John Mellencamp Quotations

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.

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

When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions.

People have the right to say what they want to.

When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.

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.

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

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.

It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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?

This is about black people selling out other black people.

We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at.

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.

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.

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.

People didn't listen to the song; they just heard the word Baghdad. They got angry. I was commenting on his economic position, not the war.

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.

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

I didn't know if I was ever gonna finish the record. We just kept working on it and working on it and it got to a point where we quit.

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.

The Legacy label is a Sony company that deals in their old catalogue. They put out the Robert Johnson collection and tons of reissued material.

Music actually meant something when I started doing it. Too bad I wasn't mature enough to write anything that meant anything.

I'm trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically.

All I can do is repeat what I think is the best information that anybody ever gave me.

I've never fit in in any music world. I've always been an outsider. I mean, the fact that I live in Indiana - I live in a fly-over state. I'm not running away from anything, that's the problem. Most people go to cities because they don't like where they come from.

I've never had anybody produce my records. I've always produced my own records. I've worked with a guy for a while who was an engineer who helped me produce records, but I've always made my own records. I'm a control fanatic. I've got to control everything.

I'm looking for trouble. A lot of people get to be a certain age and they just kind of lose interest or they give up. But I'm looking for trouble.

I enjoy the pleasure of my own company.

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.

The simple man, baby, pays for the thrills, the bills, and the pills that kill.

It's a lonely ol' night. Can I put my arms around you?

Sometimes love don't feel like it should, you make it hurt so good.

You can't tell your best buddy that you love him.

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

Check it out, forgot to say hello to my neighbors. Check it out, sometimes I question my own behavior.

The dust to which this flesh shall return, it is the ancient dreaming dust of God.

Give me someone I can look up to, show me someone I can love.

I know a lot of funny people in a lot of funny places.

I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,

I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money.

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

they say life goes on long after the thrill of living

Don't ever lose that innocent laughter, don't let time take that away

We have been lied to and terrorized by our own government, and it is time to take action.

Hold on to 16 as long as you can,

Immersing yourself in the environment of a real record store where music is celebrated and cherished adds real value to the experience of buying music. In some ways, that retail experience is as important as the music.

Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness will help a man walk tall. Walk tall!

You shouldn't even be in a band if you can't play Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away.

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

I do things my way and I pay a high price.

She said she wasn't afraid of Satan, in fact, she thought he was a joke. She said she'd tear his tail off and run her fist down his throat.

She chased after her dream with much desire, but when she got to close to her expectations, well the dream burned up like paper in fire.

This is serious business, sex, violence, and rock and roll.

I want you to dance naked, if you like, I'll join you.

There's a young man in a T-shirt listening to a rock and roll station. He's got greasy hair, greasy smile, he says, Lord this must be my destination.

My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And shed 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.

My voice has gotten better from smoking.

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

Dear Mr. President, can I ask you a question, when the bombs fall down will they hurt everyone in my family?

Mama, why do I always fall for the crazy ones?

I fight authority and authority always wins.

Go to work and be a Hollywood stud, drive your four wheel drive right into the mud.

Now more than ever the world needs love, not just a slogan.

I need a lover that won't drive me crazy, someone that knows the meaning of hey, hit the highway.

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

You have to reinvent yourself.

You know, it's cigarettes that killed Jerry Garcia. Everyone thinks it's heroin, but it wasn't. It was cigarettes.

Be careful of those who kill in Jesus' name; he don't believe in killing at all.

Nobody heard anything ahead of time.

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.

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.

I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines.

Now I do have a choice, and I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do.

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

In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.

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

Back in the '80s and '90s, when there was still a record business, there was pressure on anyone who was fortunate to have a few hits on a major label to continue that success.

For me or a Bruce Springsteen to sit up in our ivory towers and make comments about racism, well, were not really in it, are we?

Rock'n'roll starts between the legs and goes through the heart, then to the head. As long as it does those three things, it's a great rock song.

I'm not a nostalgic person. I'm not nostalgic about much of anything.

I've just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn't qualify as a hit record-but it's really the best single I've ever had.

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.

The Internet is the wrong direction for music.

Country sure has changed in the last 10 years. It was one thing, then it was another. Country has slowly marched toward a rock beat and rock preservation. Country artists of today. Man! That's how I used to sound in the '80s.

Future generations, riding on the highways that we built, I hope they have a better understanding.

Want me to spend the night? Hey lover boy, you know I will, and my best girlfriend lives down the road, together we will thrill you.