Quotes by John Mellencamp

• What's the difference? One guy's the same as the other.
• This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it.
• 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.
• Natalie from the Dixie Chicks could have said what she said before 9-11 and no one would have cared.
• People have the right to say what they want to.
• People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They've known George Bush four.
• This is about black people selling out other black people.
• It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news.
• 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.
• 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?
• In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.
• 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.
• 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.
• When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy's hand.
• When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Do I think it's OK to fight authority as long as you're only talking about the high school teacher? No.
• I'm your average Joe guy. I don't really care for politicians.
• 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.
• 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.
• I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.
• I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.
• I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs.
• 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'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain?
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off.
• Life is short, even on its longest days.