John mellencamp jack and diane

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At least part of “Jack & Diane” was coming together.

But there was still the big drum moment that Mellencamp desired. “Mick was very instrumental in helping me arrange that song, as I’d thrown it on the junk heap. I mean, that’s the whole point. This is really a song about race relationships and a white girl being with a black guy, and that’s what the song’s about.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no, no.’ … So, anyway, through much debate and me being young, I said, ‘Okay, we’ll make him a football star’.”

Mellencamp changed his socially conscious song into a tune about “typical” teenagers, drawing on the film of Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth.

So he put the percussion on there and then he sang the part, ‘Let it rock, let it roll’ as a choir‑ish‑type thing, which had never occurred to me. I take pride in the fact that I was able to create these songs. But even as the recording was taking shape, neither the singer nor his record label seemed too pleased with the results.

It was a toss-up as to what made Riva Records more upset: the money Mellencamp and pals had been spending in Miami’s Criteria Studios or the songs that they had created.

The idea, the singer would later explain, of the final version of “Jack & Diane” was to find significance in the insignificant. All of a sudden, for ‘Jack & Diane,’ Mick said, ‘Johnny, you should put baby rattles on there.’ I thought, ‘What the fuck does put baby rattles on the record mean'?

“John came in one day and, after he sat down and played it, he said, ‘This is what I want to create. Meanwhile, American Fool reigned atop the albums chart from early September to early November. “When I play it on guitar by myself, it sounds great; but I could never get the band to play along with me.

I thought, ‘Shit.’ I said, ‘How do all these fucking people know this song?’"

It seems that, decades into his career, fans’ reactions can mean much more that monetary success when it comes to “Jack & Diane.” “I think people, particularly in the Midwest, really identified with these characters,” Mellencamp told Rolling Stone.

Plus, they had no idea how to record a “bombastic entrance of some drums” like the one on the Collins single. “I don’t take pride in the fact that one song was able to climb the charts and one song wasn’t. But I do. “I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, ‘I’m Jack and I’m Diane.

When the label wanted to put money into music videos for the lead single (and smash hit) “Hurts So Good” and “Hand to Hold on To,” Mellencamp surreptitiously secured materials to ensure a video for “Jack & Diane,” too.

“He said, ‘Look, there’s a song on the album the label doesn’t believe in.

Instead of describing the difficulties of being in an interracial relationship, he imbued the lyrics with hallmarks of his own small-town upbringing and referenced universal issues of growing up and moving on. “In 1982, when I turned the song in to the record company, they went, ‘Whoa, can’t you make him something other than that?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t really want to.

He programmed the steady beat for the first half of the song.