My task with ‘Uh-Huh’ was to make a more even record and get away from juvenile topics like ‘Hurts So Good.’ But I also knew if I wanted to continue, I had to have more hits. – John Mellencamp
I think it’s ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don’t buy my records. And there ain’t that many teenagers out there in the marketplace. – John Mellencamp
I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money. – John Mellencamp
We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at. – John Mellencamp
Wait a minute, guys, I have always been on your side. I have always spoken for you, always tried to put on a good face for the state of Indiana. All of a sudden, some of you people think I’m a bad guy? – John Mellencamp
I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion. – John Mellencamp
Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing. – John Mellencamp
A lot of Woody Guthrie’s songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song. – John Mellencamp
I was born with Spina bifida. That’s where you have a hole in your spine, and your nerve endings come out. – John Mellencamp
I don’t want to be a politician. I don’t like politics. It’s petty; it fights dirty. – John Mellencamp
I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded. – John Mellencamp
Do I think it’s OK to fight authority as long as you’re only talking about the high school teacher? No. – John Mellencamp
American folk songs were about tragedy, right? They were about suffering and tragedy, and a lot of my songs are about that, even though they were misunderstood. – John Mellencamp
If I laugh a couple of times a day, I’m doing good. People think it’s their God-given right to be happy, and it’s just not. It’s something you’ve got to work at. I like to paint the human condition, and the human condition is not smiles and happy people. – John Mellencamp
Take ‘Jack and Diane.’ I was so disgusted with people thinking the line ‘Hold on to sixteen as long as you can’ meant to stay a teenager forever. What I meant was keep doing whatever makes you feel alive. – John Mellencamp
Bob Dylan’s first couple of records in the 60’s weren’t considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album. – John Mellencamp
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. – John Mellencamp
I have to say when a man lives for himself, it’s hard to live with him. That’s pretty much the story of all my divorces. I’ve been making records since I was 22 and done things my way, and it’s hard for me to compromise. And of course, to have a successful relationship, one has to compromise. Sometimes I’m not good at it. – John Mellencamp
My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she’d come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious. – John Mellencamp
My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material. – John Mellencamp
I’ve just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn’t qualify as a hit record-but it’s really the best single I’ve ever had. – John Mellencamp
‘Crumbling’ Down’ is a very political song that I wrote with my childhood friend George Green. Reagan was president – he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor. – John Mellencamp
