What I've Learned: John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp, 71, is an American singer-songwriter. His latest album, Orpheus Descending, is out June 16. He spoke to Esquire from his home in Indiana.
I am the luckiest motherfucker in the world.
I was born with spina bifida. I had my head cut off when I was six weeks old. There were three other kids who had that same operation that day. The other kids died, and I lived. One girl made it for a while, and I used to see her at basketball games. She was paralyzed from the neck down. She died when she was about, I don’t know, thirteen.
When I first got the name John Cougar, I said, “No, no, no, we’re not doing this.” The owner of the record company said, “Well, okay, you can go back to Indiana then. We’re done.” I’m twenty-one years old, and I was like, “Okay, I’m Johnny Cougar then.”
I really hated it for a long time. Now I’m kind of happy about it. It made me work twice as hard as I probably would have. It’s like that Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue.”
When you're talking to a songwriter, or a book writer, you’re talking to a liar. That’s what we do. We make shit up.
One day do forty-five minutes on the treadmill and then I will run wind sprints. I’ll run six to eight 40’s. The next day I'll do upper body, and then back on the treadmill. The next day it’s all weights and no running. I’ve been doing it since 1994, when I had a heart attack.
I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.
People will research for days a flat-screen TV they’re thinking about buying. They’ll research the fuck out of buying a car. But then they’ll go to the grocery store and put any goddamn thing in their mouth that they’re selling. They don’t give a shit what’s in it.
Farming is like holding a mirror up to the rest of the country.
If you listened to some of my first albums, you’d ask: Why did you even continue? My first records are that bad. My first paintings are that bad. Terrible. But I kept going.
Never gave two shits about money. But don’t get me wrong: I always wanted to get paid.
In the eighties and nineties, I hated singing the line “Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” Now I love it.
Daughters love their dad. They call me every day. The boys are different.
I don't know how many grandkids I have. A lot.
My grandfather used to say, “If you’re going to hit a cocksucker, kill him.”
I used to love to street fight. I didn’t care if I won or lost. It was the adrenaline of fighting another male. I used to like to get drunk, get a little stoned, go into a bar, and pick a fight with the biggest guy I could find. Until one night in Vincennes, Indiana, this guy beat me up so fucking bad, he just left me like a wet rag in the alley. I was unrecognizable to myself the next morning. I looked in the mirror and said, “John, the drugs and alcohol are not working out for you.” I never had a drink or smoked pot or did any drugs after that. I was twenty-one years old.
It's not like I felt stuck in Indiana. I was never stuck. It was a choice.
In some ways, you take what you can get. So I’ll take “the voice of the heartland.” But that’s not how I see myself.
It's so noisy now, I don’t know how a kid can make it.
You only have so many fucks to give in your body, so don’t give a fuck about what’s not fuckworthy.
They don't give a fuck about the small family farm.
Meg Ryan had just come out of her shell; I had just come out of my shell. We started dating. And we decided to do things on our own instead of having people do stuff for us. We were so fucking lost. We didn’t know how to do anything. I’ve never checked out of a hotel by myself. Her and I went to a grocery store, and they wanted our credit card, and we looked at each other and said, “Here it is,” and they said, “No, you’ve got to put it in this thing,” and we went, “Then what happens?” We laughed at how stupid we are, so hard we cried. I think she’s learned how to do everything, and I’ve learned how to do nothing.
My goal is to get to eighty. That gives me ten years. Do you know how fast ten years goes by for me? I’ve got only ten summers left. Ten summers is not that long.
I love Meg Ryan. I went with her for ten years. She doesn’t love me so much. She’s a great girl. I’m just a shitty boyfriend.
Do you know what luck is? Luck is thinking you’re lucky. If you think you’re lucky, you are.
I'm a really good smoker.
Read more from Esquire's iconic interview series, What I've Learned:
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