BLOOMINGTON, IND. — JOHN MELLENCAMP captured something about himself three decades ago when he penned the words, "I need a lover that won't drive me crazy." Someone who knows the meaning of "hey hit the highway."
These days, he could say the same for most of America's politicians.
Sure, Mellencamp is from the red state of Indiana, and he wrote all of those patriotic-sounding tunes like "R.O.C.K. in the USA" and "Small Town." But when it comes to matters of the country, Mellencamp is far from nationalistic. To say the least, he's fed up.
He thinks Barack Obama is too conservative, and every time John McCain plays his songs at a rally, the Republican nominee gets a call from a Mellencamp rep: Play the music if you want, but you better know what the lyrics mean.
According to Mellencamp, the words mean this: The government is corrupt, the war is unjust, the middle class is sunk, people are starving, racism is rampant, and those little pink houses? Couldn't we do better for the working poor?
And if pols still don't get it, Mellencamp's wish for America is spelled out in his anthem-like "Our Country": "That poverty could be just another ugly thing / And bigotry would be seen only as obscene / And the ones that run this land help the poor and common man / This is our country."
The message seems to have gotten through; McCain has all but stopped playing Mellencamp's songs, except for a few instances when the sound-booth guy accidentally cues the wrong track.
They're still featured at some of Obama's events, and that's OK with Mellencamp, even though he was strongly behind former Sen. John Edwards' presidential run. ("He was much more liberal than any candidate that we have now, and he really had an interest in the poor people," Mellencamp said recently. He joked: "And I guess we found out he had an interest in girls too.")
The singer's unedited candor comes through in his music and in his casual conversation. The morning after playing a charity show for a local crowd at the small Crump Theater in nearby Columbus, Ind., Mellencamp sat for an interview in the vast art studio on his lakeside property outside this college town.
The space is light and bright, with high ceilings, white slip-covered furniture and bookcases (filled with art books and family photos -- among them snapshots of Mellencamp's model wife, Elaine, and their two teenage sons). A long bank of windows frames the wooded hillside. A large easel is set up in the corner, where Mellencamp paints on oversized canvases (with a style reminiscent of Basquiat mixed with a bit of Robert Indiana).
