Top 100 Mellencamp Quotes
#1. I have to say, the coolest person I ever met in my whole life is John Mellencamp. I never met a person who was more secure about himself and his person.
Steven Adler
#2. The chorus of "Jack and Diane" is: Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. Are you kidding me? The thrill of living was high school? Come on, Mr. Cougar Mellencamp. Get a life.
Mindy Kaling
#3. Farm Aid was started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews as a concert to support small local farms in the U.S.
Rebecca Pidgeon
#4. Springsteen might have been able to tear through my heart, but Mellencamp shot straight through my soul.
Kristen Ashley
#5. Now more than ever the world needs love, not just a slogan.
John Mellencamp
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Do I think it's OK to fight authority as long as you're only talking about the high school teacher? No.
John Mellencamp
#9. Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying And dying to me don't sound like all that much fun
John Mellencamp
#10. 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.
John Mellencamp
#11. 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
#12. It's a lonely ol' night. Can I put my arms around you?
John Mellencamp
#13. 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.
John Mellencamp
#14. What's the difference? One guy's the same as the other.
John Mellencamp
#15. With no bottom line, it's hard to know wrong from right. But I ain't ever satisfied.
John Mellencamp
#16. It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news.
John Mellencamp
#17. I want you to dance naked, if you like, I'll join you.
John Mellencamp
#19. You shouldn't even be in a band if you can't play Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away.
John Mellencamp
#20. 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.
John Mellencamp
#21. 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.
John Mellencamp
#22. Music actually meant something when I started doing it. Too bad I wasn't mature enough to write anything that meant anything.
John Mellencamp
#23. I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.
John Mellencamp
#24. The dust to which this flesh shall return, it is the ancient dreaming dust of God.
John Mellencamp
#26. 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
#27. I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it.
John Mellencamp
#28. 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.
John Mellencamp
#29. 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
#30. 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.
John Mellencamp
#31. You know, it's cigarettes that killed Jerry Garcia. Everyone thinks it's heroin, but it wasn't. It was cigarettes.
John Mellencamp
#32. We have been lied to and terrorized by our own government, and it is time to take action.
John Mellencamp
#33. Be careful of those who kill in Jesus' name; he don't believe in killing at all.
John Mellencamp
#34. When you live life for yourself it's hard on everyone. And that hasn't changed. For me, if anything, it's gotten worse.
John Mellencamp
#35. 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.
John Mellencamp
#36. 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.
John Mellencamp
#38. I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty.
John Mellencamp
#40. It's what you do and not what you say. If you're not part of the future, then get out of the way!
John Mellencamp
#41. 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
#42. People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four.
John Mellencamp
#43. 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
#44. I have a bunch of information in my head that I'm not afraid to put in song or onto a canvas. Into any conversation.
John Mellencamp
#45. 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.
John Mellencamp
#46. When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.
John Mellencamp
#47. 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.
John Mellencamp
#48. I know a lot of funny people in a lot of funny places.
John Mellencamp
#49. 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
#50. Ain't that America, home of the free? Little pink houses for you and me.
John Mellencamp
#51. 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.
John Mellencamp
#52. 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.
John Mellencamp
#53. I'm your average Joe guy. I don't really care for politicians.
John Mellencamp
#54. Give me someone I can look up to, show me someone I can love.
John Mellencamp
#56. Don't ever lose that innocent laughter, don't let time take that away
John Mellencamp
#57. Future generations, riding on the highways that we built, I hope they have a better understanding.
John Mellencamp
#58. 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.
John Mellencamp
#59. Check it out, forgot to say hello to my neighbors. Check it out, sometimes I question my own behavior.
John Mellencamp
#60. 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.
John Mellencamp
#61. 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.
John Mellencamp
#63. Go to work and be a Hollywood stud, drive your four wheel drive right into the mud.
John Mellencamp
#64. 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.
John Mellencamp
#65. I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs.
John Mellencamp
#66. The simple man, baby, pays for the thrills, the bills, and the pills that kill.
John Mellencamp
#67. 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
#68. 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.
John Mellencamp
#69. 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
#70. I need a lover that won't drive me crazy, someone that knows the meaning of hey, hit the highway.
John Mellencamp
#71. 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.
John Mellencamp
#72. All I'm doing is painting. It's my hobby. And that's that.
John Mellencamp
#73. 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?
John Mellencamp
#74. I'm trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically.
John Mellencamp
#75. 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.
John Mellencamp
#76. 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?
John Mellencamp
#77. 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
#79. This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it.
John Mellencamp
#81. I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off.
John Mellencamp
#82. Sometimes love don't feel like it should, you make it hurt so good.
John Mellencamp
#83. We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at.
John Mellencamp
#85. His frustration running very high, he takes it out on the ones he loves because it's safe.
John Mellencamp
#86. Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness will help a man walk tall. Walk tall!
John Mellencamp
#88. 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.
John Mellencamp
#89. 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
#90. If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease.
John Mellencamp
#91. 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.
John Mellencamp
#93. 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
#95. 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.
John Mellencamp
#96. 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.
John Mellencamp
#97. As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine.
John Mellencamp
#98. All I can do is repeat what I think is the best information that anybody ever gave me.
John Mellencamp
#99. There is nothing more sad or glorious than generations changing hands.
John Mellencamp
#100. Hold on to 16 as long as you can. changes coming round real soon, make us women and men.
John Mellencamp
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