John Mellencamp Quotes
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As I get older, I have a different look on life. I just try to be a little more tolerant and a little bit more centered about what's going on around me and not so emotional.
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When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions.
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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.
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People have the right to say what they want to.
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If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.
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What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible.
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I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.
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A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness.
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I believe in something, even if it's just me.
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People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four.
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When did Jimmy Stewart not play Jimmy Stewart? When did John Wayne not play John Wayne? But that's what we like about them. When you talk about acting, you really have to respond to somebody's personality.
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When I wrote 'Pink Houses,' nobody was talking about that, right? The next thing I know, you can't see the TV without hearing commercials with 'Listen to the heartbeat of America,' or 'Born the American way.' That whole America thing now - I hate it.
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My best songs come from a place outside myself.
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It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.
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If I'm painting, I paint every day. I'll be up in the studio from 8:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night.
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A lot of record company people, even though they're our age, want to be perceived as young hip guys, and they're hurting the business.
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I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines.
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Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, 'Okay, here's another great record by Bob Dylan; here's another great record by Led Zeppelin.'
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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.
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I just think if the song's good, sing it. I don't care who's doing it. I don't care if it's a country act. I don't care if it's a rock act. If the song's good, sing it.
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One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.
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As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine.
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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.
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The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.