John Mellencamp Quotes
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I've been around so many people for so long that I take great delight in my own company.
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'Jack & Diane' was originally about race. I was playing nightclubs, and I was seeing new American couples, mixed-race couples. I thought it was cool. The song was my effort to make a song about that, but of course the record-company guy didn't like it.
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Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing.
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I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded.
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I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion.
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We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing.
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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.
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I'm as left-wing as you can get.
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Hanging out is a waste of time. The only time I would hang out was when I was a kid, I would hang out in the streets. But once I started making records, I stopped hanging out.
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If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed, and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems.
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I ended up writing songs and growing up in public with my songwriting. And it's a good thing for me back then: in the early '70s, there was a thing called artist development, where an artist could find his feet, find himself, find his voice. I think I made five or six albums before I sold five or six albums.
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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.
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When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.
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Natalie from the Dixie Chicks could have said what she said before 9-11 and no one would have cared.
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I think Roosevelt had four terms, didn't he? I think we should go back to that, and we should go back to four years for a senator, four years for a congressman, and I think we'd see a huge change in our society.
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I wanted to study at the Art Students League in New York when I was young, but I didn't have the money. Then I was fortunate enough to become Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. At the time, I thought I'd make a couple of records and get back to painting. It never dawned on me that I'd be 64 years old and still making music.
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Broadway is a very different kind of place. It's kind of like Nashville in that there's a certain amount of people that are involved, and those people are what run it.
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In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.
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I want my paintings to look like they were found in a garage. If they get a scratch or a hole in them, it just becomes part of the painting.
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Regret should be handled swiftly, and you shouldn't hold onto it. People spend their entire lives regretting what they didn't do and what they should've done. Hey, man, you did what you did.
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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.
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Do I think it's OK to fight authority as long as you're only talking about the high school teacher? No.
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This cycle of make a record, tour has been going on for 20 years now. I don't even know why I do it sometimes. Do I need more money? Do I need more platinum and gold records? The only thing I can think of is ego.
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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?