'The first record I ever bought was 'The Twist.' With my own money, I bought that by Chubby Checker and I was like, maybe, you know, 7 or 6 years old. We just wrote a letter that said, 'You guys might want to rethink about using this song,' and they quit using it.' Maybe you guys should rethink using the song.' We didn't tell him not to use it. Bob said, 'You know, McCain's using your song.' I said 'Well, he can use it if he wants to, but you probably ought to write him a letter and say, 'You know, not only that you guys are using it, but so is Barack Obama, so is John Edwards, so is Hillary Clinton, and you should understand that Mellencamp is very liberal, and do you really think that it's pushing your agenda in the right direction? I mean, you're just really falling in line with all the other liberal candidates. 'What happened was that I called up my publicity guy, a guy named Bob Merlis. On John McCain Using 'Pink Houses' In His Presidential Campaign So go from it from a different angle.' So that's what we did.' Your songs can't grow from the ground up anymore. I don't write songs for commercials, but I did this because I thought, 'Well, perhaps they are right.' I had so many people saying, 'John, you have turned down fortunes and fortunes of money, and now is the time. 'I still don't think that an artist should have to get involved with Wall Street on any level. On 'This Is Our Country' And Its Use In Commercials You've kind of got to lift up the veil of a lot of songwriters' songs to really realize what's being said.' So, you know, I've only got a few things I write about. You know, I cover race, and I cover what you're calling mortality, and then I, you know, sometimes write about girls, but I'm too old to write about that now.

'I've got the same four songs, and I just rewrite them, you know, 50 times.

Although she did say, 'Buddy, you're going to have to stop that cussing.' ' 'Before she died, she said, 'Listen, buddy, when you die, I'll be waiting on you, and you're in.' So I figure, you know, I don't - I got nothing to do. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. 'Well my grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. 1 on the pop charts, and 'Hurts So Good,' which won Mellencamp a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. But he didn't have his breakthrough until 1982, with the release of American Fool, featuring 'Jack & Diane,' which hit No. Mellencamp started writing his own music after he got his first record deal in the mid-1970s. 'And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.' 'I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out,' he said.

In a March 2009 interview with Fresh Air host Terry Gross, Mellencamp said that he almost never considered writing songs himself because he always had access to Dylan's repertoire. The Indiana-born singer-songwriter recorded the tracks for the album using just a single microphone and a mono tape recorder, in locations like Memphis' Sun Studios - once home to Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash - on his days off while he was on the road with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. John Mellencamp's new CD, No Better Than This, was produced using vintage recording equipment at historic locations in order to capture the essence of old folk, country and blues music. This interview was originally broadcast on March 31, 2009. He has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. John Mellencamp has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide.

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