1. John Mellencamp is known for his brand of heartland rock, which emphasizes traditional instrumentation.
103 Facts About John Mellencamp
1. 2.
John Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, followed by an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
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John Mellencamp has scored fourteen top 20 hits in the United States.
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John Mellencamp has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, winning one.
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John Mellencamp has sold over 60 million albums worldwide, with 30 million in the US.
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John Mellencamp is 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.
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John Mellencamp was born in Seymour, Indiana, on October 7,1951.
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John Mellencamp was born with spina bifida, for which he had corrective surgery as an infant.
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John Mellencamp formed his first band, Crepe Soul, when he was 14.
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John Mellencamp attended Vincennes University in Vincennes, Indiana, starting in 1972.
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John Mellencamp reluctantly agreed, but the album was a commercial failure, selling only 12,000 copies.
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John Mellencamp recorded The Kid Inside, the follow-up to Chestnut Street Incident, in 1977.
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However, DeFries eventually decided against releasing the album, and John Mellencamp was dropped from MCA records.
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John Mellencamp drew interest from Rod Stewart's manager, Billy Gaff, after parting ways with DeFries and was signed onto the small Riva Records label.
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At Gaff's request, John Mellencamp moved to London, England, for nearly a year to record, promote, and tour behind 1978's A Biography.
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Scarecrow was the first album John Mellencamp recorded at his own recording studio, jokingly dubbed "Belmont Mall," located in Belmont, Indiana, and constructed in 1984.
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Shortly after finishing Scarecrow, John Mellencamp helped organize the first Farm Aid benefit concert with Willie Nelson and Neil Young in Champaign, Illinois on September 22,1985.
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The album, which John Mellencamp called at the time the most "earthy" record he'd ever made, is the last to feature the "Cougar" moniker.
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John Mellencamp was heavily involved in painting at this time in his life and decided not to tour behind Big Daddy.
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John Mellencamp returned to the concert stage in early 1995 by playing a series of dates in small Midwestern clubs under the pseudonym Pearl Doggy.
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In 1999, John Mellencamp covered his own songs as well as those by Bob Dylan and the Drifters for his album Rough Harvest, one of two albums he owed Mercury Records to fulfill his contract.
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John Mellencamp embarked on the Cuttin' Heads Tour in the summer of 2001, before the album was even released.
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John Mellencamp opened each show on this tour with a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and played a solo acoustic version of the Cuttin' Heads track "Women Seem" at each show.
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In October 2002, Mellencamp performed the Robert Johnson song "Stones in My Passway" at two benefit concerts for his friend, Billboard magazine editor-in-chief Timothy White, who died from a heart attack in 2002.
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John Mellencamp sang the gospel song "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" at White's funeral on July 2,2002.
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John Mellencamp participated in the Vote for Change tour in October 2004 leading up to the 2004 US presidential election.
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John Mellencamp would leave the stage as Donovan played seven or eight of his songs and then return to finish off his own set after Donovan departed.
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John Mellencamp released Freedom's Road, his first album of original material in over five years, on January 23,2007.
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John Mellencamp intended for Freedom's Road to have a 1960s rock sound while still remaining contemporary.
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John Mellencamp provides background vocals to three other songs on Life, Death, Love and Freedom, which became the ninth Top 10 album of Mellencamp's career when it debuted at No 7 on the Billboard 200 the week of August 2,2008.
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John Mellencamp participated in a tribute concert for Pete Seeger's 90th birthday on May 3,2009, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which raised funds for an environmental organization founded by Seeger to preserve and protect the Hudson River.
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John Mellencamp recorded the album using a 1955 Ampex portable recording machine and only one microphone, requiring all the musicians to gather together around the mic.
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John Mellencamp wrote over 30 songs for the record, and he wrote one song specifically for Room 414 at the Gunter Hotel.
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On December 6,2009, John Mellencamp performed "Born in the USA" as a tribute to Bruce Springsteen, who was one of the honorees at the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors.
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John Mellencamp performed "Down by the River" on January 29,2010, in Los Angeles in tribute to Neil Young, who was honored at the 20th annual MusiCares Person of the Year gala.
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John Mellencamp sang the hymn "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" at "In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement" on February 9,2010.
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John Mellencamp, who co-headlined 11 shows in the summer of 2010 with Bob Dylan, launched the No Better Than This theater tour on October 29,2010, in Bloomington, Indiana.
38.
On this tour, which ran through the summer of 2012 and covered the entire United States, Canada, and much of Europe, John Mellencamp opened each concert with a showing of a Kurt Markus documentary about the making of No Better Than This called "It's About You" before hitting the stage to play three different sets: a stripped-down acoustic set with his band, a solo acoustic set, and a fully electrified rock set.
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John Mellencamp played for over two hours and included 24 songs on his tour's setlist.
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John Mellencamp brought the No Better Than This tour to Europe in the summer of 2011, opening in Copenhagen on June 24.
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John Mellencamp took part in two Woody Guthrie tribute concerts in 2012 as part of a year-long celebration surrounding the 100th anniversary of the folk icon's birth.
42.
On July 8,2014, John Mellencamp released a new live album called Performs Trouble No More Live at Town Hall without any advance notice.
43.
In October 2013, John Mellencamp revealed that he was working on a new album.
44.
In January 2014, John Mellencamp began recording the project, which would ultimately be titled Plain Spoken and would become his 20th album of original material and 22nd studio album overall.
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On November 19,2014, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, John Mellencamp performed an acoustic cover of Billy Joel's "Allentown" at a tribute event to Billy Joel.
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In December 2015, John Mellencamp began recording a duets album with Carlene Carter, who was his opening act for all shows on the Plain Spoken Tour and would join John Mellencamp for two songs during his set.
47.
In contrast, John Mellencamp wrote the music to "My Soul's Got Wings," giving life to a previously unheard lyric written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie.
48.
On February 1,2018, Netflix began streaming a concert that took place on October 25,2016, at the Chicago Theatre as part of John Mellencamp's Plain Spoken Tour.
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The 80-minute film is more of a documentary than a true concert film, as John Mellencamp narrates the entire presentation with stories about his childhood, his early days in music, his relationship with his family, the music business and many more topics.
50.
John Mellencamp released a compilation album of cover songs titled Other People's Stuff on December 7,2018.
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John Mellencamp began a 39-date theater tour in February 2019, dubbed "The John Mellencamp Show," that concluded April 30,2019, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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John Mellencamp confirmed in 2021 that it will be a jukebox musical titled Small Town and the story will involve two kids named Jack and Diane.
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John Mellencamp said that he had not written any new material for the project.
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John Mellencamp told iHeart Radio in January 2022 that "Small Town" was scheduled to debut in Louisville in September 2022, but that didn't happen.
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John Mellencamp revealed that the album had the working title of Strictly a One-Eyed Jack.
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John Mellencamp resumed recording on the project in March 2021, with plans to cut at least some of the 17 songs he wrote while in quarantine in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In May 2021, John Mellencamp revealed that he recently finished the album and that Bruce Springsteen would make a guest appearance on the project.
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John Mellencamp released a CD and documentary of his 2000 Good Samaritan Tour, which consisted of free lunchtime concerts in city parks, on August 27,2021.
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On September 29,2021, John Mellencamp released the audio and music video for "Wasted Days," a duet with Springsteen, as the lead single from Strictly a One-Eyed Jack.
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John Mellencamp stated in 2021 that he had booked 80 shows for 2022, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic ultimately caused him to cancel his 2022 Strictly a One-Eyed Jack tour and push it until 2023.
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John Mellencamp launched a 78-date tour called "Live and in Person" on February 5,2023, in Bloomington, Indiana.
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John Mellencamp debuted "Hey God" and "The Eyes of Portland," two songs from Orpheus Descending, in his 2023 live set.
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John Mellencamp co-wrote several of his best-known songs with his childhood friend George Green, who, like John Mellencamp, was born and raised in Seymour, Indiana.
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John Mellencamp has created an important body of work that has earned him both critical regard and an enormous audience.
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John Mellencamp is arguably the most important roots rocker of his generation.
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Former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty said of Mellencamp:.
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John Mellencamp is one of the great American songwriters and a great rock spirit.
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John Mellencamp has won one Grammy Award and has been nominated for 12 others.
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John Mellencamp has been awarded the Nordoff-Robbins Silver Clef Special Music Industry Humanitarian Award, the Billboard Century Award, the Woody Guthrie Award, and the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award.
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On October 6,2008, John Mellencamp won the prestigious Classic Songwriter Award at the 2008 Q Awards in London, England.
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John Mellencamp was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 14,2018.
72.
On September 9,2010, John Mellencamp received the Americana Lifetime Achievement Award in Nashville.
73.
John Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2008.
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John Mellencamp was inducted by his good friend Billy Joel, who asked Mellencamp to induct him into the Rock Hall back in 1999.
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On October 18,2024, a statue of John Mellencamp was unveiled on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington.
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John Mellencamp has made several forays into acting over the years, appearing in four films: Falling from Grace, Madison, After Image, and Lone Star State of Mind.
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John Mellencamp wrote the score for the Meg Ryan movie Ithaca, which premiered on October 23,2015, at the Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia and was released in theaters and on-demand by Momentum Pictures on September 9,2016.
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John Mellencamp wrote about half of it after I read him the script, and then the next half after he saw the movie.
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John Mellencamp's band provided the backing on both tracks and performed all the music in the movie.
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John Mellencamp began working on a musical with horror author Stephen King, titled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, in 2000.
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Production on the musical's recorded soundtrack began on June 15,2009, when T Bone Burnett, who served as the project's musical producer, began laying down tracks in Los Angeles for the songs John Mellencamp wrote for the project.
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John Mellencamp holds liberal views and is a supporter of the Democratic Party.
83.
In 2003, John Mellencamp became one of the first entertainers, along with Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks, to publicly oppose the Iraq War, a stance that was unpopular at the time.
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John Mellencamp expressed annoyance that the lyrics of his 1983 song "Pink Houses" were taken out of context and used as a patriotic anthem.
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John Mellencamp released the song "To Washington" in 2003 amidst the impending US invasion of Iraq, which was critical of the war and the 2000 US Presidential elections.
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John Mellencamp noted, "When the song first came out, I was in the car one day, and we were driving to the airport, and I had my kids with me, and a radio station was playing 'To Washington' and having callers call in", Mellencamp said.
87.
On his 2007 album, Freedom's Road, Mellencamp included a hidden track called "Rodeo Clown," which was a direct reference to George W Bush.
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John Mellencamp McCain stop using his songs, including "Our Country" and "Pink Houses," during their campaign events.
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John Mellencamp performed "Small Town" at a Barack Obama rally in Evansville, Indiana on April 22, the night of the 2008 Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary.
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John Mellencamp performed "Our Country" at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Indianapolis, Indiana, on May 3,2008.
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On January 18,2009, John Mellencamp performed "Pink Houses" at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.
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In 2010, John Mellencamp's music was used by the National Organization for Marriage at events opposing same-sex marriage.
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John Mellencamp's version featured new lyrics that reflected the racial conflicts in the US in the wake of the murder of George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police officers.
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In January 2018, John Mellencamp purchased an 1,800-square-foot loft in the Soho district of New York City for $2.3 million that he is using as an art studio.
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John Mellencamp is a supporter of Indiana University Bloomington and the Indiana Hoosiers and received an honorary doctorate from the university in 2000.
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John Mellencamp donated $1.5 million to the school to build an indoor athletics training facility, which was named John Mellencamp Pavilion.
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John Mellencamp was married to Priscilla Esterline from 1970 until 1981 and to Victoria Granucci from 1981 until 1989.
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John Mellencamp married fashion model Elaine Irwin on September 5,1992.
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On December 30,2010, John Mellencamp announced that he and Irwin had separated after 18 years of marriage.
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John Mellencamp has five children from his three marriages: daughter Michelle from his marriage to Esterline; daughters Teddi Jo and Justice from his marriage to Granucci; and sons Hud and Speck from his marriage to Irwin.
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Daughter Teddi John Mellencamp Arroyave was a cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for three seasons.
102.
In September 2015, John Mellencamp reportedly started dating former supermodel Christie Brinkley.
103.
John Mellencamp had a minor heart attack after a show at Jones Beach in New York on August 8,1994, which eventually forced him to cancel the last few weeks of his Dance Naked tour.