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" People have the right to say what they want to. "
John Mellencamp
Say
Want
People
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" Wait a minute, guys, I have always been on your side. I have always spoken for you, always tried to put on a good face for the state of Indiana. All of a sudden, some of you people think I'm a bad guy? "
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" 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
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Life
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" I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is. "
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Music
Start
Thought
" I used to think that eating healthy was ordering a fish sandwich at McDonalds. "
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Think
Fish
Healthy
" 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
Culture
Okay
Music
" If you hide information from people, don't want people to see the Ten Commandments or don't want people to hear about Darwin, aren't we hiding things that we know from our future generations? I just think that that's incorrect. "
John Mellencamp
People
Think
Know
" 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
Entertainment
Look
Mean
" As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine. "
John Mellencamp
Matured
Songwriter
Realize
" '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
Green
Friend
Political
" Hanging out is a waste of time. The only time I would hang out was when I was a kid, I would hang out in the streets. But once I started making records, I stopped hanging out. "
John Mellencamp
Kid
Hanging
Time
" I was born with Spina bifida. That's where you have a hole in your spine, and your nerve endings come out. "
John Mellencamp
Hole
Your
You
" 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? "
John Mellencamp
Who
Guy
Authority
" I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty. "
John Mellencamp
Like
Dirty
Petty
" 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
Song
Doing
Care
" 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
Money
Art
Time
" 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. "
John Mellencamp
Afraid
Fail
Happen
" 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. "
John Mellencamp
Great Things
Work
Great
" 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
Time
Sunday
She
" 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
Always
Song
Life
" I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off. "
John Mellencamp
Voice
Depth
Off
" 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
Thought
Wealth
People
" 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. "
John Mellencamp
Love
Community
Compassion
" I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it. "
John Mellencamp
Comment
I See
See
" It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news. "
John Mellencamp
Singer-Songwriter
News
Responsibility
" In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that. "
John Mellencamp
Try
Think
Forward
" People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four. "
John Mellencamp
Indiana
Me
Years
" 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
Right
Tragedy
American
" 'Jack & Diane' was originally about race. I was playing nightclubs, and I was seeing new American couples, mixed-race couples. I thought it was cool. The song was my effort to make a song about that, but of course the record-company guy didn't like it. "
John Mellencamp
Cool
American
Thought
" 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
Man
Regret
People
" A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness. "
John Mellencamp
Painting
Even
Beautiful