"He's pretty fearless," says Mike Wanchic, Mellencamp's longtime guitarist, co-producer and friend who's worked with the songwriter since 1976. He was born in tiny Seymour, Ind., then moved an hour away to Bloomington and never left. He's an irascible activist and self-described liberal who makes his home outside of America's cultural and political capitals. He's fascinated by bygone rules of etiquette and swears like a sailor. He's a committed smoker who doesn't drink. With Mellencamp, many things are true at once. What did we really expect to happen when we elect a guy like Trump?"Īt the same time, he's an enduring example of the multitudinous nature of Middle America, of its diversity of people and perspectives, of a complexity ignored by those who paint the region with a broad, red brushstroke. "And I suppose that's not comfortable, but it's to be expected. He's a storied American voice who finds himself in the crosshairs of a culture war that has divided his fan base and his Midwestern home. ![]() Long considered an unpretentious champion of the marginalized, Mellencamp now inhabits a liminal space between past and present populism between being an indefatigable symbol of the working class, and a megaphone condemning the racism, xenophobia and misinformation that has surfaced in the Trump administration's wake. "Reagan is my biggest enemy," he says on a phone call from his home in Bloomington, Ind., decrying the former president's deregulation and its ripple effect. Now, at age 70, after a lifetime of speaking his mind, he doesn't hesitate to name his adversaries. More than two decades later, in 2020, during a virtual broadcast of Farm Aid amid the coronavirus pandemic, he took a knee and heaved his fist in the air in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, prompting some ticket holders to demand a refund. "He ain't a gonna help no women/He ain't a gonna help no children/He's just gonna help his rich friends," Mellencamp sang on 1989′s "Country Gentleman," a scathing indictment of President Ronald Reagan from the album "Big Daddy," released amid the former president's last year in office. Since ascending to fame in 1982 with "American Fool," which occupied the Billboard album chart's top position for nine weeks, the artist formerly known as John Cougar has protested in song, onstage and in interviews. Mellencamp may have been topping the charts, but he was committed to the common man. With this appearance, he dug in his heels. Months earlier, he'd helped launch the first Farm Aid benefit concert in Champaign, Ill., with performances by Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and others, which drew 80,000 attendees. Mellencamp, then at the apex of his celebrity, swooped into the small Midwestern town after learning of local protests against farm foreclosures and delays in federal aid. "I hope for a moment we can have your voices be the voices of millions of people across the United States who are suffering the exact same thing." "I'm not here against any specific person," he told the crowd, and television cameras, before performing a three-song set. Nearly 36 years ago, John Mellencamp stood among 10,000 family farmers and their supporters in Chillicothe, Mo., his shaggy hair flying in the hot May wind. John Mellencamp, 70, has never stopped speaking his mind.
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