Scarecrow

He's, he's probably struggling a little bit on stage now, but he has a great band that's been with him for a long time, and it still sounds like no other.

Um, so Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, and I'm gonna play the fantastic album that was Scarecrow, and I'm gonna play the song Small Town.

And-

Mm

... uh, that, that song, uh, went to number six on the charts from the 1985 album Scarecrow, and he wrote that about either growing up in a small town or living in a small town.

Beautiful.

He's a great storyteller, John, John Mellencamp, isn't he?

And so, um, I became an assistant engineer on, um, Uh-huh, and then we went and John wanted to build a studio for h- like that he still has now.

It's called Belmont Mall, where he's done every record since Scarecrow.

And we took the design of Studio B at Rumbo and basically took that exact design and, and plans.

The same woodworker did the wood.

So anyway, it was Greg Edward that brought me into the Mellencamp world, and then he was not, um, he didn't have great people skills.

He could piss people off.

And so basically, after Scarecrow, John was like, "I don't want this guy around." And so I stayed moving forward with Mellencamp for quite a few years, um, working with John and then making other records like R.E.M.

with Gehman, um, in, in, in Belmont.

What do you think?

Well, he, he never had his Scarecrow moment.

He never had, or even the albums afterwards, I don't think Bryan Adams ever had the critical appeal that Mellencamp did in the middle of his career.

Like, that Scarecrow-

All right.

Uh, r- I mean, Reckless is, is a pretty-

[laughs]

... get together to talk about albums from Robert Dimery's list of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Now, if this is your first time listening to the show, welcome.

If you're a longtime listener, you know that on this show, we are going to give you some background on this artist leading up to the recording of the album, talk a little bit about the individual tracks.

Oh, man.

So more on later in our story as to why he felt that he had to record this album in just 16 days.

The next number we're gonna throw out is 60, as in John, Johnny Cougar, John Cougar Mellencamp, has sold over 60 million albums worldwide and still chooses to live in Indiana.

[laughs]