Mellonhead Speaks

Now basically I like Mellonhead, and I respect him for the tenacity to stick it out in the face of some poor early-career marking decisions made by his labels, himself, or a combination of the two (the transition from "Cougar" back to "Mellencamp" was long and painful). He has turned out to be one of the most solid American rockers of the last 30 years, but I am also bone-weary of the "woe-is-me, I was anti-war and ritualistically abused for it" routine. War is a super emotional issue - if you take the minority side, you will receive emotional disagreement from the majority, that's all there is to it:

"The whole thing was surreal to me," says John Mellencamp. He's remembering the three-month period during the winter and spring when America was wrestling with the notion of war against Iraq. The roots-rocker found himself caught in the public fray after he released an antiwar song at the height of the debate, with some radio listeners comparing him to Osama bin Laden.

It was a startling charge for the Hoosier recently dubbed "Mr. Middle America" by ABC News. After nearly 30 years on the public stage, Mellencamp and his lunch-bucket rock and populist tales have come to signify heartland values like faith, hard work and, yes, a healthy skepticism toward authority. But anti-Americanism? "Get the fuck out of here," he scoffs.

His protest song "To Washington," with its thinly veiled jabs at President Bush, struck a chord with listeners on the left and right alike. "Isn't it funny?" he asks. "A 51-year-old guy who's made as many records as I have can still piss off the right wing."

....Wrapping his workmanlike rock in what he calls his "left-of-center" politics, in the '80s Mellencamp teamed up with Willie Nelson to begin staging charity concerts and raise millions of dollars for Farm-Aid. In 1989, at the height of commercial appeal, he penned "Jackie Brown," among the most stinging indictments of American poverty ever put to record. ("We shame ourselves to watch people like this live.")

As the late Timothy White, his good friend and the longtime editor of Billboard, wrote in 2001, "Mellencamp's best music is rock 'n' roll stripped of all escapism, and it looks directly at the messiness of life as it's actually lived. This is rock music that tells the truth on both its composer and the culture he's observing."

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Article Author: Eric Olsen

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