Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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

Ridiculous

Sell

Teenagers

" 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. "

" Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album. "

John Mellencamp

Two

First

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it. "

" Take 'Jack and Diane.' I was so disgusted with people thinking the line 'Hold on to sixteen as long as you can' meant to stay a teenager forever. What I meant was keep doing whatever makes you feel alive. "

" 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. "

" A lot of record company people, even though they're our age, want to be perceived as young hip guys, and they're hurting the business. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine. "

" 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

Small

Pretend

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

" 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? "

" The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased. "

" I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" What's the difference? One guy's the same as the other. "

" People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four. "

John Mellencamp

Indiana

Years

" I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty. "

John Mellencamp

Dirty

Petty

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