That song appeared on his Columbia Records album Cuttin' Heads, of which the title track found Mellencamp performing with Public Enemy rapper Chuck D. In 2001, Mellencamp released the single "Peaceful World," a duet recorded with India.Arie. And after building up a long career and selling millions of albums, he has enough clout in the music industry to call it out when sees that kind of behavior go down. With his work on Farm Aid and songs about the working class, it tracks that John Mellencamp doesn't care much for injustice or intolerance. The role instead went to some guy named Brad Pitt. According to a 2017 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Mellencamp says he turned down the role of hunky J.D. (Despite the parallels to his real-life, the film is not biographical.) Mellencamp's first film could have come earlier, and might have made him into a star. Written by Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry and actually directed by Mellencamp himself, this 1992 movie is about a country music star whose life is a mess to heads back to his Indiana hometown to get his head on straight. His biggest acting work to date (among about four movies) is his film debut: Falling from Grace. While those musical stars successfully branched out into this other form of entertainment, Mellencamp resisted the lure of pursuing silver-screen stardom. To read an extended transcript of Jane Pauley's interview with John Mellencamp click here.As a photogenic guy with millions of fans, Hollywood came calling for John Mellencamp the way it has for so many other well-known musicians, from Elvis Presley to Dolly Parton to LL Cool J. And I intend not to waste them being old." And now, at 66, he does think about mortality. "Now that I've said that, two weeks from now you're gonna read: 'Mellencamp dies of heart attack'!" "It's probably a wacky idea, but it comforts me!" Mellencamp said. He's got a strange theory: "Rightfully or wrongfully, I believe that it's the combination of cigarettes and alcohol that get people - the two of them combined."Īnd he hasn't had a drink, he says, since college. He says he doesn't worry so much about cigarettes and his health. I wanted to sound like, you know, Louis Armstrong. "Are you kidding me? Have you ever heard my voice, honey? It's fantastic! Are you kidding me? I sound like a black guy singing now." Don't you? Or is it just getting better and better?" He's been smoking, by the way, most of his life - since he was 10.Īs he looked for another cigarette, Pauley noted, "You have a voice to protect. The singer-songwriter credits cigarettes with giving him a voice like Louis Armstrong. He has five children, and nine grandkids. He's been linked in recent years to perennial cover girl Christie Brinkley and actress Meg Ryan – and before them, three wives. Apparently, women just don't like me very much. "What is the greatest lesson you've learned from the women in your life?" It's an acknowledged fact that relationships have been a struggle. If John Mellencamp sounds like one self-assured son-of-a-gun, she is the reason why: "Here's the trick, if you want a kid that has confidence: my grandmother told me every day of my life, 'Buddy, don't forget: you're the handsomest, luckiest, talented boy in the world.' The flip side of that is, it's really hard for girlfriends to compete with that!" he laughed. "When the Iraq War started, I was so against that." "Your fans are probably way, way, way on the spectrum to the right of you," said Pauley. Pays for thrills, the bills, the pills that kill "Pink Houses," for instance, is not a red-white-and-blue anthem:
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