His disciplinarian father, an executive with a local electronics firm, tried to motivate him to pursue athletics and his studies, with little luck. With a rebellious streak, Mellencamp hung out with his friends and partied instead of paying much attention to his schooling. He started playing in a cover band called Crepe Soul in his early teens. Mellencamp, who recovered from neonatal surgery to correct a spinal defect, developed an early interest in music. John Mellencamp was born on October 7, 1951, in Seymour, Indiana. Elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following year, he continues to release new material and tour regularly. 1 track "Jack & Diane," and throughout the decade he cemented his popularity through hits like "Pink Houses and "Small Town." Mellencamp continued churning out music as his sound matured, returning to the spotlight in 2007 with his album Freedom's Road. His breakthrough 1982 album, American Fool, featured the No. He often gave a voice to the American small-town experience in his music - something he knows quite well from his childhood in Indiana. A pop sensation in the 1980s, Mellencamp has evolved into one of rock’s most enduring acts. "My manager went in and was talking to the record company, and the president of the record company - who I won't mention his name, but you could probably figure it out - said, 'I don't know why Mellencamp insists on having these singing with him," Mellencamp said on The Howard Stern Show in 2017 (via Ultimate Classic Rock).John Mellencamp began his musical career in the mid-1970s as Johnny Cougar. What do those Mellencamp collaborators have in common? They're African-American, and a Columbia Records executive had a problem with that. Seven years earlier, the singer had one of the biggest hits of his career with "Wild Night," a duet with Meshell Ndegeocello. That song appeared on his Columbia Records album Cuttin' Heads, of which the title track found Mellencamp performing with Public Enemy rapper Chuck D. In 2001, Mellencamp released the single "Peaceful World," a duet recorded with India.Arie. And after building up a long career and selling millions of albums, he has enough clout in the music industry to call it out when sees that kind of behavior go down. With his work on Farm Aid and songs about the working class, it tracks that John Mellencamp doesn't care much for injustice or intolerance. The role instead went to some guy named Brad Pitt. According to a 2017 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Mellencamp says he turned down the role of hunky J.D. (Despite the parallels to his real-life, the film is not biographical.) Mellencamp's first film could have come earlier, and might have made him into a star. Written by Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry and actually directed by Mellencamp himself, this 1992 movie is about a country music star whose life is a mess to heads back to his Indiana hometown to get his head on straight. His biggest acting work to date (among about four movies) is his film debut: Falling from Grace. While those musical stars successfully branched out into this other form of entertainment, Mellencamp resisted the lure of pursuing silver-screen stardom. As a photogenic guy with millions of fans, Hollywood came calling for John Mellencamp the way it has for so many other well-known musicians, from Elvis Presley to Dolly Parton to LL Cool J.
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