Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Mellencamp -- Happy Old Fart

A nice profile of John Mellencamp by Jim Farber at the NY Daily News, in which he talks about his new album, defends putting his song in an ad and generally comes across as enjoyably ornery. My favorite quotes:
Last summer, when he saw that Tom Petty put out a good single and CD that radio snubbed, Mellencamp realized, "If they're not going to play [Petty's] song, they're not going to play mine."

The star isn't fazed by the subsequent cries of "sellout." "The minute you sign with a record company, you've sold out," he asserts. Moreover, he says that "Chevy has been a much better record company for me than [my last label] Columbia Records ever was."
And this on how he sees America:
"The Americans" appears to tout the open-minded character of U.S. citizens. But Mellencamp - who was born in Indiana and still lives near Bloomington - says it's actually about "how we see ourselves, not how we are. I think that's an image that should be strived toward. If I had written about how we really are, it would have been negative. If [I was writing about] the Midwest, it would be, 'I'm narrow-minded and don't give a f- about other cultures.'"

1 comment:

priv8pete said...

That's the way we do it in the O.C., b*itch!