp for GQ and I really enjoyed the experience, I think he's a really smart and interesting guy. His people agreed to a 30-minute call, but I managed to keep him talking for a full hour and finally let him go a few minutes before his next scheduled interview. In the first 5 minutes, he said "y'know, I'm from the midwest" as context for a story and, jackass that I am, I couldn't stop myself from sarcastically going "wait...you're from the midwest? I didn't know that." So for a second, I thought maybe I'd just blown the entire interview, but he laughed it off and continued with what he was saying. So I wouldn't say he doesn't take himself as seriously as people sometimes say he does.
John Mellencamp deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Dream Killing Town
2. Where The Sidewalk Ends
3. Goodnight
4. Great Midwest
5. Cheap Shot
6. Tonight
7. Danger List
8. Thundering Hearts
9. Kid Inside
10. Jackie O
11. Golden Gates
12. The Kind Of Fella I Am
13. Between A Laugh And A Tear
14. Down And Out In Paradise
15. Hot Dogs And Hamburgers
16. Theo And Weird Henry
17. Void In My Heart
18. I Ain't Ever Satisfied
19. Sweet Evening Breeze
20. Brothers
21. The Full Catastrophe
Track 1 from Chestnut Street Incident (1976)
Tracks 3 and 3 from A Biography (1978)
Track 4 from John Cougar (1979)
Tracks 5 and 6 from Nothin' Matters And What If It Did (1980)
Tracks 7 and 8 from American Fool (1982)
Track 9 from The Kid Inside (1983)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Uh-Huh (1983)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Scarecrow (1985)
Tracks 14 and 15 from The Lonesome Jubilee (1987)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Big Daddy (1989)
Track 18 from Whenever We Wanted (1991)
Track 19 from Human Wheels (1993)
Track 20 from Dance Naked (1994)
Track 21 from Mr. Happy Go Lucky (1996)
Obviously, Mellencamp was famously saddled with a silly stage name early in his career. And most people who become famous with a stage name never manage to shake it off, but he did, even if it took him a while. He was credited as 'Johnny Cougar' on albums from 1976 to '78, then 'John Cougar' from '79 to '82, then 'John Cougar Mellencamp' from '83 to '89, and finally released his 11th album as simply John Mellencamp in '91.
As I noted in the GQ piece, a young Mellencamp played in a glam band, Trash, named after the New York Dolls song, and his first manager was Tony DeFries, best known for working with David Bowie. The voice and aesthetic that Mellencamp would eventually be known for are already pretty identifiable on his debut album, which opens with a song called "American Dream," features the refrain "I'm just a small town boy" on "Chestnut Street," and contains covers of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. But some of the outtakes that appear on reissues of the album include covers of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World" and The Stooges' "I Need Somebody," so you can hear a little of the glam Mellencamp road not taken.
The Kid Inside was recorded in 1977 as Mellencamp's second album, but it remained shelved until Tony DeFries released it in 1983 to capitalize on the singer's newfound stardom. And that album's title track had an interesting self-deprecating lyric: "It's hard for me to justify my position when everything I'm saying can be said better by Mr. Springsteen." When he wrote those words, Mellencamp was just a relative unknown looking at Springsteen's fame from afar, but by the time the song was released in '83, they were pretty much on the same level (in fact, by then Mellencamp had a solo #1, which Bruce never got). And one of the coolest things about Mellencamp's latest album is the three songs with Springsteen, getting to finally hear these guys kick back together and harmonize, I love when artists who seem to be in competition with each other get a little older and get around to working together.
I'm a big fan of Nothin' Matters And What If It Did, which was produced by Stax Records legend Steve Cropper and featured Edith Massey, who was in all the early John Waters movies, on the cover. "Cheap Shot" is a funny sort of middle finger to his record label and his name change that closes the album after he originally suggested opening the album with it (a completely different song called "Cheap Shot" also appeared on The Kid Inside). And "Tonight" is a very catchy song that probably could've been a hit if not for some of the more risque lyrics ("She says 'come here little boy, I'll put my pussy right on your face").
One thing I talked about with Mellencamp that didn't fit into the GQ piece was his work with John Prine: "In the '80s he would come to Indiana, and we'd sit around and write stuff, but we never wrote anything very good, to be quite honest." I think he's being a little overly modest, "Jackie O" is a pretty cool song with a playful drum machine beat that sounds nothing like anything Mellencamp made in the '80s. And the Prine deep cut they wrote together, "Take A Look At My Heart," is really good, too.
In the the mid-'80s, when vinyl was still the primary format people bought albums on but CDs and cassettes were gaining steam, some artists would feature songs on the CD and tape editions that didn't fit on the single LP album. That was the case for Scarecrow, which had "The Kind of Fella I Am" with Ry Cooder on tapes and CDs but not vinyl. "Between A Laugh And A Tear" with Rickie Lee Jones is another highlight on that album.
Much has been made of the sort of depressing content of one of Mellencamp's most famous lyrics, "Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone." And I kind of love this dark misanthropic streak running through Mellencamp's songs, it kind of runs against his '80s pop idol image and even the perspective of a lot of his peers. I really like the song "Brothers," kind of a dark sibling rivalry song that totally doesn't go how you'd expect it to. I don't know if it's autobiographical at all, Mellencamp has two brothers, and one of them, Ted Mellencamp, who passed away a few years ago, was his tour manager.
Mellencamp's 1999 album Rough Harvest contained some acoustic arrangements of covers and favorite songs from his catalog. And alongside some of hits, that album revisited "Between A Laugh And A Tear" and "The Full Catastrophe," which is also one of the most played deep cuts in his live repertoire, along with "Thundering Hearts," "Golden Gates" and "Down And Out In Paradise."
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