JOHN COUGAR
John Mellencamp (born October 7, 1951), previously known as Johnny Cougar, John Cougar and John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American rock singer-songwriter, musician, painter and occasional actor known for his catchy, populist brand of heartland rock which emphasizes traditional instrumentation. Mellencamp rose to superstardom in the 1980’s with a string of Top 10 singles, including “Hurts So Good”, “Jack & Diane”, “Crumblin’ Down”, “Pink Houses”, “Lonely Ol’ Night”, “Small Town”, “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.”, “Paper in Fire”, and “Cherry Bomb”. He holds the record for the most tracks by a solo artist to hit number-one on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, with seven, and has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, winning one. Mellencamp is also one of the founding members of Farm Aid, an organization that began in 1985 with a concert in Champaign, Illinois to raise awareness about the loss of family farms and to raise funds to keep farm families on their land. Johnny Cash called Mellencamp “one of the 10 best songwriters” in music. Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008. (More from Wikipedia)
John Mellencamp is just John Mellencamp these days; but in the beginning, it wasn’t like that at all. Mellencamp was infuriated to find out that his first album, Chestnut Street Incident had been released under the name Johnny Cougar. After his next album included a Top 40 song, “I Need A Lover” – Pat Benatar also included “I Need a Lover” on her debut album, In the Heat of the Night – Johnny Cougar had a little moxie from his record sales and set about to reinvent himself, well, back to being himself. I still hear “I Need A Lover” on the radio from time to time, though if the DJ said “Johnny Cougar” or even “John Cougar”, almost no one would know who they were talking about anymore.
His third release was simply John Cougar; in Australia (according to Wikipedia), the album was called Miami. John Mellencamp kept getting better in his work, with subsequent albums Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did and American Fool (both released under the name John Cougar) spawning several hit songs: “Ain’t Even Done with the Night”, “Hurts So Good” (both suggestive of S&M), “Jack & Diane” (Gulfport has a tattoo parlor with that name, although those are the real names of the owners), and “Hand to Hold Onto”. The next step was to release his two best albums, Uh Huh and Scarecrow under the name John Cougar Mellencamp; the opening track on Uh Huh, “Crumblin’ Down” is the first song of his that I truly loved.
(July 2012)
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Last month I discussed the curious case of John Mellencamp, a/k/a John Cougar Mellencamp, a/k/a John Cougar, a/k/a Johnny Cougar.
(September 2012)
