They wouldn't let me have a sound check, George and I wrote that together, almost sent them around, and mine for "Lover" was then I was really militant for that time period carnival with her husband. "Lonely 01' Night" and so I didn't feel good about that. We didn't as a competition between us. George and I shot in the Marquee club in London. about endorsements and sponsorships. I could is about average people. Rather than looking have a lot of songs back then, but all I had to very rarely wrote songs in the same room I remember flying down to Australia, and see that these McDonald's hamburger places for some weird location of Duran Duran's that offer was my best effort on the few we did. together. I would usually have lyrics and say, I didn't know what a hit record was until I were running the little mom -and -pop places nobody's ever gonna be able to visit, I just Before the first song was over, Kenny had "Here, see if you can make these better," and found I was, like, a teen idol there.When I got out of business, and these small towns in the said, "The carnival's coming to Bloomington busted his snare drum and broken his cym- I'd get back a whole different song or poem, off the airplane there were thousands of Midwest couldn't remain towns -they were next week, let's use that." bal, Mike's amp had gone out andToby's had and the same thing would happen to him. screaming girls, and I had just left America closing down their main streets because they gone out. I eventually said, "For those of you But for "Crumblin' Down," we sat and couldn't compete with agribusiness and all The big surprise of the serious Scare- who came to see me, we're not able to do our looked eye to eye and tried to out -do each these big corporate chain stores that were crow album was that its giant hit was the show tonight because this gear ain't worth a other's next best line. I'd say," 'Some people coming into each county. light- hearted "R.O.C.K in the U.S.A.," which shit, and if it was up to me I'd give you your ain't no damn good, you can't love them, can't I think the first song written for Scarecrow shot to No. 2 on The Billboard Hot 100- money back. Instead, here, you can have this trust them, no good deed goes unpunished.' was "Small Town." I remember (second wife) yet you didn't even want it on the record. shit gear. "We started handing out the ampli- Okay, George, take it!" He'd come up with three Vicky and my AuntToots laughing about it. I'd fiers, the mikes, the drums. I didn't know at or four lines. It was real fast [snapping his fin- sing, "I was born in a small town," and they I was really struggling with what I thought the time that that was the same stuff the gers]; it wasn't our normal way, where we'd just kept adding their own stupid, funny vers- my job was, and that song didn't fit into that Beach Boys planned to use!" [Laughter] take weeks and weeks, tinkering with lyrics es, 'cause I used to write down in the laun- idea at the time-it was just too poppy. I was before I even tried to put them to music. In dry room of my house, and you could hear enjoying a lot of pop success at the time but Making friends, everywhere you go. recording "Crumblin' Down, "I can still see Mike me. That song was intended as a folk song, I thought "R.O.C.K." was too poppy. I thought Wanchic playing a ketchup bottle for a per- probably like Woody Guthrie's'This Land Is people would think I was selling out. I didn't Oh, and Mike Love was pissed off! But this cussion instrument, and it broke right in the Your Land." For me, it was always about realize that they already thought I had (Huge would prove to be another lesson: Any time I middle and ketchup went all over. We were just Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Nobody else laughter], so it didn't matter. did anything just for money and not because I picking up anything handy to use. ever entered into it, despite all the bullshit thought it was a good idea, it never worked out. written at that time. Sometimes you can try too hard to live "Authority Song" was in the spirit of Some people just have better PR than oth- up to something. To get limbered up for Uh -Huh 11983], your band's jams on rock classics. ers. Look at a guy like Donovan and all the you and the band rehearsed a lot of old great records he's made. "Universal Soldier" Particularly when you don't know what the rock chestnuts and B- sides. That was like the Bobby Fuller Four meets was a great song, and "Catch the Wind," and fuck you're trying to live up to! Bob Marley, in terms of inspiration.The feel that [1969) Barabajagal album. He's just Right! Uh -Huh, unlike American Fool, was that Marley was able to get on "No Woman where I couldn't get arrested. I said, "What's totally forgotten! How fair is that? Still, " R.O.C.K." was very effective at a lot of fun, because I was starting to find my No Cry," where he was carefully telling a going on here? " They said, "You." Molly would making people recall great American feet as a songwriter -songwriting really went story but you still felt the rebellious nature have me on Countdown a lot, and if you were Not fair at all. Donovan also wrote rock'n'roll -and the fact it was made up the ladder in terms of importance. We of his soul-that's what I was trying to get on Countdown even once, it was a big deal. I "WearYour Love Like Heaven," "Season of by both black and white kids, as the weren't young boys anymore; we were get- with "Authority Song." got Molly mad at one point when I got inter- the Witch," and "Sunshine Superman," but video accentuated. ting ready to turn 30 years old. Things like viewed in my hotel at the end of the weeks - all that great work still exists, waiting to "What does John Mellencamp want to say ?" You cut Uh -Huh very quickly. long trip, and I was so burnt out that when be rediscovered, like a lot of your back It is one of my only gold singles (besides had never dawned on me before that time, some journalist asked me about being on Aus- catalog. Meanwhile, the first single from "Hurts So Good" and "Jack and Diane "). But I which is when I wrote "Pink Houses." Yeah, in, like, 16 days.We spent half the tralianTV, I sighed and said it was stupid.What Scarecrow was "Lonely 01' Night," which can remember being on the phone with Dick time fucking around with some song by Louis I meant was, "l'm tired and wanna go home." you shot at a local carnival with George Asher, who was president of PolyGram at the Recount the exact inspiration for that. Johnson from the Brothers Johnson, who Molly wrote a piece in the country's TV mag- Green's wife portraying your girlfriend. time, screaming at him from a hotel room in played bass on that record; he came in and azine headlined JOHNNY COUGAR BARES Driving back from the Indianapolis airport said, "Hey man, see if you can make a song HIS IMMATURE CLAWS. He was right. I apol- "Lonely 01' Night" is named for some lines one day, I saw that scene of the black man out of this lick," and it was a good lick but the ogized and he forgave me. from Larry McMurtry's book Hud, and the Paul and the pink house on the interstate; the guy song we made stunk. So the rest of the album We're still friends. Matter of fact, I did a Newman movie based on it. I watched that was sitting in his front yard with the interstate really took six days to make. [Chuckling] We painting of him, called Molly the Ghost Cow- movie a thousand times during that time in running right over his head. I thought to recorded it all in a place called the Shack, a boy, that Molly donated to the Sydney Art my life. When you're in your early 30s, you myself, "How do people live like this ?The traf- fallen -down old farmhouse halfway between Museum. It's in my book [Mellencamp: Paint- think that there's more to life than there is, fic must make you go crazy, going, "RRRRHH- Brownstown, Ind., and Seymour, that my sis- ings and Reflections, HarperCollins, 19981. where I was so antsy and so bored all the time HH, RRRRHHHH," all night long, while you're ter had bought to fix up; she had a boyfriend With Canada, it was a place we always and so lonely. I was around the band and I had inside these little wooden shotgun houses." and when they got married they were gonna loved to play.