Hated them! He said, "We expect you to become the next Neil Diamond. The three songs were "Jack & Diane," "Hurts So Good" and "Hand to Hold On To." He hated them. Finally the president of the company came down and was like, "You're spending money like crazy!" He went nuts. We had spent $300,000, and I had three songs done. It was 1980, and I was down in Miami again, making a record. It became a semihit in America, and it let me make another album. It was her first big hit, and then mine went to Number One in Australia. Then two record producers named Chinn and Chapman heard "I Need a Lover," and they had Pat Benatar sing it. I was washed up and over by my midtwenties. I would walk by and hear "Life in the Fast Lane," go back into my session and hear, "I need a lover that won't . . ." I'd be like, "Oh, fuck. We were recording in Miami at the same time that the Eagles were finishing up Hotel California. It wasn't like I had the support of critics – my first Rolling Stone review said something like, "This guy is a phony, picked out of central casting." But I knew if I delivered a song that could get on the radio, I had a shot.īy the time of "I Need a Lover," I had three albums out. I knew that if I wanted to continue in the music business, I had to get on the radio. I was like, "Are you shitting me?" I didn't realize he was going to charge me back. He gave me a choice: "Record under the name Johnny Cougar or move back to Indiana." He also paid off my college loans. I would have signed anything – I would have signed the bottom of a shoe. Mellencamp took that excuse to tell the stories behind 15 key songs from his career, opening up about his life and art in a way he never has before. "Before CDs totally go away," he says, "I wanted to make sure that people who were fans of John Mellencamp could go, 'OK, I've got every fuckin' record he's made.'" And on December 10th, he is releasing a massive box set containing 19 of his albums. He's also writing songs for his 20th studio album, which he'll begin recording with T Bone Burnett in January. Says Mellencamp, "I wanted to turn them into the kind of girls you would find dancing at the Savoy in 1931." In the painting, Ryan is wearing red clown makeup, and both are wearing white dresses, under the words the stardust sisters. He's 86 hours into a giant picture of Ryan and her friend Laura Dern, but he's not quite sure it's finished. "I get up at 8:00, I have breakfast, I go to the art studio, and I don't come out until dark," he says. These days, Mellencamp, 62, spends much of his time in a large, bright room over a barn, painting. "I don't give a fuck about me, but I don't like it for ," he says. I can't see the trash on the streets." There's also the big-city paparazzi, who trail the couple. "I'm too sensitive to live there," he says. Moving to New York to be with his girlfriend, Meg Ryan, would solve the empty-nest problem, but Mellencamp says that's out of the question.
I walk in now sometimes and go, 'Who loves their dad?' Nothin'." "I used to walk into my house and I could always go, 'Who loves their dad?' And throughout the house I'd hear Elaine go, 'I do!' Then I heard Hud go, 'I do!' and then Speck, 'I do!' It was this greeting that I always had. "Some nights it's weird," Mellencamp says. It has felt bigger since he split with his wife, Elaine Irwin, in 2010, and his two youngest children, Hud, 19, and Speck, 18, took off for college. John Mellencamp lives in a lakefront mansion at the edge of a wooded 65-acre estate outside Bloomington, Indiana.
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