QUOTES by John Mellencamp
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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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I just think if the song's good, sing it. I don't care who's doing it. I don't care if it's a country act. I don't care if it's a rock act. If the song's good, sing it.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I'm wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it's MTV and radio, well, they're great things, but can't be the only thing. I don't know that it would work even for the Beatles.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I've been around so many people for so long that I take great delight in my own company.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain?
Quote by -John Mellencamp
People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
American folk songs were about tragedy, right? They were about suffering and tragedy, and a lot of my songs are about that, even though they were misunderstood.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
If I'm painting, I paint every day. I'll be up in the studio from 8:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
Life should never be viewed from the vantage point of achievements. It is total folly.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
When I wrote 'Pink Houses,' nobody was talking about that, right? The next thing I know, you can't see the TV without hearing commercials with 'Listen to the heartbeat of America,' or 'Born the American way.' That whole America thing now - I hate it.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
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.
Quote by -John Mellencamp
I have to say when a man lives for himself, it's hard to live with him. That's pretty much the story of all my divorces. I've been making records since I was 22 and done things my way, and it's hard for me to compromise. And of course, to have a successful relationship, one has to compromise. Sometimes I'm not good at it.
Quote by -John Mellencamp