John Mellencamp is just John Mellencamp these days; but in the beginning, it wasn’t like that at all. Early on, he was signed by David Bowie’s manager Tony Defries, who put out his first album in 1976. Mellencamp was infuriated to find out that the album, Chestnut Street Incident had been released under the name Johnny Cougar (he was already 25 by then and seems a little old to be a “Johnny”). To add insult to injury, his label MCA Records dropped him; and his second album, The Kid Inside stayed on a shelf for several years until he was able to break through. He released another album in 1979 under this name, A Biography that 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. Now that he had a little moxie from his record sales, he 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. One of his biggest selling albums (it topped the album charts in Canada), The Lonesome Jubilee introduced folk and country forms into his music. By the way, we got to see him in concert right on the front row in Long Beach, NY; quite a treat!
For some reason, the name “Mellencamp” seemed funny to media people, though it was probably the numerous name changes that did it. He was able to shut that crap down for keeps by showing a tombstone with the name in large letters on one of his videos, I believe “Small Town”. Mellencamp’s name was rightfully a point of pride with him; and eventually people began to realize how incredibly unfair the whole Johnny Cougar thing was. As far as I know, that has never happened to any other musician since. At length, after 15 years, his 11th album, Whenever We Wanted came out under his real name John Mellencamp.
