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" I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off. "

John Mellencamp

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" I've been around so many people for so long that I take great delight in my own company. "

John Mellencamp

" Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll. "

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

" People have the right to say what they want to. "

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. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" Life should never be viewed from the vantage point of achievements. It is total folly. "

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

" My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious. "

John Mellencamp

" All I'm doing is painting. It's my hobby. And that's that. "

John Mellencamp

" This is about black people selling out other black people. "

John Mellencamp

" Do I think it's OK to fight authority as long as you're only talking about the high school teacher? No. "

John Mellencamp

" Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depression. I don't care whose fault it is, it's the truth. "

John Mellencamp

" When did Jimmy Stewart not play Jimmy Stewart? When did John Wayne not play John Wayne? But that's what we like about them. When you talk about acting, you really have to respond to somebody's personality. "

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. "

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. "

John Mellencamp

" 'Crumbling' Down' is a very political song that I wrote with my childhood friend George Green. Reagan was president - he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor. "

John Mellencamp

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

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

" You cannot expect the guy who drove the car into the ditch to navigate it out of the ditch. You have to put a new driver in the seat. I'm not saying the new driver is going to be any better, but we need a new driver. Kerry is the only choice. "

John Mellencamp

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

John Mellencamp

" For me to pretend I'm the keeper of the small town mentality or that's all I'm interested in is wrong. "

John Mellencamp

" My best songs come from a place outside myself. "

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. "

John Mellencamp

" There are a lot of actors who try to get records made and try to make record deals, and everybody goes, 'Ugh.' It used to be expected in the entertainment business. I mean look at Sinatra, Bing Crosby. All these guys started out as singers. "

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. "

John Mellencamp

" This cycle of make a record, tour has been going on for 20 years now. I don't even know why I do it sometimes. Do I need more money? Do I need more platinum and gold records? The only thing I can think of is ego. "

John Mellencamp

" As I get older, I have a different look on life. I just try to be a little more tolerant and a little bit more centered about what's going on around me and not so emotional. "

John Mellencamp

" I'm your average Joe guy. I don't really care for politicians. "

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. "

John Mellencamp