Ain't that America?

Denounced as un-American after he blasted Bush on his 21st album, John Mellencamp talks about the rise of Fox News, pay-for-play, what's wrong with the Rolling Stones and why most Republicans aren't rich enough to be Republicans.

By Eric Boehlert

Jun 30, 2003 | "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."

Born in 1951 in Seymour, Ind., the son of a fundamentalist father and a Miss Indiana runner-up, Mellencamp joined his first band at the age of 13. After graduation and a failed job installing telephones for Indiana Bell, he landed a record contract despite, he says, having no discernible talents. "I had a deal when I was a kid not because I could write songs or sing. It was the way I looked," he says. "The idea of actually writing songs had not even dawned on me."

The songs, and the hits, came later, as Mellencamp honed his vocal and songwriting prowess and fought his way onto portions of the pop charts usually not occupied by bar band singers. In 1986, the top three selling artists of the year were Whitney Houston, Madonna and Mellencamp.

Through the years the headstrong Mellencamp has remained one of the few major recording artists not to cash in by selling his songs for use in television commercials or to accept corporate sponsorship for his concert tours, decisions that have cost him millions of dollars.

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."

More recently, Mellencamp has been tackling the topic of race relations. The title track to 2001's "Cuttin' Heads" featured Chuck D. rapping about the word "nigger": "I connect the word with pain, now some smile when they scream the name?/ Die, N-word, die. I want to live."

The album's second song, the sweet-sounding single "Peaceful World," was equally blunt: "Racism lives in the U.S. today." Not exactly Top-40 fare.

While Mellencamp's radio hits in the '90s couldn't match such '80s anthems as "Pink Houses" and "Lonely Ol' Night," they were always among the smartest on the airwaves, featuring his trademark American Bandstand sound that's always easy to dance to: "Love and Happiness" (1991), "Human Wheels" (1993), "Dance Naked" (1994), "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" (1996) and "Your Life Is Now" (1998).

Mellencamp has amassed 29 Top-40 singles in a career spread over 21 albums, including his latest, the steel-tipped, blues-flavored "Trouble No More."

As the years pass, however, it's gotten progressively harder for Mellencamp to get his music heard on FM radio, or even VH1. "I was standing outside a restaurant the other night," he recalls with a laugh. "And a guy, about 37, says, 'Man, are you John Mellencamp?' I said yeah. He said, 'I love your songs,' and then he said, 'Did you stop making records?'"

Thanks to "To Washington," fans have been likelier to read about Mellencamp in the news pages than the arts section. Originally written in 1903 as "White House Blues," a commentary on the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, the folk classic has previously been updated as political commentary by the Carter Family and Woody Guthrie. Mellencamp continued that tradition:

So a new man in the White House
With a familiar name
Said he had some fresh ideas
But it's worse now since he came
From Texas to Washington.

During a recent phone call from South Carolina, Mellencamp talked at length about the song, his politics and contemporary pop culture, as well as the ailing music industry.

Talk about people's reaction to "To Washington."

Initially I was surprised. My album wasn't going to come out for a few months and I had the song recorded so I put it up on my Web site and asked for people's comments. And there were some mean damn comments coming back.

How about today?

It's changed. Now they're almost totally in favor of the song. Because people are starting to realize, "Now wait a minute, what really happened in Iraq?" I see the climate changing tremendously. But when people hear those drums of war pounding, and Fox News is showing it on television, people got pretty riled up. People were afraid, and when people are afraid they make emotional decisions.

Did that include people in your hometown of Bloomington, Ind.?

When the song first came out I was in the car one day and we were driving to the airport and I had my kids with me and a radio station was playing "To Washington" and having callers call in. Some guy comes on and says, "I don't know who I hate the most, John Mellencamp or Osama bin Laden." My kids heard that and my 9-year-old said, "Dad, are they talking about you? Why are people mad at you?"

I just thought that was really jerky and wrong. Why would you play a song on the radio and tell people to call up and say what they think about it. What is this? Is this like a football game? Tit-for-tat? I don't like this sporting-event mentality to people's lives, which is basically what it became.

In retrospect, there were only a handful of famous musicians who opposed the war in their music. Were you surprised, or is it just not feasible today for artists to put out songs like that on major record labels?

Major record companies don't want those songs. You know, when the record company heard "To Washington," it was kind of like "Whoa, wait a minute. We don't want you to do this." Understandably so, because this record was on the same label that has the Dixie Chicks and that had just blown up in their face.

Were there discussions about not including the song on your record?

I was asked not to put it on the record.

Where did it go from there?

I think the people who asked me knew what my response would be, but they felt they had to ask. They were polite about it.

Did they say it just didn't feel right, or the tone wasn't right for the record?

No, it was more, "You're asking for trouble, and look what happened to the Dixie Chicks, which was based on just an offhand comment they made." And my point to them was, "Look, I'm John Mellencamp, I've been doing this 25 years. For anybody to say I'm un-American is laughable."

But people have said that recently, haven't they?

Oh yeah. But who knows what people are going to say. I read a list of un-American people and there was Jimmy Carter on there. He's probably the most honest president we've ever had, since I was alive, and now he's un-American?

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