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" 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

Personality

Talk

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I wrote 'Pink Houses,' nobody was talking about that, right? The next thing I know, you can't see the TV without hearing commercials with 'Listen to the heartbeat of America,' or 'Born the American way.' That whole America thing now - I hate it. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy's hand. "

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

John Mellencamp

Believe

I Believe

" This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it. "

" 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. "

" Natalie from the Dixie Chicks could have said what she said before 9-11 and no one would have cared. "

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

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

" It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" I would never say John Kerry would be a great president. I will say that George Bush has divided us; he has filled this country with hatred. "

John Mellencamp

Great

Divided

" 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? "

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

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

" '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. "

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

" If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to. "

" 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. "

" 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. "