John Mellencamp Quotes

Author Image

John Mellencamp

Profession : Musician

Birth : October 7, 1951

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.

John Mellencamp

Sound quality was supposed to be one of the big selling points for CDs but, as we know, it wasn't very good at all. It was just another con, a get-rich-quick scheme, a monumental hoax perpetrated on the music consuming public.

John Mellencamp

I was born with Spina bifida. That's where you have a hole in your spine, and your nerve endings come out.

John Mellencamp

Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, 'Okay, here's another great record by Bob Dylan; here's another great record by Led Zeppelin.'

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.

John Mellencamp

I used to think that eating healthy was ordering a fish sandwich at McDonalds.

John Mellencamp

Radio was my friend after 'Jack & Diane' and 'Hurts So Good.'

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.

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.

John Mellencamp

If I laugh a couple of times a day, I'm doing good. People think it's their God-given right to be happy, and it's just not. It's something you've got to work at. I like to paint the human condition, and the human condition is not smiles and happy people.

John Mellencamp

I wanted to study at the Art Students League in New York when I was young, but I didn't have the money. Then I was fortunate enough to become Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. At the time, I thought I'd make a couple of records and get back to painting. It never dawned on me that I'd be 64 years old and still making music.

John Mellencamp

I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded.

John Mellencamp

Everything I have is for sale. Material items are just things that pass through your hands that mean very little or nothing.

John Mellencamp

I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion.

John Mellencamp

I'm as left-wing as you can get.

John Mellencamp

A lot of the time, I write in the third person, but I'm mostly describing my own ordeals. When those unsettled struggles prey on your mind, you become haunted. To get free, you must defeat your ghosts.

John Mellencamp

My best songs come from a place outside myself.

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.

John Mellencamp

I believe in something, even if it's just me.

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.

John Mellencamp