AIN’T EVEN DONE

“ANTHONY, I’M NOT dropping names or anything, but look at the people I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the years,” John Mellencamp says as we near the end of an hour-long telephone conversation. “Stephen King. Bruce Springsteen. Larry McMurtry. I mean, I’m a kid from a small town in Indiana. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

I’ve interviewed John many times over the past 37 years. Though I was born and live in New York—a definite danger sign in John’s eyes—the five years I spent in graduate school in Bloomington hold me in good stead with him. I was a New York hick before I moved to Indiana, and John has always trusted me for that reason. I first heard of him in 1978 when a student of mine, a young woman from French Lick, handed me a copy of an EP titled U.S. Male and asked if she could write about it for my class. John and I go back a long way.

It feels good to hear him taking genuine pleasure in the things life has brought him. It hasn’t always been that way. John has been a rarity in the world of rock stars—someone who has never been afraid to tell you exactly what’s on his mind. He has left some bruises because of that, and taken a hit or two himself. So if he tells you he’s proud of what he’s been able to accomplish, you can absolutely believe it.

I would add that what’s important is not just the quality of the names that John has worked with, but the range of artistic endeavors they represent. Mellencamp collaborated with Stephen King and T Bone Burnett on the musical , which premiered in 2012 and toured through the South and Midwest. A soundtrack from the play was released on and , among other modern classics, wrote the script for the 1992 film , which Mellencamp starred in and directed. And Springsteen, to whom Mellencamp has often been unfavorably compared, has recently become his good friend. He came out to Bloomington this past spring to duet with Mellencamp and play guitar on John’s forthcoming album, .