John Mellencamp
USA Today, May 10, 2018
JOHN MELLENCAMP
USA Today, May 10, 2018
I have no idea why I declined when John Mellencamp asked me to spend a weekend with him at his place in Indiana. I was editing Musician magazine at the time, so I was pretty busy. But I could certainly have come back from his Indiana home with tons of material for a cover story, which he more than merited.
So I don’t know what to say. Maybe I should apologize belatedly for snubbing him. For sure, I regret not flying out to his Indiana place and doing whatever it was we would have done for a couple of days. Too late now, I imagine.
But I did get to spend some time on the phone with him, doing an interview for USA Today. At the time, John was about to release Plain Spoken: From the Chicago Theatre, a DVD that combined his performance in an intimate setting with voiceover reflections on his career. In my opinion, this is one of the finest documentary profiles I’ve ever seen: evocative visuals, wonderful performances and, most of all, John’s narration, alternately sardonic and amused, self-deprecating, dead honest and always insightful. Those same qualities were apparent later when we spoke.
John, if you’re reading, sorry for not taking you up on that visit. But thanks for shooting straight with me over the phone. Maybe we’ll follow in person someday if time and fate allow.
How did you come up with the idea for this project?
For years I’ve been asked, “When are you going to put out a live performance DVD?” I’d always say, “I don’t really want to do that. I don’t think you can capture what a person does onstage, put it in a box, and expect that to even remotely resemble what happened in that room.” But after so many years of being talked to about it, I decided I wanted to find a different way of doing it. I used to listen to a show on the radio in the 1960s. It was a guy — I think he was from Texas — who would just do a monolog all night long. He’d just talk about stuff that he was interested in talking about. That was basically my thought process.
Did you follow any notes for your voiceover?
[Mellencamp laughs.] Man, I’ve never planned anything in my life! There were no notes, no script. We did it in two days. It was just freewheeling. But we had a really good editor, a guy named Mark [Stebbeds]. He was the engineer on the first record I ever made, so he’s been with me forever. He spent his summer editing down what I said, trying to get to the point of things. We just kind of bounced it back and forth. We never did get done with it; we just kind of abandoned it because there was so much dialog. We had a lot to choose from.
Did the editing include trying to find the best match for your words and the song being played?
That was discussed. We had long conversations about that. I thought that was too on-the-nose. What makes this thing work, if it does work, is that there’s an arc to what I’m saying. It arcs in a certain way. Then you travel back and forth, back and forth, to the end. There is some sort of conclusion at the end. I have to give that credit to Mark. That’s why it works. That’s why you stay interested if you do stay interested. I’m not even convinced this works yet [laughs].
Shadows and Surprises
You’ve talked in other interviews about how important the element of surprise is in creating art. In more or less improvising your voiceover, did you say things that surprised you and maybe illuminated you on things you’d forgotten or never knew?
Yeah, I did. But I’m very clumsy at talking. I’m a much better writer than a speaker in my conversation. But at the end of the day, I learned how great a job Mark did. The big surprise was not so much what I said but the fact that he was able to weave it all together in a way that made sense. At first I imagined it would be confusing for people to get used to having the song with spoken words over the top. But once you get into the rhythm of it, I didn’t find it difficult at all to hear both at the same time.
How does that element of surprise apply when you’re doing a concert?
Here’s the surprise, at least for me. If we make it through an entire performance without any calamities, that’s the surprise [laughs]. “Hey, nobody clammed up a bunch of songs!” There are so many surprises onstage. If the band and I are hitting on all fours and the audience is hitting on all fours, when that happens, it’s just a fantastic feeling for everybody involved. There are nights when it’s not that way. When you do 150 shows in eighteen months … This thing was done at the end of 150 shows. You’ve gone to shows where you’ve seen guys just walking through it. I’ve always felt that if you just want to show up, just stay home. Showing up is not enough.
“I do know a lot of people who are myth makers. The best example of that is our president.”
On the DVD, you talk about the “shadow self” of celebrities. Do you try to overcome that when you’re onstage? Or is the shadow self what you ought to project?
I don’t really think it’s a conscious effort by all artists onstage to present themselves in a non-true light. My girlfriend, who has seen a bunch of my shows, always goes, “Oh, yeah, I forget that you’re that guy!” Being onstage and trying every night to be as good as you can be elevates the artist to a place he cannot maintain day to day. You know exactly what I’m talking about because there are times in your life when you have to be on. So you just ramp that up.
First of all, the shadow self is not necessarily a question, although I do know a lot of people who are myth makers. The best example of that is our president [at the time, Donald Trump]. He presented himself to people as putting his best foot forward. Now the rest of the country is thinking, “Maybe not so much [laughs].” I mean, come on, Bob: Who knew that health care was so hard [laughs]?” Like, everybody!
I got sick in Australia once. It was like, “Are you shitting me?” Brand new facilities, three and four doctors looking at me. I think I paid eighteen dollars and then I walked out. We used to have health care like that in the United States. They had state mental institutions and hospitals. Then in the late Sixties you had to grade it down to, “Big business can take care of our health care while we repair and readjust our system. Then we’ll take it back.” They tore down all the mental health places. Well it’s not supposed to be that way.
Paintings in Motion
You mentioned in your voiceover that when you write five hundred songs, they can’t all be about you. But some songs here definitely do seem to be self-referential, like “Pop Singer” and “Authority Song.”
In every song something comes from the guy writing it. My favorite song on the DVD is probably “Crumblin’ Down.” I wrote this song when I was a kid about crumbling down. I was so surprised that everybody thought it was about me! But in my mind, it was about Ronald Reagan! That’s why it’s a ridiculous question.
People ask me, “What’s this painting about?” I feel like going, “Hey, fuck you! What’s it mean to you?” What I think about it has little or no validity at all. What does it mean to you? To me, it means a whole different thing. I’m looking at a whole different project. I’m doing a whole different thing than you’re doing. I’m trying to do a painting that has the correct amount of weight on one side, the correct amount of shadowing, the correct amount of color. I’m trying to do a lot of technical things. There’s a lot of juggling going on with my paintings.
“The perfect song entertains and informs — and you can dance to it.”
It’s the same with songs. The perfect song entertains and informs — and you can dance to it. It has to start between your legs, go to your heart and then to your head. As an artist, I go, “Hey, listen to this!” And you don’t like it? Well, maybe you’re letting it go straight to your head, and there’s no room for the heart or between your legs.
Where do visual art and music intersect in your process? Paintings are static images. Songs move through time. Does that affect what kinds of ideas come up for each medium?
I have to disagree with your foundation. I don’t view paintings as static images. I’ve gone into museums and galleries and seen paintings that are static. But I’ve walked into rooms where you just feel the vibration. I got a great compliment the other day. A guy came up to me and said, “I own one of your paintings. I sit in my office and look at it every day. And every day she’s saying something different.”
True, but it moves in its interaction with the viewer’s imagination. It doesn’t actually move physically or through time.
The same goes with songs. You might hear a pop song a few times and you’re tired of it and there’s no imagination at all. But if you listen to a song and the first time you hear it, you know if you get it or not. Then maybe it does kick in the third time you listen and you’re going, “Oh, yeah. I’m getting it now.” Those songs stay with you forever. It’s the same thing. It all boils down to the listener.
Quite honestly, I never sat down and made it my point to do a painting about this or write a song about that. I’ll be painting, and a voice in my head will go, “Hey, put the paintbrush down and write these words.” I’ll go, “Well, I don’t want to. I’m painting.” A little time goes by, and I’ll hear it again: “Put that paintbrush down and write these words.” Of course, the voice always wins. I’ll write something down — and I can’t write it fast enough. I can’t keep up with the lyrics. A couple of days go by, and I’ll find it. I’ll go, “When did I write this? It sounds like there might be a couple of good lines in there.”
If you’re an artist, you create every day. I make something every day. You’re open to whatever is being sent to you, whether it’s a song or a painting. You keep your head open.
Some of your songs have a painterly quality. The first verse of “Rain on the Scarecrow” just spells out a series of visual images: a scarecrow on a wooden cross, a blackbird in a barn. It’s a painting!
To me, it’s the same thing. It’s just that paintings take longer. If you’re going to fret over a song for as many hours as you put into a painting, then your song is not going to be good. If this song is hard to complete, I’ll write a different song.
Your more recent paintings express political or social concerns pretty directly. Your songs are usually a little less pointed.
I feel like I can be a little more on the nose with painting than I can be in songs. As I say in the documentary, keep it vague so everybody automatically thinks, “That’s what I knew already!” Let’s not make it about you. Let’s make it about the listener.
How has your painting evolved or changed in recent years?
I’m always looking for something new to do. I’m constantly rediscovering and reinventing myself.
Do you work mainly in oils?
It’s all mixed media now. I’ll do a painting with house paint on it. Anything can go down. I figure at 66, I’ll do just about anything I want to do.
Arcs and Accordions
At the beginning of the DVD, you say that you were bringing accordions into the mix with guitars, which nobody else was doing in rock music at the time.
I didn’t know what I was doing. Everybody’s doing that now, but in 1987 it was like, “What the fuck are you doing?” Again, it surprised me, it surprised all of us, what a violin and an accordion would sound like together, with a harpsichord or something.
Creative decisions like these suggest that audiences feel nostalgia for times that were more innocent and less affected than ours. You make a similar point in your DVD voiceover, where you seem to be a little bitter over rock having lost touch with its roots.
Just look at the best-selling books; that’ll tell you something. In 1956 or whatever it was, On the Waterfront won, like, nine Academy Awards. Now I don’t think you can even get On the Waterfront made today.
“What made the Sixties work was the draft.”
Isn’t there reason for optimism that artists will respond to all of this with a new surge in creativity?
Let’s lay our cards on the table. What made the Sixties work was the draft. I’m not sure any young men would have gone against the Vietnam nonsense without it, because they’re the ones that had to go and fight it. So if you want to get young people involved with politics, reinstate the draft. I went to Washington, D.C., and marched in 1970. If not for the draft, I’m not sure I would have made it.
Do you think people will get that from your voiceover?
I’m not in that game anymore. I don’t really have any expectations that anybody will ever see this thing. It’s not about how many people see it or what they’ll think about it. We don’t have some of those numbers, buddy. We only have so many numbers left. I mean, I’m 68 years old [laughs, then coughs vigorously].
You know, I read that you quit drugs and booze by age 21, but right at the top of this DVD we see you offstage before your show, in the wings, smoking a cigarette.
Well, you’ll remember that TV ad: “Are you smoking more but enjoying it less?” That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m at that point.
You had your share of romantic adventures too. The way you put it on the DVD, “I understood the beginning stages of love, but I never really did understand much past that.”
I’ve had one foot out the door for the majority of my life. But now, like I wrote in a song once, I guess I’ve run out of other places to run.
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Of all the male superstars of the 70's, I think Mellencamp's music has aged the best. Petty, Springsteen, Seger, Jackson Browne... all of them have gotten tired over the years. He's the most timeless of them.