Joe Rogan Experience #2438 - John Mellencamp

Joe Rogan 0:02 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. [upbeat music] Okay, cool.

John Mellencamp 0:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Why, why would I hate my tattoos?

John Mellencamp 0:16 Because you get older, and they get all smudgy, and-

Joe Rogan 0:19 Mine are getting kind of smudgy.

John Mellencamp 0:21 Yeah, well look at-

Joe Rogan 0:22 I don't mind them.

John Mellencamp 0:22 Look at this one.

Joe Rogan 0:24 It's pretty smudgy. [laughing] Pretty fucking smudgy.

John Mellencamp 0:28 [laughing] I, I owned a tattoo parlor in, uh, I don't know what year it was, mid-'80s, and they were illegal in Indiana, but because it was me, they said, "Okay, leave him alone."

Joe Rogan 0:41 Really?

John Mellencamp 0:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:42 I remember when they were illegal in New York. I used to-- I went to Connecticut to get my first tattoo.

John Mellencamp 0:48 Yeah, I, uh, I didn't know it was illegal, but I met this guy in LA, and, uh, he worked at Sunset, you know, where the Hyatt House is, and there was a tattoo parlor right across the street. Anyway, he was there, and, uh, so I brought him to Bloomington 'cause he wanted to get out of LA, and guess why they closed me down?

Joe Rogan 1:13 Why?

John Mellencamp 1:14 Fucking guy was a heroin addict. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:18 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:18 I know, and he did this tattoo one time, and I went over-- I just went over to the shop. I said, "Hey, let's do this little..." And he was all fucked up, [chuckles] and it was just like, "What's wrong with him?" You know, 'cause I didn't know. I don't know anything about heroin addicts, so...

Joe Rogan 1:35 There wasn't a lot of heroin addicts back then. That was a rare thing. Now, when you think about how many people are... Because of the Sackler family, think of how many people are hooked on opiates today. I mean, it's gotta be, uh-

John Mellencamp 1:47 Lots.

Joe Rogan 1:49 It's off the charts in comparison to what it was like in, you know, the 1980s. There's-- I mean, I knew one guy that, uh, had a friend who did heroin. That's it.

John Mellencamp 2:01 Well, I was at a... The first time I saw somebody do heroin was, uh, I was in college, and there was a place called Bull Island that tried to imitate Woodstock, and me, and my then wife, and my kid, my little girl, and, uh, and my roommate, who lived with us, we're just walking down, [chuckles] and we see this guy shooting up, so we just thought, "Well, we'll watch."

Joe Rogan 2:31 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 2:33 'Cause he was just sitting right there, and, uh, I mean, I-- there was, like, two hundred thousand people there. And he shot, and he went out. And I looked at the guy I was with and go, "Well, we won't be doing this." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:49 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 2:49 "We're not gonna do this."

Joe Rogan 2:52 I had a friend who was a longshoreman, and he worked with this guy that every lunchtime, he would go and score, and sit in his truck, and shoot up, and that's what he did every lunch. He was a functional heroin addict, and he would show up for work every day, and he did his job. But, uh, during lunchtime, during his hour, he would do heroin and just fucking find his happy place and then an hour later, go back to work.

John Mellencamp 3:23 And he, and, and the one shot would last all day?

Joe Rogan 3:26 I don't know. I don't know if he did hero- I didn't ask if he did heroin after that as well. I'm assuming he probably did, but he was a functional heroin addict. Like, guy kept a full job. He was in the union, and everybody knew. This guy would go on his break, shoot up.

John Mellencamp 3:46 Last time I did drugs was 1973.

Joe Rogan 3:53 What was the reason you stopped? [chuckles]

John Mellencamp 3:55 You want to hear?

Joe Rogan 3:56 Yeah, yeah. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 3:58 Well, I used to like to smoke and drink whiskey, and then I liked to fight.

Joe Rogan 4:08 Oh, that's a problem.

John Mellencamp 4:10 I couldn't whip anybody.

Joe Rogan 4:11 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 4:13 I could, I could-- But I loved the contact and the, the, the, the rush of, like, you know, starting the fight. But so anyway, [chuckles] I was in college, and my roommate and I went to this downtown bar, which we'd never been to, and I sat down at the bar, and I would start these fights, you know, just a prick. And, uh, I was sitting next to this big guy, and, uh, for whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea if I spit on him.

Joe Rogan 4:51 Oh!

John Mellencamp 4:52 One of those guys. You know, you know those guys that get drunk and-

Joe Rogan 4:56 Oh, yeah.

John Mellencamp 4:57 Yeah. Well, that was me.

Joe Rogan 4:59 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 5:00 So I did, and we went out back, and he left me in the alley like a wet rag. I mean, he beat the shit out of me. Beat the shit out of me, and I was a hippie. I had hair down to here, and they-- the guy, my roommate, dr- was driving me home in an old Pinto, and I was leaning on the door like this. I was so fucked up from getting beat up. I mean, the oars around my face were this big, and I was leaning on the door, and all of a sudden, he went over a railroad [chuckles] track, and I fell out of the car.

Joe Rogan 5:41 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 5:42 Got my hair wrapped around the jigamaflop that hold, holds the car, and the guy that I'm with, drunk, just driving. He didn't even know I fell out of the car, and I'm going, "Stop the car! Stop-" He went, "Oh! [chuckles] Oh." And, uh, so I got up the next morning, and I looked at myself-... and I was unrecognizable. I had road rash on my arms, uh, my knees were all fucked up, my face was beat up from the- And I just said, "You know, this drug and alcohol thing is not working for you." And so I, I went and got all my hair cut off. Not as short as yours, but not much longer. And, uh, that was it.

Joe Rogan 6:31 Well, you found your rock bottom.

John Mellencamp 6:34 Yeah. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 6:34 That's what they say. They say you need to find rock bottom.

John Mellencamp 6:37 Yes-

Joe Rogan 6:37 I would've never imagined that you would be the type of guy that would fuck with people at a bar, and spit on somebody, and start a fight. It just-- you just don't seem like that at all.

John Mellencamp 6:47 Well, I grew up in a small town, and, uh, there was not much to do in a small town. Uh, you know, you would either, uh, find a girl or, or fight. Just-

Joe Rogan 7:00 I figured you for the find-the-girl type of guy. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 7:03 Well, you know, I, I, I was, uh... I did okay with that, but it didn't always work. So, yeah. Yeah, it was like, uh-- Don't forget, Joe, it was like 1967, '66. You weren't, you weren't even born yet.

Joe Rogan 7:21 I was born in '67.

John Mellencamp 7:22 Yeah, so this is like 1967.

Joe Rogan 7:24 Wow!

John Mellencamp 7:25 So, you know... So from that time on, until I turned 21, I was 21 when I quit using drugs, and quit smoking, quit drinking.

Joe Rogan 7:37 Wow!

John Mellencamp 7:38 So I-

Joe Rogan 7:38 And nothing since then?

John Mellencamp 7:39 Not a drop.

Joe Rogan 7:40 That's impressive.

John Mellencamp 7:41 Not a drop. Well, you know, I think I've thought about it, and I, I think that I didn't really like it that much. [laughing] You know, as much as I thought I did.

Joe Rogan 7:51 Well, you certainly didn't like the results, right?

John Mellencamp 7:53 Well-

Joe Rogan 7:53 One bad result will-

John Mellencamp 7:56 Will do you in.

Joe Rogan 7:56 Will set you straight.

John Mellencamp 7:57 Yeah, will do you in. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:00 You were, uh, a big part of my high school experience. It w- it was interesting because you, uh, your songs sort of introduced the idea of nostalgia to me, you know?

John Mellencamp 8:13 I don't know what that means.

Joe Rogan 8:14 Well, uh, the- when you were singing songs like Jack and Diane, it's like I, I was kind of realizing as I was a very young guy, listening to those great songs, that there's, there's gonna be a t- like, this is a weird time in life, and there's gonna be a time where you're gonna look back on this, and it's probably one of the best times of your life, but even though it doesn't feel like it. It felt, you know, it felt confusing and weird, and I, I remember thinking at the time like, "My God," like, "is this as good as it gets?" You know, some people look back on this weird, confusing time of adolescence as the happiest moments of their life. I'm like, "I can't wait to get the fuck out of this time of my life." And it's like, you know, you were singing from a position of, like, an everyman position of n- you know, you were, you were singing nostalgia... They were great fucking songs. They had heart, and there was, there was soul to them, but it was like, it was a lot of sadness, you know? A lot of, "Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone." And I was like, "Oh, Jesus Christ, life's gonna go [laughing] this is it?"

John Mellencamp 9:31 This is it.

Joe Rogan 9:31 This is it! [laughing]

John Mellencamp 9:32 This is it. Well, I-- listen, I struggled with that, probably like you did, or he did. Uh, you know, there's a point in a man's life where he feels like, "There's got to be more to life than this." I mean, I had huge hit records and, you know, very, very, very, very, very lucky. Very lucky. You know, everything was j- you know, it was just, I was just lucky. And I would go home, and I would think, "I'm not happy. There's got to be more to life than this." And then guess what happened? I got a little bit older, and I found out there's not.

Joe Rogan 10:21 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 10:23 And I'm good at it. I'm good at it. So, you know, we're only on this earth for a few fucking minutes. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, and quit being confused, and accept your responsibilities, and, and try to, you know, maintain some humility, which was a million miles away from me spitting on people- [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 10:45 Right

John Mellencamp 10:45 ... in a bar. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 10:46 What didn't you enjoy about being this enormous rock star in the early days of MTV? I mean, you were a rock star when it became a totally different thing because it was like this visual thing that was in everyone's household now.

John Mellencamp 11:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 11:00 It wasn't as simple as, you know, you were on The Tonight Show, and you would sing this musical segment, and people would have to go see you live, to go see you perform.

John Mellencamp 11:08 Well, and all you got to see of guys in rock bands were their album covers.

Joe Rogan 11:13 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 11:14 You know?

Joe Rogan 11:14 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 11:15 You would, you would go to a record store and, and file through the records, and if you liked the way a band looked, you would buy the record.

Joe Rogan 11:22 Yep.

John Mellencamp 11:22 At least I would.

Joe Rogan 11:23 I would, too. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 11:23 And, and so, um... I forgot the question.

Joe Rogan 11:29 Well, I was just saying like, w- what was it-- what was not good about that? I mean, what, what was that experience like, being this enormous rock star that left you feeling like you wanted more, that you weren't happy?

John Mellencamp 11:43 Uh, I think that, uh, for me, I think you, I, I think it- when that, when that happens, it's the age you're at, and I think it's a chemical imbalance in our brain. And as we grow older, it kind of finds its way. And like I said, I just woke up one day and just went, "Hey, this is all there is. Accept it."... and try to show some humility and, and try to be good at it. And it, I never thought about it again.

Joe Rogan 12:17 That's interesting. Well, you're a, you're a snap-out-of-it type of guy, right? You snapped out of drugs and alcohol. You snapped out of feeling sorry for yourself.

John Mellencamp 12:26 Yeah, I-

Joe Rogan 12:26 That's a good trait to have.

John Mellencamp 12:28 Well, I'm very lucky that, that I'm j- listen, Joe, you're looking at the luckiest fucking guy you, you've ever interviewed. I don't give a shit who you've interviewed. I'm the luckiest guy you know. I was born with spina bifida. Do you know what that is?

Joe Rogan 12:44 I don't.

John Mellencamp 12:46 That's where you have a hole in your spine, and [clears throat] the fluid and all of the, your nerve endings... Like, on me, look at the back of my neck.

Joe Rogan 13:04 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 13:05 You see that scar?

Joe Rogan 13:06 Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. That scar is huge.

John Mellencamp 13:11 That's 1951.

Joe Rogan 13:13 In 1951, you got that operation?

John Mellencamp 13:16 I, I was born with it. You're born with spina bifida. And-

Joe Rogan 13:20 So what did they do to-- What, what was that operation exactly?

John Mellencamp 13:25 Well, they had to, uh... Well, here's the story. I was a-- My parents are only 20 years older than me, so I was born deformed, and my parents didn't know what the fuck to do. You know, "What are we gonna do with this kid?" So they just went like that to my grandmother, "Here, you take him." And, uh, so I was in the hospital, and, uh, there were four other kids, and there was a young doctor named Heinberger, who was just a young neurosurgeon. Don't forget, neurosurgery in 1951 was in its... So he just said, "Well, we've gotta try to do something with these kids." And, uh, so he operated on all of us. I was the only one that lived.

Joe Rogan 14:21 Oh, boy!

John Mellencamp 14:23 You know, the fact that-- And he charged my parents a dollar for the... You know, 'cause it was an experiment. I was like a guinea pig, and these other poor kids who had the same thing I did, uh, they all died within, you know, six months.

Joe Rogan 14:43 Oh.

John Mellencamp 14:44 I remember seeing one girl that made it till she was 14, and she was in a wheelchair. I would see her at basketball games, and my parents would go, "That's the other little girl that had the same operation you did," and then she died. So my whole life has been full of luck. I mean, uh, I'm not supposed to be here.

Joe Rogan 15:09 What did they do during the operation? What is the procedure?

John Mellencamp 15:13 Well, they have to cut your head off, [chuckles] for starters. You know, they had, they had to cut my head and lay it open-

Joe Rogan 15:22 Oof

John Mellencamp 15:22 ... to get to my spine, and then they would push each individual nerve ending back down into my spine, dr- drain the fluid off, uh, sew it back up, and make sure that everything was working. And, uh, they told my parents, "You know, look, uh, here he is. He's probably going to die becau- get encephalitis, and his head's gonna fill up with water. We, we don't anticipate him living much more than six or seven months." And I was, fuck, I think I was in fifth grade. I didn't even know I'd had the operation, and some kid in my class said, "Hey, Mellencamp, what's that big scar on the back of your neck?" Don't forget, now we're talking, you know, 1957, '58, '60, maybe. I didn't even know there was a scar back there, you know? [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 16:24 Wow!

John Mellencamp 16:25 Went like I was going, and my parents never told me. So [clears throat] I came home, and I asked my old man, I said, "Dad, what, what's with the scar on the back of my neck?" And he goes, "Oh, don't worry about it. You had an operation when you were born." So I did it. I played football. I ran track. I fought. You know, I did everything that every other kid did without a thought of that. Not until I got older and I ha- started having panic disorder, that I thought, I thought maybe the, the panic disorder was from, uh, from that operation.

Joe Rogan 17:04 How old were you when you started having panic disorder?

John Mellencamp 17:07 Uh, I was just out of college. I couldn't leave the house. I became what they call, uh, what's that called? Agoraphobia.

Joe Rogan 17:14 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 17:15 Yeah. So I had agoraphobia for about a year and a half, and then I got a record deal, and I had to leave the house. I mean, I was married in high school. I got married in high school, and the girl I was married to was five years older than me, you know.

Joe Rogan 17:31 How old were you?

John Mellencamp 17:33 Eighteen.

Joe Rogan 17:34 Eighteen?

John Mellencamp 17:35 Yeah. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 17:35 You had a kid, right? You had a kid real young.

John Mellencamp 17:38 Yeah, she's, uh, 50-something now.

Joe Rogan 17:41 Wow.

John Mellencamp 17:42 I, I have three girls and two boys.

Joe Rogan 17:44 Weren't you a grandfather when you were in your 30s?

John Mellencamp 17:47 [scoffs] Maybe. [laughing]

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John Mellencamp 19:16 'Cause that oldest daughter of mine got married when she was, like, 19.

Joe Rogan 19:21 Wow!

John Mellencamp 19:22 Not much to do in a small town, man.

Joe Rogan 19:24 Yeah. [chuckles]

John Mellencamp 19:25 Uh, not much to do.

Joe Rogan 19:26 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 19:27 So that's the spina bifida.

Joe Rogan 19:31 But it never bothered you again other than the panic? Do-- W- were you performing when you were having the panic stuff?

John Mellencamp 19:38 Oh, man, I have been on stage in front of, like, 20,000 people and had a panic attack.

Joe Rogan 19:45 Oi!

John Mellencamp 19:46 Yeah, it's like... Have you ever had one?

Joe Rogan 19:48 No.

John Mellencamp 19:50 You're lucky, 'cause you feel like, uh, "I can't breathe."

Joe Rogan 19:56 Mm.

John Mellencamp 19:57 "My chest hurts," and, uh-

Joe Rogan 20:01 I've seen it. I've seen people have them. It's, it's horrific.

John Mellencamp 20:05 Yes, it is.

Joe Rogan 20:05 You can't do anything for them. You're like, "Are you okay?" You think they're having a heart attack-

John Mellencamp 20:08 Yeah

Joe Rogan 20:08 ... you think they're dying.

John Mellencamp 20:09 Yeah. Well, I've been on stage, and I remember having to plant my feet and just power through, you know, in front of 20,000 people, and it was just, it was awful.

Joe Rogan 20:21 Did it pass while you were on stage?

John Mellencamp 20:23 Yeah. Uh, I don't know if it did. I just remember it happening numerous times. And then guess what happened? I had a fucking real heart attack on stage at Jones Beach [chuckles] like 30 years later.

Joe Rogan 20:35 Oh, Jesus.

John Mellencamp 20:36 I know. So... But you know what that heart attack led to? I was m- I just married Elaine, uh, Irwin, and we had two little boys, and I got to stay home. 'Cause I said, "Fuck that, I'm gonna die." I didn't know about heart disease. "I'm gonna die, so I wanna spend the last couple years of my life with my boys," who were little, teeny guys, which I wanna tell you a story about them and you. Uh, and, uh, uh, so I got to actually kinda not be in the music business, which pleased me. Uh-

Joe Rogan 21:19 How old were you when you had your heart attack?

John Mellencamp 21:20 42.

Joe Rogan 21:21 Oh, geez.

John Mellencamp 21:23 And, uh, [clears throat] so I got to stay home. I stayed home for three and a half years. Elaine didn't model, and we just... You know, we had TV shows we watched, which is unheard of in my life. You know, like, "Hey, it's Thursday night. [chuckles] Let's watch, let's watch this!" You know? Which is where you come in. So the boys were little, and they loved your show. They loved your fucking show. And I was kinda like, "I don't know if the kids should be watching this," you know?

Joe Rogan 21:56 You talking about Fear Factor?

John Mellencamp 21:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:57 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 21:58 Yeah. "I don't know if the kids should be watching..." So I made a deal with them. "All right, you guys, you can watch this show, but you have to watch 60 Minutes, too." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 22:09 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 22:10 "So if you're gonna watch this, then you gotta watch 60 Minutes." And they obliged, which surprised the hell out of me. But it was like, "Dad, 60 Minutes is on. Dad, Fear Factor's on!" "I know." So we would watch it together. I mean, how lucky is that?

Joe Rogan 22:26 That-- Well, it sounds like it was a blessing in disguise.

John Mellencamp 22:30 Yeah. Well, that's-

Joe Rogan 22:31 Yeah. It gave you a pause.

John Mellencamp 22:33 You know what luck is?

Joe Rogan 22:34 What?

John Mellencamp 22:35 Thinking you're lucky.

Joe Rogan 22:36 Mm!

John Mellencamp 22:38 Thinking you're lucky.

Joe Rogan 22:39 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 22:39 You know, what you think about yourself, all comes true. I wrote it in a song once. What you think about yourself will come true.

Joe Rogan 22:47 Mm.

John Mellencamp 22:48 So if you call yourself a dumbass, guess what? You do it enough, and you start-- your brain starts to believe it.

Joe Rogan 22:56 What caused your heart attack at such a young age?

John Mellencamp 22:59 [chuckles] Me being stupid. Uh, I would go in and to, uh, get a physical, and, uh, they'd go, "John, your cholesterol is off the charts. It's, it's at 400." And, and I would go, "Am I all right now?" And they'd go, "Well, yeah, you're all right now." "Good!" 'Cause I didn't want to get on medicine.

Joe Rogan 23:20 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 23:21 You know, and statin drugs had just become... You know, just were invented, uh, you know, at that time. People started using the statins, and I didn't want to take them. I didn't know what they were. But I know all about heart disease now, 'cause you-

Joe Rogan 23:37 Did you have plaque? Did you have arterial plaque?

John Mellencamp 23:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:40 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 23:41 Yeah. And, uh, uh, it runs in my family. I have a sister that has-- or she used to, I don't think she does anymore, but she-- her cholesterol was a 500. Imagine? That's like-... It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 23:57 Cholesterol is a very controversial subject now, 'cause people are starting to try to sort out what is the actual cause of heart disease, and there's a lot of people that don't believe it is cholesterol. They think it's arterial plaque. And what is that stuff called? Nattokinase? I, I don't know how to pronounce it, but there's a, a supplement, like an over-the-counter supplement, that's supposed to be able to eliminate arterial plaque in a very profound way that they're just starting to realize.

John Mellencamp 24:29 I don't know, but what-

Joe Rogan 24:30 It's clogging of it.

John Mellencamp 24:32 Listen, what-- I, I was in New York once with a girl, and I went to the doctor with her. She was an actress, and she was getting a physical, and she wanted me to go, so I went with her. And, uh, she went to the best doctor in New York City, [sniffs] and I found myself alone with that doctor. And I said, "So, uh, [sniffs] the doctor in Bloomington just put me on metformin. What's the side effects for metformin?" And this guy, Joe, is the guy, he went longevity, and he said, "If it was up to me, I'd put the entire United States on metformin and a statin, because the fucking food we eat is terrible."

Joe Rogan 25:25 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 25:25 "It's processed, it's this-

Joe Rogan 25:27 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 25:27 ... and that," you know, and he just said, "You know, the, the human body was not meant to eat this crap."

Joe Rogan 25:34 That's a fact.

John Mellencamp 25:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:35 Yeah. I think the solution is probably eating food that you're meant to eat, but metformin is, uh, one of those drugs that longevity doctors recommend. I've never been on it, but, uh, I know s- quite a few people that have. I, I think, uh, isn't it a diabetes drug initially?

John Mellencamp 25:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:51 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 25:51 And I, uh, my mom died of diabetes-

Joe Rogan 25:55 Mm

John Mellencamp 25:55 ... so, uh, I was always borderline, and I'm still borderline, and this was-

Joe Rogan 26:00 She get Type 1 or Type 2?

John Mellencamp 26:02 Well, she started out with two, and then she paid no attention to it, wouldn't take her medicine. We'd drive by Krispy Kreme, and she'd go- [laughing] "Just don't tell your dad! Okay."

Joe Rogan 26:14 Uh-

John Mellencamp 26:14 And she'd get a half a dozen, you know, Krispy Kremes and eat them, and it's just like-

Joe Rogan 26:18 Yeah

John Mellencamp 26:18 ... hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:19 That's where it's at. It's, it's the food. [sniffs] It's a horrible thing that we've done to this country. You know, there's-- I mean, this is the most controversial thing about RFK Jr., I guess, or one of the most controversial things, is the elimination-

John Mellencamp 26:33 [coughs]

Joe Rogan 26:33 ... of all the stuff that's already eliminated in a lot of European countries. He's-

John Mellencamp 26:38 I, I had a friend come here from Europe who had not ever been to the United States and got sick-

Joe Rogan 26:44 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 26:45 ... just from eating.

Joe Rogan 26:46 Just eating our food.

John Mellencamp 26:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:47 It's crazy. Just our bread. What is that, that supplement?

26:52 Yeah, it's not a... You had it right.

26:53 How do I say it?

26:54 I think of how you were saying it.

26:56 Can you find out what it's supposed to do? Like, what-- because there's a recent study.

27:00 Oh.

27:00 There it is. Okay. So natto k- [sighs] yeah, that's it. "Nattokinase supplementation can significantly reduce the size of existing arterial plaques and slow the progression of arster- arteriosclerosis." I never say that word. Uh, atheri- atherosclerosis. Ath- no, atherosclerosis? Whatever. "Particularly at [chuckles] higher doses. Uh, nattokinase and arterial plaque reduction. Multiple clinical trials provide evidence that nattokinase, an enzyme derived from fermented Japanese food, natto, has a positive effect on, a- ather OS sclerosis, hardening and narrowing of the arteries due to plaque buildup." Yeah, so folks, go take that stuff. High-dose supplement shrinks arterial plaque by thirty-six percent. Very interesting stuff.

John Mellencamp 27:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:51 And it's a very common supplement. It's an easy-to-get supplement and, you know, comes from fermented food.

John Mellencamp 27:57 Mm-hmm. Well, you know, if you-- if, you know, I've watched a lot of things about the food that we eat, and-

Joe Rogan 28:06 Terrible.

John Mellencamp 28:07 Terrible.

Joe Rogan 28:08 Well, a bunch of monsters decided to make more money, and the way they make more money is to throw a bunch of preservatives and bullshit and stuff in the food, so that it keeps their shelf life as long as possible.

John Mellencamp 28:19 Oh, yeah. You, you've heard those stories about, uh, taking, a, uh, a, a hamburger that you would buy at a very popular store and just putting it in a box and leaving it for five years, and you- five years later, it's-

Joe Rogan 28:33 Oh, yeah.

John Mellencamp 28:34 I-- my, my, some of my grandkids were at my house in, on Daufuskie, and, uh, they had an ice cream sandwich, and he only ate half of it, and it sat there for three hours and did not melt.

Joe Rogan 28:52 Yeah, I've seen those. [laughing] Yeah, that's not ice cream.

John Mellencamp 28:56 That's not ice cream. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 28:57 I don't know what the fuck's in there, but it's not regular ice cream. The Burger King or the, well, McDonald's hamburger thing is nuts. 'Cause what is the longest that that guy-- there's one guy that's had one on a shelf at his house for... God, I w- I wanna say it's close to 20 years or something crazy like that. It's just sitting there, and you would think that he got it five hours ago.

John Mellencamp 29:20 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:21 And we're supposed to be eating that.

John Mellencamp 29:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:23 And for a lot of people, that's a big portion of their diet is fast food, which is just crazy. You're just sucking down all these chemicals and preservatives.

John Mellencamp 29:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:31 'Cause if something cannot rot, can sit there and not rot-

29:34 The Quarter Pounder that's 30 years old, it says.

29:37 [chuckles] It's a Quarter Pounder that's 30 years old. Wow! That is insane.

John Mellencamp 29:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:45 That's insane.

John Mellencamp 29:46 That's craziness.

Joe Rogan 29:48 Wow. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 29:51 Yeah, our, our f- our food source... And, and I, I don't know about RFK Jr. I, you know, I don't follow what he says or listen to-- I try not to listen to much politics.

Joe Rogan 30:01 Good for you.

John Mellencamp 30:02 You know why?

Joe Rogan 30:03 That's another good way to not have a heart attack. [chuckles]

John Mellencamp 30:05 ... Well, you know why? 'Cause it, it's all, you know, I was a hippie.

Joe Rogan 30:09 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 30:09 And I grew up thinking, [clears throat] you know, that anybody over 30 was the enemy.

Joe Rogan 30:15 Right.

John Mellencamp 30:16 And, you know, it's kinda like, [chuckles] my- I remember when Kennedy was shot, I asked my dad, I go, "Do you..." And I was like a kid. I go, "Do you really think o- one guy did it?" And he just looked at me and went, "What do you think?" And that was the whole, his whole answer.

Joe Rogan 30:37 Wow. Well, he knew it back then. That's interesting, 'cause it took a long- it took until, uh, Dick, Dick Gregory brought the Zapruder film on the Geraldo Rivera show, which was, I think it was 12 years after Kennedy's assassination, that people realized that he probably had gotten shot from the front.

John Mellencamp 30:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:56 'Cause his head went back and to the left.

John Mellencamp 30:59 Yeah, and, a- a- and I've seen that, and, uh, I remem- my dad was a Young Democrat, you know, and, and, uh, so he, he was involved a, a lot with the Democratic Party back then. And, uh, uh, I'd ask him questions, and he never would really give me answers. He would just give me looks. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 31:27 Oh. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 31:29 It was kinda like... And he knew the look! It was just like, "Uh, what do you think, John? You really think somebody did that? You, you know, figure it out for yourself."

Joe Rogan 31:44 Yeah, not much has changed.

John Mellencamp 31:47 A- and that's why I don't watch... I don't, you know, I used to be very politically minded and, and cared about what politicians said. I don't give a fuck what they say. I don't trust any of 'em. I don't like any of 'em. Not that I don't like 'em-

Joe Rogan 32:05 Right.

John Mellencamp 32:06 It's just that I don't, I, I... You know, it's just hard to believe anything that anybody says because everybody's spinning everything in such a way that it's just, like, for their purposes, you know, so, you know.

Joe Rogan 32:21 And unfortunately, we're more aware of it now than ever before. There's less trust in politics now than there's ever been, and then there's more people talking about politics than there's ever been. There's more polarization. I mean, I don't know what it was like when, uh, you were a kid, but wh- when I was a kid, there, there wasn't this polarization between people that were conservative and people that were liberal. Like, you could hang out and talk to each other. You didn't-- they didn't hate each other. They just thought the other person was a fool for having a different opinion than them, but there wasn't hate like there is today.

John Mellencamp 32:54 Well, here's the way you gotta look at it, [chuckles] this is that when you used to vote, you would go inside a place, and they would shut the curtains-

Joe Rogan 33:05 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 33:06 ... and you would vote, and that was your fucking business.

Joe Rogan 33:08 Yep.

John Mellencamp 33:09 It's nobody else's business. [cup clanks] So, like, you know, it's like, uh, you know, uh, I'm for anybody that's doing good. If you're doing good and you're not hurting somebody, go, man. But, uh, you know, I, I'm not for cheating, and, you know, how about a little morality and-

Joe Rogan 33:33 Yeah

John Mellencamp 33:33 ... integrity in what you're saying and doing? It's-

Joe Rogan 33:37 That would be nice. It would be nice.

John Mellencamp 33:39 Well, it's, it's never been that way.

Joe Rogan 33:41 No, never.

John Mellencamp 33:42 It's ne- it's never been that way. I mean, in the, in the '60s, when I was a hippie, uh, I mean, people think that this is, like, really bad. No, it was really bad when fucking Russia had, had, uh, uh, missiles in Cuba, and it was really bad when kids with long hair were getting shot at Kent State.

Joe Rogan 34:09 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 34:10 I mean, it was really-

Joe Rogan 34:11 Yeah

John Mellencamp 34:11 ... the separation of, of, of adults and, and, and kids. You know, there was a change that was happening. And, uh, of course, the change happened, and all my generation did was get to wear blue jeans to work. [chuckles] That was about it. That's about all we accomplished.

Joe Rogan 34:31 Well, the change was because it was the first generation that realized that the war that they were being sold was bullshit.

John Mellencamp 34:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:37 You know, uh, the people that were involved in World War I and World War II, they thought they were stopping the world from an evil dictator taking over and, and just ruining the world. That's what we-- we're-- in World War II, United States was fighting Hitler. You, you, you can't get a more evil person that's l- leading an army that you wanna fight against than that guy, right? So everybody felt like that was a just war. Came back from that war victorious. America had national pride. We did it. We're the good guys. But then all of a sudden, we're in Vietnam. Like, what the fuck are we doing in Vietnam? Didn't make any sense.

John Mellencamp 35:15 Well, back up, Joe. What do you think the Civil War was fought about?

Joe Rogan 35:20 The Civil War?

John Mellencamp 35:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:22 Well, slavery was a big one.

John Mellencamp 35:24 No, no.

Joe Rogan 35:26 No?

John Mellencamp 35:26 Ports.

Joe Rogan 35:27 Ports.

John Mellencamp 35:28 They fought-- it was fought over ports. The port in Savannah, Georgia, was the biggest port in America, and the ports in Boston, New York, were struggling. And the North said, "Hey, why don't you guys send some of that our way? You guys got more than you can handle." And they said, "Fuck you, no. No, we're, we're not, we're not sending you any of our stuff." And they just kinda went, "Well, then fuck you, we're gonna come down and take it. But how are we gonna get the f- American people to get behind that? Slaves. We'll say it's to free the slaves."

Joe Rogan 36:10 Really?

John Mellencamp 36:11 ... Yeah, I li- I, I have a house in the South, and, and, [chuckles] uh, that's what it was about. It was about the ports. Slavery was just an excuse, 'cause nobody cared about Black people-

Joe Rogan 36:26 So you-

John Mellencamp 36:26 ... North or South.

Joe Rogan 36:27 Wow! So you think that if they had just spread the wealth a little bit, that that would not have happened, and slavery would have still continued? Don't you think that... I mean, there was already a distaste of slavery because it wasn't, it wasn't ubiquitous in the North, but in the South-

John Mellencamp 36:43 But it, but it was.

Joe Rogan 36:44 In the North, it was?

John Mellencamp 36:45 Yeah. I, I mean, Lincoln had slaves.

Joe Rogan 36:48 Right, back then, but not in, uh, not in the 1860s when they were fighting the Civil War.

John Mellencamp 36:56 He was president.

Joe Rogan 36:58 Really? He had slaves when he was fighting in the war?

John Mellencamp 37:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:03 I wasn't aware of that.

John Mellencamp 37:04 Yeah, a lot of people in the North so- you know, they weren't at- they, they hadn't spun it to be so cruel as the South was, apparently.

Joe Rogan 37:15 Well, there was more in the South, right? Because of plantations, and-

John Mellencamp 37:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:20 So here it is: Abraham Lincoln never personally owned slaves. This is according to Perplexity, which is our, uh, AI sponsor, which is always very accurate. Either before or during his presidency, according to mainstream historical scholarship, claims that he had slaves through inheritance or marriage come from fringe or highly disputed sources and are not accepted by most professional historians.

John Mellencamp 37:44 That's me. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 37:46 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 37:47 I'm fringe.

Joe Rogan 37:47 Lincoln was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana and Illinois, all as a non-slave owner, working as a laborer, a lawyer, and a politician. He was a really good wrestler, too. Um, being related to slaveholders did not legally make those enslaved people his property, and the best documented homes Lincoln himself maintained in Illinois and Washington employed free servants, not slaves. Hmm, okay, where'd the idea come from?

John Mellencamp 38:14 Okay, hold on for a second. Let me stop for a second. You can call it what you want.

Joe Rogan 38:17 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 38:18 Free servants. Call it what you want.

Joe Rogan 38:21 Well, they were free-

John Mellencamp 38:22 But they were-

Joe Rogan 38:22 ... and they were getting paid is like, means like you said, you had a housekeeper.

John Mellencamp 38:26 It was still, it was still a minstrel show, no matter how you cut it.

Joe Rogan 38:29 Mm, okay. Uh, some modern writers and websites argue Lincoln inherited or ordered-- this is where the idea Lincoln had slaves came from. Uh, websites argued i- Lincoln inherited or ordered the sale of slaves via the Todd estate, but these claims hinge on a small number of contested documents and are rejected by most specialists in Lincoln studies. Hmm.

John Mellencamp 38:51 There you go.

Joe Rogan 38:52 Well, it's interesting that the-

John Mellencamp 38:55 The fact that we're even talking about it.

Joe Rogan 38:57 Mm-hmm. Well, it's kind of crazy how recent it was. That's what's really crazy.

John Mellencamp 39:01 Oh, yeah, it wasn't that long ago. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 39:03 Two year- two people ago, you know?

John Mellencamp 39:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:05 People lived to be 100.

John Mellencamp 39:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:06 You know, 1865 is roughly two people ago.

John Mellencamp 39:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:09 That's fucking crazy.

John Mellencamp 39:10 Well, I know. I bet you when you were in school, you thought World War II was ancient history.

Joe Rogan 39:15 Oh, yeah, which is nuts-

John Mellencamp 39:16 Yeah

Joe Rogan 39:16 ... because I, I was in high school in the '80s, right?

John Mellencamp 39:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:19 So World War II ended in '45, which is nuts, like-

John Mellencamp 39:22 Yeah, I thought it was ancient history. I, I remember sitting in, in history class in eighth grade going, "What do I need to know this shit for?" You know?

Joe Rogan 39:31 Right.

John Mellencamp 39:31 And I was born in '51, so it was only like three or four years, and the war ha- had just ended.

Joe Rogan 39:38 That's nuts.

John Mellencamp 39:40 But to me, and but to me, it was ancient history.

Joe Rogan 39:42 Isn't that crazy? Because the-- essentially, what we're talking about now is, like, the 1980s.

John Mellencamp 39:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:49 Well, that, that to us, the 1980s, like, to kids today, they must be like, "Oh, my God, fucking dinosaur days."

John Mellencamp 39:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:56 No internet.

John Mellencamp 39:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:57 Fucking big old tube TVs that was a giant box.

John Mellencamp 40:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:01 A big one was 14 inches.

John Mellencamp 40:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:04 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 40:05 Yeah, I, uh, I, uh, I re- [chuckles] I remember being at home once, and I told my dad, I said, "Hey, Dad, the people down the street have got, like, a changer, and it's got a cord on it." And he goes, "I got a changer, too. Change it to channel four." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 40:23 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 40:23 I was the changer. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 40:26 Yeah, I remember we used to have a pliers because the thing got stripped.

John Mellencamp 40:31 Broke off, yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:31 So you had to change the channel with the plier. You didn't know what channel it was until, like, "Oh, it's CBS. All right, so we're on five. Go like this, then you're on ABC. Go like that, you're on NBC."

John Mellencamp 40:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:41 Yeah. I remember the day cable came out. I was like, "This is fucking bananas."

John Mellencamp 40:47 Yes.

Joe Rogan 40:47 "Look at all these channels."

John Mellencamp 40:49 Well, I, I, I remember seeing, uh, a home box office-

Joe Rogan 40:53 Oh, yeah

John Mellencamp 40:53 ... for the first time. It was like, "What on earth?" I even remember what movie it was. It was some, The Miracle Man or something, and I thought, "What is thi- this-- it's past 11 o'clock, and this movie's just starting!"

Joe Rogan 41:07 [laughing] Yeah.

John Mellencamp 41:09 Are you kidding me? You kidding me?

Joe Rogan 41:09 Do you remember in the old days when the TV would sign off, and the American flag would f- wave, and it would just play music, and then it would just go... ) , tshhh?

John Mellencamp 41:19 And then, well, the Indian would always show up.

Joe Rogan 41:21 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 41:21 The American Indian would always show up, and it had, like, this ooo, oo.

Joe Rogan 41:27 Yep.

John Mellencamp 41:27 Go.

Joe Rogan 41:28 And then it would go to nothing.

John Mellencamp 41:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:29 They would stop broadcasting at night.

John Mellencamp 41:31 Yeah, 11.

Joe Rogan 41:32 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 41:32 11.

Joe Rogan 41:33 Those were wild times. Cable changed everything. Home box office changed everything because when HBO came around, all of a sudden, you got to see stand-up comedy uncensored. I remember the first time I watched Sam Kinison on HBO, I was like: This is fucking crazy.

John Mellencamp 41:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:51 Like, I'd never seen anything like that before. Like, wild, raw comedy on TV.

John Mellencamp 41:56 Did you ever know Sam Kinison?

Joe Rogan 41:57 No, I never met him.

John Mellencamp 41:59 I did. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 41:59 What was he like?

John Mellencamp 42:00 Wild. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 42:01 Yeah, I would imagine.

John Mellencamp 42:03 He was very unpredictable, very, uh... You know, he was Sam Kinison.

Joe Rogan 42:10 You know his story, how he became that way?

John Mellencamp 42:12 No.

Joe Rogan 42:12 Got hit by a truck when he was a little kid.... he was real normal, like a normal kid. His brother Bill wrote about it. His brother Bill wrote a great book called My Brother Sam, and, um, he said that Sam was just a normal kid, got hit by a truck, got really fucked up, bad brain injury, and then from then on, wild and reckless. Just, like, impossible to control, just a maniac.

John Mellencamp 42:37 Well, you could imagine.

Joe Rogan 42:38 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 42:38 I mean, you know, th- that's- I don't know about you, but if you grew up in the '80s, you know, our parents used to just tell us, "Go outside."

Joe Rogan 42:49 Yeah. Yep.

John Mellencamp 42:50 "Go outside, and we'll see you at dark."

Joe Rogan 42:52 Yep.

John Mellencamp 42:53 And, you know, I could go-- I was, I don't know, 10, 9, riding my bike all over Seymour-

Joe Rogan 43:02 Yep

John Mellencamp 43:02 ... which is where I grew up. And just no- nobody kept an eye on us.

Joe Rogan 43:07 Nope.

John Mellencamp 43:08 Nobody, y- you know?

Joe Rogan 43:09 And nobody had any idea of knowing where you are, either. It was just your, your responsibility to come home.

John Mellencamp 43:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:14 There was no way to find you.

John Mellencamp 43:15 [laughing] Well, it was funny, they had to remind us that, uh, remind our parents that, "You have kids." There was a thing that said, "It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?"

Joe Rogan 43:28 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 43:29 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 43:29 'Cause a lot of people didn't. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 43:30 Well, they didn't.

Joe Rogan 43:31 And people would yell. They would open up the window and yell their kid's name, "Billy!"

John Mellencamp 43:37 A lot.

Joe Rogan 43:37 You would just hear it in the neighborhood-

John Mellencamp 43:38 Yeah

Joe Rogan 43:38 ... someone, like, rolling down their window-- rolling up their window and just screaming out the kid's name to tell them to come home-

John Mellencamp 43:43 Yeah, I-

Joe Rogan 43:43 ... and hoping the kid was in earshot.

John Mellencamp 43:45 I remember, uh, uh, somebody in my neighborhood, I would hear it every night at dark, "Henry Earl!" [laughing]

Joe Rogan 43:55 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 43:55 And I'd hear it and go, "I better go home." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 43:58 Yeah. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 43:59 "It's time-- if it's time for Henry Earl to go home, I better get home."

Joe Rogan 44:02 What was it like when MTV rolled around?

John Mellencamp 44:06 Uh, [clears throat] I didn't... I mean, I liked it, and, uh, John-

Joe Rogan 44:10 How long had you been performing by then?

John Mellencamp 44:13 Oh, uh, I was in my first band when I was 11.

Joe Rogan 44:17 Wow!

John Mellencamp 44:18 Uh, you know, a little garage band with a bunch of kids, playing along with records. And then I was in a band called The Crepe Soul. I-- think about this, Joe: I was 14 years old, playing in bars.

Joe Rogan 44:35 Wow!

John Mellencamp 44:36 And my parents were cool with it. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 44:40 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 44:40 It was like, "Where's John?" "He's playing tonight." "Playing what?" "He's, he's in The Crepe Soul." "Oh." And it was me and this Black kid named Fred Booker, and we shared the vocals, and we would do, you know, we would do songs like, uh, "Pull strings and I'll kiss your lips. I'm your puppet. I'm your puppet." And we had, you know, Nehru jackets on, and I was cute back then. And, and so, you know, it was great for me. I would've done it for free because I was 14 years old, making out with 18 and 19-year-old girls.

Joe Rogan 45:21 Wow.

John Mellencamp 45:22 I know, it was great. Are you kidding me? And then, uh, we played at every fraternity, every sorority, and I came home with maybe, you know, over the weekend, I might make 60 bucks. I was the best-dressed kid in school.

Joe Rogan 45:40 Wow.

John Mellencamp 45:40 "That Mellencamp kid is just a dressed-up hood. That's all he is." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 45:46 So did you know back then that you were gonna be a professional musician, or were you doing it for fun? Did you think it was gonna be a career?

John Mellencamp 45:53 I thought-- here's what I thought: I'm either gonna be a professional football player, a professional boxer, or a singer. That was my choices.

Joe Rogan 46:03 You boxed?

John Mellencamp 46:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:05 Yeah?

John Mellencamp 46:06 I'll whip your ass right now. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 46:10 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 46:11 At 74!

Joe Rogan 46:13 Is that why you were getting in so many fights, 'cause-

John Mellencamp 46:15 Yeah, I liked it.

Joe Rogan 46:16 Wow.

John Mellencamp 46:17 I liked it. I, I liked the contact. Didn't like getting whipped every goddamn night, but, [chuckles] you know, it happens.

Joe Rogan 46:24 Did you have any, any professional boxing matches?

John Mellencamp 46:28 No, but my son, I'm gonna brag on my son, uh, was National Golden Gloves champ twice.

Joe Rogan 46:34 Wow!

John Mellencamp 46:35 And, uh, then he played football for Duke, and, uh, he was... You don't wanna mess with Hud. Don't wanna mess with Hud.

Joe Rogan 46:45 And so-

John Mellencamp 46:46 He's 31 now

Joe Rogan 46:47 ... when did the music thing really start taking off for you?

John Mellencamp 46:52 Well, I went to college, and I got a degree in, uh, broadcasting technology, which, at that time, was pretty... And, uh, I would-- they would have dances at college and bands playing, and I would sit there in the audience and go, "I can do this better than that. I know I can." And so as soon as I got out of college, I got into a band called The Mason Brothers, which I have, I have so many funny stories. Uh, like I said, I'm so lucky. I got into a band called The Mason Brothers, and we played every weekend, and, uh, I was a barroom singer. You know, I never wrote any songs or anything like that. Uh, you wanna hear a funny story about The Mason Brothers, how The Mason Brothers ended?

Joe Rogan 47:45 Yeah. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 47:46 [laughing] This is good. The guy that ran the band-- I was just a singer, and the guy that ran the band was a guy named Dave. And Dave [clears throat] talked to the booker, and we had a gig on a riverboat, up and down the Ohio River. Uh, and it was a fraternity show. And we had an old Plymouth and a U-Haul on the back.... and we get there, and the guys in the fraternity, Joe, are so fucking mad at us. Dave failed to realize that there was a time change between Seymour and Cincinnati, which is on the Ohio River. So they c- all these fraternity guys are going: "Where the hell have you guys been? You're an hour late!" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it really pissed me off. I go, "Dave, goddamn it, if you're gonna run the band, you gotta, like, keep track of this shit." He said, "Oh, don't worry about it." And as time went on-- and, and, [chuckles] uh, so as- And you had to do four sets back then, you know, four 45-minute sets, which was plenty of time for Dave to get drunk. And he would drink, and he was the bass player. And the fraternity guys already hated us, you know, 'cause we w- we weren't really any good anyway. [chuckles] So Dave's playing, and he's going along really good, and he was putting on a show, and he leaned back and, "Man overboard!" [laughing] He fucking fell off the ship, and they had to stop and fish him out. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 49:33 Oh, my God.

John Mellencamp 49:35 So I got so fucking mad at him that he said, uh... I said, "Dave, I'm gonna quit. This is, this is it for me. I'm, I'm done with, with this crap." Uh, and then Dave said, "No, John, give us one more chance." And then the drummer quit 'cause he went to, uh, he went to medical school, and then the guitar player was still in high school. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 50:00 Wow!

John Mellencamp 50:00 And he was my mom and dad's paperboy. [laughing] And, uh, so, uh, Dave said, "John, let me put the band back together. I'll get some, uh, new guys." And I'd call him up, and I'd go, "Dave, how's the band going?" And he'd go, "Oh, it's going great, man. It's going really great." I said, "Good." I said, "Who are these new guys?" He goes, "You'll see when you get there. Don't worry about it. I got it covered." I said, "Oh, you mean like you did with the time change?" And he goes, "No, no, no, this-- these guys are good." So I show up for this gig. I haven't even rehearsed with these guys, [chuckles] not even rehearsed with them. But it was the same shit, you know, because it w- we, we, we were just a cover band, and I was just a ballroom singer. So, you know, if you wanna see Taking Care of Business, I'm your guy, you know? And, uh, ♪ Taking care of business ♪ You know, who can't do that? So anyway, [chuckles] I show up. Dave has recruited two sophomores in high school [laughing] who couldn't play their instruments at all. The drummer was like, ba-ba, pa-pa. It's like, boom, boom, crack, asshole, boom-

Joe Rogan 51:16 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 51:16 ... boom, crack. That's all you gotta do. And he was, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum the whole fucking time. And, and, and so the show was about half over, and I just said-- I looked at Dave, and I go, "You're the lead singer." And I just left, 'cause it was just too embarrassing. And then, uh, I got, uh, I went t- I went to New York, and, uh, I was afraid. Joe, I was afraid. I mean, I'm from a fucking town of 18,000 people,

John Mellencamp 51:47 and I'd been to Chicago once. I'd never been on an airplane. And so I flew to New York, 'cause I came into some money. That's another funny story. I came into some money, and I went there, and I was afraid to come out of my hotel room for the first two days, 'cause New York in the early '70s was broke, and there were prostitutes, and pimps, and everything everywhere, you know, and h- homeless people. Which reminds me, you guys got a lot of homeless guys here.

Joe Rogan 52:24 There's a few. It's not as bad as LA.

John Mellencamp 52:27 Well, that isn't-- [chuckles] you can say that about anything, Joe.

Joe Rogan 52:30 That's true.

John Mellencamp 52:31 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 52:31 Yeah. Um, it's a lot better than it was during the pandemic. During the pandemic, they allowed them to do the camping on the street thing. So you'd go down, like, Cesar Chavez, and you'd see, like, 15, 20 tents where people were just hanging out, and people were trying to jog and ride their bikes past them. It was, it was pretty bad, but, uh, the former, former mayor, uh, cleaned it up, and they've pretty good programs here to get people into housing.

John Mellencamp 52:58 Well, everybody here, everybody here must love, uh... And I'm not putting Austin down, I'm just-- I had-- you know, I was-- I played here about three years ago. Uh, but everybody must love graffiti here. [laughing] And that's the thing about graffiti, I, I don't mind if you want to destroy somebody else's property, but at least do something original-

Joe Rogan 53:26 Right

John Mellencamp 53:26 ... 'cause it all looks the same. You know, it's big letters and outlined in-- it's done in black and outlined in yellow, and it's, it's the same fucking shit you see in New York or Los Angeles. It's the same!

Joe Rogan 53:38 Right.

John Mellencamp 53:38 If you're gonna, if you're gonna be a, an artist, be an artist.

Joe Rogan 53:43 Well, a lot of these guys are just tagging. They're just, like, it's just their gang affiliation or whatever it is, I guess.

John Mellencamp 53:51 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 53:52 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 53:52 But it wasn't that way the first time I came to Austin.

Joe Rogan 53:55 No, it's-- Well, I think all cities have deteriorated, but I think Austin's deteriorated quite a bit less. We found out recently that Skid Row in LA is 50 blocks, five-zero.

John Mellencamp 54:08 Right now?

Joe Rogan 54:08 Right now.

John Mellencamp 54:09 Wow.

Joe Rogan 54:09 Fifty blocks-

John Mellencamp 54:11 Wow

Joe Rogan 54:11 ... of homeless people just living on the streets, and, like, almost impassable. Like, if you've e- ever been down Skid Row, it's fucking-- I went there once accidentally, and this was in the 2000s. We were filming Fear Factor downtown in LA, and I took a wrong turn and wound up in Skid Row, and I was like-- I couldn't believe it was real. I, I, uh-- it was like a zombie movie, and that's-

John Mellencamp 54:35 ... so, so you decide, so you decide to get on Fear Factor, you go stay in there for three days, [laughing] and you win!

Joe Rogan 54:43 [laughing] Three days and do no coke.

John Mellencamp 54:45 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 54:45 Yeah, you could do three days with no meth, and you win.

John Mellencamp 54:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:48 Yeah. It was, uh, it was sobering. And then, and then we looked up the history of, uh, Skid Row, and the reason why it's like that is they would take people out of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, and homeless people then, and they would put them in Skid Row and force them to stay there. And they, they sort of built it as a place where they could deposit vagrants and homeless people.

John Mellencamp 55:13 Well, there is a law in this country called vagrancy.

Joe Rogan 55:17 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Not very enforced.

John Mellencamp 55:20 Well, uh, well, it's, it's- it would be... Let me tell you something, if you grew up in Seymour, Indiana, it was enforceable.

Joe Rogan 55:27 Right.

John Mellencamp 55:27 'Cause if you stand uptown too long, which is all kids did back then-

Joe Rogan 55:32 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 55:32 ... the cops come up and go, "Hey, you've been here for three hours. We've been timing you."

Joe Rogan 55:37 This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. New Year's resolutions are great and all, but sometimes I don't want to upend my entire life to create a new and improved me. If you're feeling the same way, I've got a tip for you to let go of those big New Year's expectations and start small. Focus on one thing that's been weighing you down lately. Maybe you want to stress less about what you can't control, or put less pressure on yourself at work, or reconnect with an old friend. Whatever goal you have, BetterHelp can help you get there. Therapy, in general, is a great way to discover more about yourself from an unbiased, outside perspective. It can really help take a weight off your shoulders. BetterHelp makes connecting with a therapist straightforward and simple. And with a network of thousands of fully licensed therapists, they can connect you with the right one, like they have for millions across the globe. According to those same people, BetterHelp works great, too. Their live sessions have an average of 4.9 out of 5 rating, so do yourself a favor and try BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/JRE. That's betterH-E-L-P.com/JRE.

John Mellencamp 56:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:53 Move on.

John Mellencamp 56:53 You wanna keep a nice, clean town, that's how you do it.

Joe Rogan 56:56 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 56:56 But if you let it go long enough, it will be like Skid Row. Uh, I mean, and I think that what we're saying, like the documentary-- What was the, uh, hotel again? That one-

Speaker 57:06 Hotel Cecil.

John Mellencamp 57:06 The Hotel Cecil. The documentary was about the Hotel Cecil, which was a beautiful hotel in downtown LA that's now a fucking disaster area. But it's in that whole area, and they just, they couldn't figure out a way to deal with the homeless problem, but they didn't want it messing up the beauty and glamour of Hollywood. So every time they would find homeless people, they would just ship them-

Joe Rogan 57:28 They'd ship them off

John Mellencamp 57:28 ... to downtown. Downtown LA is really the only downtown of any major city that I've ever been to, where nobody wants to go. Downtown New York is fucking downtown. Like, "Holy shit, we're downtown. Look at all the restaurants. Look at all the shops."

Joe Rogan 57:42 Yeah, but it wasn't that way in the '70s.

John Mellencamp 57:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:44 I mean, the first time I went there, it was just like-

John Mellencamp 57:47 Yeah ... if you went to Times Square, it was frightening.

Joe Rogan 57:49 The first time I went to, uh, New York was to fight. I was fighting in a martial arts tournament in 1980... [exhaling] Ooh, it had to be, I guess it was '85 or '86, and, uh, it was bad. We went through, through Times Square, and I was like, "Oh, my God." I couldn't believe people lived like this. I remember the first time driving through it, I couldn't believe how big it was. I was like, "This is crazy!" It was so-- because Boston, where I was from, was, you know, a big city, I thought. It was nothing compared to New York.

John Mellencamp 58:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:21 I'm like, "This is nuts." I couldn't believe how many st- streets there were, and how many buildings there were, and how tall they were.

John Mellencamp 58:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:27 But the, uh, just the seediness of it was so strange to me.

John Mellencamp 58:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:32 You know, the peep shows and all the weird people, and I was a kid back then. I was probably, you know, 18. It was very strange.

John Mellencamp 58:39 It was frightening.

Joe Rogan 58:40 Yeah. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 58:41 Yeah. Like, like I was, I don't know, I probably got sidetracked, but the first time I went there, I, I didn't leave my hotel room. I had a... I was in a Holiday Inn on 57th Street, and I just kind of peeked through the curtains [chuckles] and looked, and I thought, "I can't go out there." I mean, I, I was, you know, coming off, uh, agoraphobia, and here I'm in New York 'cause I have a meeting with some record company people, and, you know, they liked the demo, and-

Joe Rogan 59:11 So let's go back to that. So you were, um, your fucked-up drunk friend, you quit him. How do you get back into music after that?

John Mellencamp 59:20 Oh, Dave?

Joe Rogan 59:20 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 59:21 No, I, [laughing] when I got my first record deal, the first guy I called was Dave. [laughing] No, he was a, he was a great bass player. He was a great bass player.

Joe Rogan 59:32 Did he get his shit together before then?

John Mellencamp 59:33 No.

Joe Rogan 59:34 Nope? Still not?

John Mellencamp 59:35 No, no. I got funny stories about Dave and Max's Kansas-

Joe Rogan 59:39 Is he still around?

John Mellencamp 59:41 Yeah, he's a professor now. He found God and all this stuff.

Joe Rogan 59:44 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 59:44 He's a professor at Vince's University, and he teaches-

Joe Rogan 59:47 He's a professor? Wow, what does he teach?

John Mellencamp 59:49 [clears throat] Music.

Joe Rogan 59:51 Oh, wow.

John Mellencamp 59:52 And, uh... no, he was really a handsome, really good bass player. Really, really, really, really good, but he just, you know... Da- uh, you know, Dave, and we were 20 years old-

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 1:00:09 ... 22 years old. You know, what the fuck did we know about anything?

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:00:14 Nothing. Nothing.

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 So when you left Dave and you left that band, what, what happened next? What was, like, the big break for you?

John Mellencamp 1:00:25 I never really had a big break. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:00:27 Well, something must have happened.

John Mellencamp 1:00:29 It was a slow climb. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:00:31 Yeah?

John Mellencamp 1:00:32 It was a very slow climb. Yeah, I, uh, I got a record deal-

1:00:40 ... and of course, being me at that age, at 22, uh, I went out to California and I met with a guy named Mike Maitland, who hated my new record, but said I had great possibilities. And I told [laughing] I just stood up and I said, "Motherfucker, you're an old man. What do you know about rock music?" He must have been 40. [laughing] And of course, I got dropped immediately. I was on MCA, and I got dropped immediately. But there were a couple people at MCA who believed in what I was doing, and so they helped me along. And then I got introduced to, uh, Rod Stewart's manager, and I moved to England for two years. Made a record and, and, you know, lived with the whole band on Chelsea, in Chelsea. And, uh, [clears throat] punk was just starting. And just starting, I mean, you know, The Clash and, and the Sex Pistols, I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 Mm

John Mellencamp 1:01:56 ... these, they were brand-new bands.

Joe Rogan 1:01:58 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:01:59 And there I am with an acoustic guitar going, "I need a lover that won't..." I'm just like- [laughing] However, that song became number one in Australia. And, uh, so Australia was ahead of us with televising rock bands, and they had a whole bunch of rock shows. And I had the number one record album and single in Australia, a- and couldn't fill up a bar in Bloomington.

Joe Rogan 1:02:34 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:02:35 Couldn't... Nobody'd come to see me. So anyway, I went to Australia, and then, uh, a girl covered I Need a Lover, and she had a big hit with it. I mean, my mine was like, went to, like, 30 or something like that, but hers went to, like, two, um, of that song. And that's how it all started for me. That was the very first thing-

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 Wow

John Mellencamp 1:02:59 ... was some girl covering one of my songs.

Joe Rogan 1:03:02 And you were living in England back then, as well?

John Mellencamp 1:03:04 I lived in England for, uh, [clears throat] two years. And, uh, and they had the National Front there at the time. I don't know if you know what that is. The National Front was, "If you're not English, get out of our country."

Joe Rogan 1:03:23 Oh.

John Mellencamp 1:03:23 And a couple of my-- couple guys in my band got beat up because they heard... You know, some of the National Front guys heard, uh, their accent, and it wasn't English. So it was, like, dangerous to even go to the movies.

Joe Rogan 1:03:38 Really?

John Mellencamp 1:03:39 Keep your fu- keep your fucking mouth shut and your head down.

Joe Rogan 1:03:41 What year was this around? '70s?

John Mellencamp 1:03:44 '77, '76, '77.

Joe Rogan 1:03:48 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:03:49 Yeah. Yeah, the National Front was... You know, they were like all a bunch of skinhead guys, and violent, and didn't, did not want any foreigners in their country at all, and even Americans, you know? So yeah, you had to keep your eye- you know, I learned real quick to keep your head down and your mouth shut.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 Wow. And so you got out of there because of that?

John Mellencamp 1:04:17 No, I got out of there 'cause I got mad at the [laughing] ... I know it's hard to believe that I got mad at somebody, but, uh, I got mad at the manager 'cause I never could get the cocksucker on the phone, you know? And then I came back to the United States, and he had a, he had a record deal based on the number one record in Australia. And I used to go, "Well, we have a number one record in Australia." And they would look at me and go, "Not many Australians in the United States, John." [laughing] So,

John Mellencamp 1:04:50 you know, and then it just kinda built. But see, what happened, and I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I didn't give a fuck. I, I got to the point where it was like, "I don't give a fuck," you know? "Do what the fuck you want." 'Cause I, I didn't want to be Johnny Cougar, which is how they made me start.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 And whose idea was that, to turn you into John Cougar?

John Mellencamp 1:05:19 It was Johnny to start off with.

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 Johnny Cougar.

John Mellencamp 1:05:21 Tony, Tony DeFries managed me, David Bowie, Lou Reed, uh, Mott the Hoople. You remember all these bands?

Joe Rogan 1:05:30 Oh, Lou Reed, for sure, yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:05:31 Yeah. Anyway-

Joe Rogan 1:05:32 David Bowie, obviously.

John Mellencamp 1:05:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 Rod Stewart, obviously.

John Mellencamp 1:05:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 Same guy, managed them all.

John Mellencamp 1:05:36 Well, Rod Stewart was different.

Joe Rogan 1:05:38 Different manager.

John Mellencamp 1:05:39 Different man, but he was English, too. So, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:05:44 It's hard to argue with someone that's got that kind of talent, right?

John Mellencamp 1:05:47 Well, it's hard to argue, uh, when you're 22 years old with a 45-year-old man who has had success.

Joe Rogan 1:05:55 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:05:56 Yeah, like I signed away my publishing and stuff. This is an old story, but I mean, an old story from everybody, from the Rolling Stones-

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 1:06:06 ... to, you know, you name it.

Joe Rogan 1:06:07 Prince.

John Mellencamp 1:06:09 I- if you were Black, i- you know, it was like, "Here's a new car, and a, and a shiny ring, and some money."

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:06:17 And, uh, so I remember the... I was in, getting ready, getting ready to leave England, and I heard, heard that Gaff had, uh, had good news for me in America, so that's the reason I went home. And the good news was, is that he just got a deal for me for on Mercury Records-... and then, uh, so I ca- I went back to the United States, and, uh, we started, m- you know, started making records and just kept plowing away. And the critics hated me. You know, they fucking hated me because of Johnny Cougar. And MainMan came up with that name, Johnny Cougar, and he, his excuse was, uh, "His name was David Jones, and I called him David Bowie, and look how well that worked out." [chuckles] And that was-- and I'm 22, and I'm going: "But I don't like this name." And he'd go, "Well, you don't have to, you don't have to, uh, participate. You can go back to Indiana if you want." It was like: "Well, fuck you, then I will." And then I walked outside and thought for a minute and thought, "Hmm, I guess I'm Johnny Cougar." [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:07:38 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:07:40 I hated it. And, and they compared me to James Dean and Bruce, and, you know, so the critics just hated that. It was like, you know, "He's so American. He's so American." You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I was a fucking hillbilly. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:07:56 Fucking critics.

John Mellencamp 1:07:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:58 They're always gonna be a problem.

John Mellencamp 1:08:00 Yeah, but you know what? Um, I learned stuff from some of the critics that were good.

Joe Rogan 1:08:07 Like what?

John Mellencamp 1:08:08 Well, one of my best friends was a guy named Tim White, who was the editor of Rolling Stone and the editor of Billboard Magazine, and he died a few years ago. And, uh... You wanna hear some inside baseball?

Joe Rogan 1:08:25 Sure.

John Mellencamp 1:08:27 Uh, Tim and I talked every day, and Tim is as different as me, as you. Tim wore a bow tie, white bucks, you know, blue jeans, suit jacket every day. And he was the editor of Rolling Stone for a long time, and then he became editor of Billboard, and he called me up and he said, "I'm gonna have to sign a deal with SoundScan." I said, "So?" I didn't know what that was. He goes, "John, you don't understand the ramifications of signing a deal with SoundScan." I said, "Well, what are they?" He goes, "You'll be out of business." I go, "Why do you say that?" He goes, "Because now, the way the Billboard charts work..." Is this getting too inside baseball?

Joe Rogan 1:09:27 No, not at all. No.

John Mellencamp 1:09:28 Uh, the way that the charts work is that if you get played in Indianapolis and you get played in New York, it counts as one play. New York counts as one play, Indianapolis counts as one play. A play is a play. When SoundScan came in, they changed it, so it's like the number one record of the week. So if you got a play in New York, that was worth five points. If you got a play in Indianapolis, that was worth a half a point.

Joe Rogan 1:10:02 Oh.

John Mellencamp 1:10:04 So what does that mean? That means that people who grew up in St. Louis, and where rock took place, all of a sudden, you know, where I would-- got played all the time, the points didn't amount to shit.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 Mm.

John Mellencamp 1:10:20 But what did? Urban stations. Urban stations played what? Rap. So do you remember when, all of a sudden, rap music took over?

Joe Rogan 1:10:37 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:10:38 It was because-- it wasn't because these guys were so great, and I'm not saying they were bad. I'm just saying that it was because of SoundScan, and my friend Tim knew this was going to happen as soon as I signed this deal with SoundScan. And there was a magazine called Radio & Records at the time, who was rivaling, uh, Billboard, and, uh, uh, if Tim hadn't have bought SoundScan, Radio & Records would have bought them, which would have made them the premier record comp- 'cause they were the most modern. And so SoundScan changed everything. So I'm sure that you remember that y- there was a time when you knew every song that was number one. Then all of a sudden, you woke up one day and you didn't know, "What the f- what did-- what's-- how does this song become number one?" But the way that it was before SoundScan, each song had to work its way up the charts. So if you had, like, you know, let's say, 20 plays, I'm just throwing out low numbers, but if you had 20 plays, uh, that got added to the 20 plays that you got the next week. So now you have 40 plays. So you might move up from 36 to 31. But Joe Rogan in Boston was hearing the fucking songs as they move up. "Oh, I heard this new song." You talk to your friend, and they said, "Yeah, I heard that song." And then all of a sudden, the song would build and build and build and build and build and build, and Michael Jackson would be number one, or whoever.

Joe Rogan 1:12:20 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:12:21 And once SoundScan took over, if you were in a rock band, the record companies said, "Well, fuck this. We're not even gonna advertise in Indianapolis anymore."

Joe Rogan 1:12:35 Oh.

John Mellencamp 1:12:36 The biggest, the biggest, uh, uh, uh, numbers are, uh-... R&B stations, and they're playing rap, and that's what we're g- we're, we're gonna service those people. 'Cause back then, you know, there was payola and all that stuff going on.

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 Mm, of course.

John Mellencamp 1:12:57 So there was, like, no money coming into Indianapolis all of a sudden, where there used to be.

Joe Rogan 1:13:02 Mm.

John Mellencamp 1:13:02 It was all going to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, to all these R&B stations. And then, uh, what was that thing called when you could, like, download records for nothing?

Joe Rogan 1:13:19 Napster?

John Mellencamp 1:13:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:20 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:13:21 And then that started, and then that really put us out of-- put all rock guys in, out of business. If you check the Billboard charts right now, I bet you, you, you'd be hard-pressed to find two rock bands in the top 100.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 Rock bands right now, just in general, are almost non-existent in terms of, like, new bands. It's really weird. There used to be so many rock bands, and-

John Mellencamp 1:13:45 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:13:45 ... rock and roll is still a very popular form of music when you listen to the older stuff.

John Mellencamp 1:13:50 That's why, that's why I've decided [chuckles] -- I don't mean to plug myself, but I... They have been asking me f- 'cause I got tired of going on tour and being a cheerleader, which is what I was. "Let's do a rounding hit of Small Town. I was born in..." You know, and everybody'd stand up singing. It w- I was playing to 20,000 people, and everybody was drunk, and I was just kind of the cheerleader, you know, the human jukebox.

Joe Rogan 1:14:22 People's good time.

John Mellencamp 1:14:23 Yeah, giving them the opportunity. I just thought, "You know, I'm here to be a musician. This is not being a musician; this is being a fucking clown. I, I don't wanna be a clown." So I started playing in theaters, which pissed everybody off. I said-- And, you know, when you come to one of my shows, and this has been for the last 20 years I've been doing this, you come to one of my shows in a theater, it says, "Please recognize-"

Joe Rogan 1:14:51 Back then. Pull that sucker up close to your face.

John Mellencamp 1:14:53 What?

Joe Rogan 1:14:53 The microphone.

John Mellencamp 1:14:54 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:14:54 Otherwise, we're barely hearing you. You're very soft-spoken already.

John Mellencamp 1:14:57 There you go. How's that?

Joe Rogan 1:14:58 There we go. Um, but-

John Mellencamp 1:15:00 I am-

Joe Rogan 1:15:00 And?

John Mellencamp 1:15:01 I, I am soft-spoken.

Joe Rogan 1:15:03 [chuckles] Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:15:04 You know why?

Joe Rogan 1:15:05 Why?

John Mellencamp 1:15:06 'Cause I'm deaf. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:15:07 Are you really? Oh, from all the singing-

John Mellencamp 1:15:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:09 -all the music?

John Mellencamp 1:15:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:10 Oh, every rock star is deaf. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:15:11 I'm, I'm deaf.

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 No one knew shit about hearing protection back then.

John Mellencamp 1:15:15 No, I'm deaf. I can't hear. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:15:18 All my friends in bands and all my friends that are hunters, deaf.

John Mellencamp 1:15:23 Can't hear.

Joe Rogan 1:15:24 Yeah. Guns and loud music.

John Mellencamp 1:15:26 Yeah, uh, my kids would love it because they could walk up and say shit behind my back. [laughing] I'm like: "I heard that!" I got three girls and two boys, and what-- how many kids you got?

Joe Rogan 1:15:40 Uh, three. Three girls.

John Mellencamp 1:15:44 Uh, girls are... At, at about 12, you lose them, and then about 21, they come back.

Joe Rogan 1:15:53 I haven't lost them-

John Mellencamp 1:15:55 You haven't?

Joe Rogan 1:15:55 - fortunately. No, no, I'm real close. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:15:58 Yeah, I k- I kinda-

Joe Rogan 1:15:59 I have, uh, 17 or 28

John Mellencamp 1:16:00 ... I kinda, I kinda lost mine, you know, it was like, uh, but now it's kinda like... But I do have a daughter that's really sick, which is not fucking fine.

Joe Rogan 1:16:12 Oh, that sucks. I'm sorry to hear that.

John Mellencamp 1:16:14 She's got, uh, she's got cancer in the brain.

Joe Rogan 1:16:19 Oh, Jesus.

John Mellencamp 1:16:20 And, uh, she's suffering right now, and [exhales] but that kid used to call me up, and I'd go, "Teddy, you can have a thought without asking me [chuckles] if it's-- You know, figure it out yourself." [laughing] You don't have to ask me everything, you know? But I love having kids.

Joe Rogan 1:16:43 I do, too. It has made me a much nicer person, that's for sure.

John Mellencamp 1:16:47 Yeah, me too.

Joe Rogan 1:16:47 But, uh, I've stayed close with them, even through the teenage years, luckily. But, you know, I worked hard at it, and really-

John Mellencamp 1:16:54 I was on tour all the time.

Joe Rogan 1:16:56 Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that I did when we moved to Texas, uh, almost six years ago now, [clicking] was that I, um, decided to be home a lot more. In the beginning, when here, I was still touring a lot. Uh, I would do, you know, weekends, I'd go do shows, but, uh, now I hardly ever. Now I have my own comedy club, so I'm in town all the time.

John Mellencamp 1:17:18 W- what do you think of stand-up now?

Joe Rogan 1:17:20 I love it. It's a great time for stand-up.

John Mellencamp 1:17:23 You think?

Joe Rogan 1:17:23 Yeah. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:17:25 I mean, you, you don't have to, like, worry about crossing the line or-

Joe Rogan 1:17:29 Yeah, you do. Yeah, yeah, you do. You'll cross the line, but not for, with the people that you care about, you know? You, you cross the line for people that are looking to be offended, and there's-

John Mellencamp 1:17:39 Well, which is a lot of people.

Joe Rogan 1:17:41 Yeah. So they're, they're gonna be mad. Let them be mad.

John Mellencamp 1:17:43 Yeah. Well, I, I understand-

Joe Rogan 1:17:44 You just can't pay attention. That's the thing. It's like s- I, I tell all the comics, like: "Stay out of the comments, don't read anything about yourself, and you'll be all right."

John Mellencamp 1:17:53 I, I, I-

Joe Rogan 1:17:53 Just the audience is what matters.

John Mellencamp 1:17:55 I've never-

Joe Rogan 1:17:55 Is the audience laughing?

John Mellencamp 1:17:56 I've never Googled myself-

Joe Rogan 1:17:58 Good for you

John Mellencamp 1:17:59 ... in my life.

Joe Rogan 1:18:00 Good.

John Mellencamp 1:18:02 I've never Googled myself, ever, and 'cause I don't give a fuck.

Joe Rogan 1:18:06 Well, that's a good, that's a good practice to keep. Where were we? Where were we? So we were talking about how y- they stuck you with the Johnny Cougar name. You're in New York City. That's kind of where we left it off. I was trying to figure out, like, what, what was the MTV days like, and when did it-

John Mellencamp 1:18:26 Oh, yeah

Joe Rogan 1:18:26 ... like, really start cracking? Pull that microphone close up to you.

John Mellencamp 1:18:29 Uh.

Joe Rogan 1:18:29 When did it really start cracking?

John Mellencamp 1:18:33 Well, do you know John Sykes?

Joe Rogan 1:18:34 No.

John Mellencamp 1:18:36 He was one of the guys who started MTV.

Joe Rogan 1:18:38 Okay.

John Mellencamp 1:18:41 And, uh, I remember calling him up, and I didn't know him. This was like 1981, '82.... and like I said, you know, it was, it was like, uh, all you really saw of guys in rock bands were the album covers-

Joe Rogan 1:19:02 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 1:19:03 ... and, you know, maybe on Midnight Special or something like that.

Joe Rogan 1:19:07 Yep.

John Mellencamp 1:19:07 Or Don Kirshner's Rock Concert or something like that. But then with MTV going all the time, and not very many people made videos, but see, I was making videos because I had a hit in Australia, and like I said, Australia was way ahead of us. So it was the video that I just made in a club in London that was shown, that made that record number one-

Joe Rogan 1:19:32 Wow

John Mellencamp 1:19:32 ... in Australia. And, uh, so when MTV started, there weren't that many people making videos, but I was. So [chuckles] they didn't have any content!

Joe Rogan 1:19:50 Ah.

John Mellencamp 1:19:51 So they played me all the fucking time, just because nobody else had videos yet.

Joe Rogan 1:19:57 Right, people hadn't caught up yet.

John Mellencamp 1:19:58 Right. And, uh, I remember sitting with-- I can't remember the guy, some English guy, and I said, "Do you-- what is this MTV thing?" He goes, "I don't know. The record company told me..." I can't remember the guy's name. He was really a good songwriter, but you don't hear of him much anymore. Uh, anyway, I had a conversa- I mean, neither, neither one of us knew what was going on. And then I met John, and, uh, I was, [chuckles] I was the first-- And John and I got along great. I was the first promotion that MTV did, and we gave away a pink house.

Joe Rogan 1:20:41 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 1:20:42 You know, uh, and y- you had to register and do all this stuff, and, and there's a funny story that goes with that. So Sykes and somebody else came to Indiana to find a house in, in Bloomington that they were gonna buy, and then they were gonna do a show. And I did an ad where I went, "And you can win a house, and we're gonna paint the mother pink," you know? And that's what they did, except the house they bought, Joe, was on a chemical dump. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:21:19 Oh, no!

John Mellencamp 1:21:21 But I didn't know it, and they didn't know 'cause they were from New York. And so when I found out, I, I called them up, I said, "Guys, we can't give away this house. It's on a fucking chemical dump." Because RCA was dumping chemicals out in this field that was right next to the house-

Joe Rogan 1:21:43 Oh, geez

John Mellencamp 1:21:43 ... that, that we bought, you know. And back then, in the, in the early '80s, there wasn't much legislation about where you could dump that kind of stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:21:52 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:21:54 So they had to buy another house, which they weren't happy about. [chuckles] So they had to buy two houses, couldn't sell the other one, gave it away. And Sykes, to this day, I'll tease him about it, and he'll go, "Oh, we took that off the books years ago." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:22:09 Geez.

John Mellencamp 1:22:10 But it, uh, it, it, it, it went from walking down the street to nobody know who the fuck you are, to walking down the street and everybody knew who you were. Everybody. I mean, it got to, uh, it-- at the height of MTV, you couldn't go any- I couldn't go anyplace.

Joe Rogan 1:22:35 Did you, uh, get the agoraphobia before that?

John Mellencamp 1:22:38 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:22:38 Oh, boy. So that probably just made it way worse, right?

John Mellencamp 1:22:42 No, actually-

Joe Rogan 1:22:43 No?

John Mellencamp 1:22:43 ... again, Joe, lucky. It helped me get over it.

Joe Rogan 1:22:48 Ah.

John Mellencamp 1:22:49 It helped me-- And, you know, like I, I believe that all growth takes place in the chemicals inside our body. So I was growing still, 'cause I, I grew up in public.

Joe Rogan 1:23:02 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:23:03 You know, I grew-- I mean, I literally grew up pub- When I got my first record deal, Joe, I had never written a song.

Joe Rogan 1:23:10 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:23:11 Never written a song. They, they, they asked me, "Well, play us some of the songs you've written." It's like, "I don't write no fucking songs. I'm a, [chuckles] I'm a barroom singer. I sing other people's songs. What do you want a song? What do you want me to write for? Dylan's writing great songs. Springsteen's writing-

Joe Rogan 1:23:27 You hadn't written anything?

John Mellencamp 1:23:29 Nothing.

Joe Rogan 1:23:30 Wow! So when did you start writing, after you got a record deal?

John Mellencamp 1:23:33 Yeah. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:23:34 Wow! But it turns out you're a great writer. That's crazy.

John Mellencamp 1:23:38 And I have dyslexia. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:23:41 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:23:41 Which means I can't read.

Joe Rogan 1:23:43 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:23:43 You should see my songwriting books. It's, they're t- it's, it's absolutely terrible.

Joe Rogan 1:23:49 Ah.

John Mellencamp 1:23:50 It looks like... You know, I have to have somebody now, an- after I write a song, I have to give it to somebody right away and let them copy it, and I'll read it to them so that we can read what the fucking-- you know, what, what I wrote. 'Cause songwriting is not what people think it is. But anyway, back to MTV. It just blew up, and you couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't-- I c- I, I would walk down the street, and all I did was sign autographs and shake hands, and I, I didn't like it at all.

Joe Rogan 1:24:27 Well, that'd be very weird.

John Mellencamp 1:24:29 Yeah, I mean, it, it, it was like, you know, you've been in rock bands since you were 13, nobody gave a shit, and then all of a sudden, they did. And, you know, it was the baby boomers coming of age and, you know, I was very fortunate but unappreciative.

Joe Rogan 1:24:51 So when you first started writing songs, what was, what was your process when you knew you had to write songs?

1:24:59 ... how did you, uh?

John Mellencamp 1:25:01 Well, I figured out, 'cause don't forget, the critics hated me.

Joe Rogan 1:25:09 Already?

John Mellencamp 1:25:10 Yeah. Oh, yeah. John-- they hated Johnny Cougar. Fucking hated him.

Joe Rogan 1:25:14 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:25:14 And, uh, I didn't like him much either. [laughing] Uh, 'cause I, you know, we weren't any good, you know? We just weren't. We did not write songs. We did not do anything. Uh, so I figured, how do you reach a lot of people? By being on the radio. So keep it simple, stupid. So I would write, like, I had a song called Hurt So Good. Do you remember that song?

Joe Rogan 1:25:50 Sure.

John Mellencamp 1:25:51 Yeah, Hurt So Good. I wrote that in the shower, and I came out real quick, and I wrote it down, and then I had somebody write it down, and I remembered the melody, and I sang it to a tape machine. And, uh, [laughing] I got so many funny stories. Uh, I was down in Criteria, which was in Florida, in Miami, and, uh, you know, it was the early '80s, and so we had this-- and Criteria had five or six studios, and, you know, there were like, I don't know, all kind of bands. The Bee Gees were over here, and this band was over here, and, and, uh... We had, we had the studio blocked out, but we wouldn't show up. We had other things to do. [laughing] There was a place called Scaramouche that had the prettiest girls you ever saw in your life. So it was like, we did not have time to go to the studio because we had been up till daybreak at Scaramouche, you know? And, uh, so I was spending a lot of fucking money by now, and it was like, maybe, you know, at the time, a half a million dollars, and I had three songs done.

Joe Rogan 1:27:26 Whoa!

John Mellencamp 1:27:27 [chuckles] That's exactly right. Whoa. And I'd had a couple hits. I had I Need a Lover, uh, Ain't Even Done with the Night-

Joe Rogan 1:27:35 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:27:36 ... and, uh, This Time I Think I Remember. And so those songs were like, got into the top 20. Anyway, the record company came down and said, "Mellencamp, what the fuck? You know, you're spending all this money, and, and if you don't get on with it, we're gonna drop you from the label." And I went, "You can't drop me from the fucking label. Are you kidding me? I'm just starting!" "Well, we wanna come down and hear what you've done." I said, "Well, come on down." I played them three songs, the three I had done in six weeks. [laughing] Uh, anyway, I played them the three songs. They hated them.

Joe Rogan 1:28:26 Which songs were they?

John Mellencamp 1:28:28 Jack and Diane-

Joe Rogan 1:28:29 Oh, God, they hated-

John Mellencamp 1:28:30 ... Hurt So, Hurt So Good-

Joe Rogan 1:28:31 Oh, God!

John Mellencamp 1:28:32 [laughing] And Hand to Hold Onto.

Joe Rogan 1:28:33 Oh, my God!

John Mellencamp 1:28:34 [laughing] Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan 1:28:35 They hated those?

John Mellencamp 1:28:36 Oh, they hated them. They said-

Joe Rogan 1:28:38 Oh, wow.

John Mellencamp 1:28:39 They said, "John, this is-- they're too rough, they're too raw, and what is this sound in Jack and Diane? This [mimicking drum sound] it's not even-- what is that sound?" Well, the sound was, I would walk by the Bee Gees studio, and they had just invented s- drum machines, and the Bee Gees were using it to keep time. 'Cause, you know, most drummers, [mimicking drum beat] they speed up.

Joe Rogan 1:29:08 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:29:08 You know, they start the song at this tempo, and all of a sudden, you, they're like, da, da-- by the end of the song, it's like, "I can't keep up with you, God damn it!

Joe Rogan 1:29:15 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:29:15 Slow down." So, uh, the Bee Gees were using it to keep time, and I heard this sound, and so I knew the engineer. His name was Albie Gluten. And Al [laughing] and I said, "Albie, can I borrow that machine?" He goes, "Yeah, 'cause w- we're not gonna be in the studio for a week." So we were doing a song called Jack and Diane that just was not working out because the drummer kept speeding up, and when you're trying to keep it simple, stupid, simple is hard. 'Cause if you make a little mistake, it's a big mistake now, because there's not a bunch of shit covering up your mistake.

Joe Rogan 1:30:01 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:30:03 So [laughing] I called up Mick Ronson. He was the guitar player for David Bowie. You remember Mick?

Joe Rogan 1:30:11 No, I don't.

John Mellencamp 1:30:13 Joe!

Joe Rogan 1:30:14 I don't-

John Mellencamp 1:30:14 God damn it.

Joe Rogan 1:30:15 Sorry.

John Mellencamp 1:30:17 Uh, anyway, Mick was a great guy, and he, he, he was, he was Bowie's guitar player when Bowie was great, when he had Ziggy Stardust and all that stuff. And Ronson was an English guy, and he'd call me Johnny all the time, and, you know. And, uh, he said, "Johnny, maybe you should put those baby rattles on there." And I go, "What?" He goes, "You know, that drum machine thing that makes that noise, just to keep time." And I said, "Okay, we'll try it." So we put on this doom, doom, do, do, doom [mimicking drum machine] and it was perfect timing. Perfect.... so the odd, uh, the idea was, is that we'll take that drum machine out when we get everything. We'll take it out. And now the drummer had to play in time because that machine did not budge. That machine was perfect, and it was, it was a prototype of a drum machine. That's how new it was. It was a prototype, and it was the only one they gave the Bee Gees to try it out to see how they liked it. And, uh, so we d- we got it all together, and we took the drum machine out. Sounded like shit! [laughing] But it sounded great with the drum machine. So I said, "Fuck it, we'll just leave the drum machine in." And it worked because nobody'd ever heard that sound.

Joe Rogan 1:31:55 And the record company didn't like that?

John Mellencamp 1:31:57 Oh, they hated it! They hated, they hated that fucking sound.

Joe Rogan 1:32:00 But that song was so good.

John Mellencamp 1:32:02 Uh, well, uh, you know, and i- it's surprising to me that to this day, how m- how many people still love that song.

Joe Rogan 1:32:11 It's a fucking great song.

John Mellencamp 1:32:13 You know, and ev- every time-

Joe Rogan 1:32:15 What year was that?

John Mellencamp 1:32:16 1981.

Joe Rogan 1:32:18 Wow! I was 14.

John Mellencamp 1:32:20 So, so how, so how old were you in 1981?

Joe Rogan 1:32:21 14.

John Mellencamp 1:32:23 So you were-

Joe Rogan 1:32:23 Yeah, high school.

John Mellencamp 1:32:24 Yeah, you were there.

Joe Rogan 1:32:25 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:32:26 That's great. See, that's great, and I, I, I love hearing, you know, guys your age talk about it because it's just like, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. And the fact that th- that song today... I had somebody tell me, one of the nicest things anybody said to me was, is that, "John, there was Romeo and Juliet, there was Frankie and Johnny, and now there's Jack and Diane."

Joe Rogan 1:32:55 Ah.

John Mellencamp 1:32:56 "And you've joined-- those two kids have joined those people of importance in American culture."

Joe Rogan 1:33:05 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:33:06 Now, think about it. Now, who would've fucking thought that some dumbass like me would write a fucking song as a child, when I first started writing songs, and create those two characters that made such an impression on everybody?

Joe Rogan 1:33:24 The only other one I think about is Brenda and Eddie from Billy Joel, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.

John Mellencamp 1:33:30 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:33:32 That's another one. Yeah, Jack and Diane was fucking huge when I was in high school. I can't believe the record company didn't like that. They d- they didn't like Hand to Hold Onto?

John Mellencamp 1:33:43 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 1:33:44 God!

John Mellencamp 1:33:45 And they, and they didn't like me. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:33:48 God.

John Mellencamp 1:33:49 And they didn't like me. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:33:51 Oh, how could you be more wrong than Jack and Diane?

John Mellencamp 1:33:54 Well, they-

Joe Rogan 1:33:54 Jack and Diane was fucking huge!

John Mellencamp 1:33:57 Yeah. Joe, look at-- I don't know that much about your career, but look at your career and look at, at what suits have said to you and how wrong they were.

Joe Rogan 1:34:08 Well, the most successful thing that I've ever done, nobody had any input on at all, which is this.

John Mellencamp 1:34:14 Well, there you go.

Joe Rogan 1:34:15 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:34:15 Well, there you go.

Joe Rogan 1:34:16 Yeah, they would've-- there's not a chance in hell anybody would've said, "Yeah, have unfiltered conversations for three hours with random people, [sniffs] and, you know, millions of people will listen and watch." No one would've believed it, but when we did it-

John Mellencamp 1:34:30 Well, but, but, but

Joe Rogan 1:34:30 ... we didn't do it for anybody else.

John Mellencamp 1:34:32 But you were an actor before.

Joe Rogan 1:34:33 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was a comic first, and then, um, because I got a development deal, they gave me some money to be on a sitcom, so I did that. That sitcom got canceled, then I did another sitcom that was kind of successful called Newsradio. That got canceled, and then I wound up being on Fear Factor. Yeah, it's just a bunch of weird circumstances that-- a lot of luck, a lot of weird stuff happened. Lot of luck, yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:35:01 Yeah. See, and you know what? I, I walk in my house sometimes, and I look around and think, "I get to fucking live here."

Joe Rogan 1:35:11 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:35:13 I get to fucking live here.

Joe Rogan 1:35:14 I think that all the time, yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:35:16 I get to live here. And, and how lucky I, I am to have had that kind of success from such a horrible beginning as Johnny Cougar.

Joe Rogan 1:35:28 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:35:29 And, you know, to be able to, you know, do-- I've done what I wanted to do ever since I decided, "Fuck you guys."

Joe Rogan 1:35:42 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:35:42 After, after American Fool came out and those songs became hits, nobody has ever said shit to me about anything.

Joe Rogan 1:35:51 Well, they realized they were wrong. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:35:53 Well, well, those guys, I'm sure, are out of business. And I have to kind of smile about the rock critics because it got to the point where I had such-- so many songs on the radio that they couldn't ignore it anymore.

Joe Rogan 1:36:11 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:36:11 They-

Joe Rogan 1:36:12 You were undeniable, yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:36:14 Yeah, and that's-- and you know what? That's the word I used to say.

Joe Rogan 1:36:17 That's the key to success.

John Mellencamp 1:36:18 Uh, that, that's, that's the word I used to say to the guys in the band, "We have to make this song undeniable."

Joe Rogan 1:36:24 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:36:24 'Cause if you give them an inch, they'll find a fucking reason not to do it.

Joe Rogan 1:36:27 They definitely will, and it's-- there's good in that, too. There's good in those people that hate, that they're valuable. They, they can fuel you to greatness. They can fuel you to be better. 'Cause if you know that there's people out there that are just gonna fucking hate on you no matter what you do, and you just gotta come up with something that, "Listen, this will be undeniable," and they, they'll still hate it. Look, I was watching a fucking interview yesterday where this lady was talking shit about the Beatles. She was talking about how she thinks the Beatles is, are terrible, and this lady was not-... particularly articulate. She wasn't i- interesting or compelling. She didn't seem very intelligent, but she was speaking with such authority about how she thought The Beatles were terrible. And I was like: "Well, you're fucking wrong. You're-

John Mellencamp 1:37:15 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:37:15 ... you couldn't be more wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. They are one of the greatest bands in the history of the fucking known world."

John Mellencamp 1:37:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:37:25 Fact! But this lady was just going-- Which shows you, you cannot make everybody happy, because some people don't wanna be happy. They don't wanna see good.

John Mellencamp 1:37:35 You had four really talented people in that band, and it showed, because some of the songs... Hear me out. Some of the songs, it was good for my generation, 'cause we went from cartoons to rock and roll.

Joe Rogan 1:37:51 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:37:52 ♪ So in a town where I was born ♪

Joe Rogan 1:37:55 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:37:56 ♪ Lived a man who sailed the seas ♪

Joe Rogan 1:37:59 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:38:00 And he- you know-

Joe Rogan 1:38:01 Yeah

John Mellencamp 1:38:01 ... it was a cartoon.

Joe Rogan 1:38:02 Right. Right.

John Mellencamp 1:38:03 And the guy that produced, Martin, the guy that produced the, um, The Beatles, up until that point, he made comedy records.

Joe Rogan 1:38:15 Ah.

John Mellencamp 1:38:16 Yeah, he made comedy records and cartoons, and so that's- at least that's my understanding. And, uh, he brought that to them, you know? And, uh, and, uh, mm, you know, you have four guys writing songs. It's a lot better than John Mellencamp writing songs. [laughing] I'll tell you that. You know, so-

Joe Rogan 1:38:42 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:38:43 You know.

Joe Rogan 1:38:43 But my point is, it's like, you can't make everybody happy 'cause everybody's not happy-

John Mellencamp 1:38:48 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:38:48 ... and they don't wanna be happy.

John Mellencamp 1:38:50 I have said for years, "I'm not for anybo- I'm not for anybody anymore."

Joe Rogan 1:38:57 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:38:58 If you're coming to my show, and this is when I started playing theaters, if you're coming to my show to hear all these hits, you're not going to. But that's why I'm-- after th- 20 years, I'm gonna go back out, and I'm gonna play nothing but hits for two and a half hours. That's how many hit records I have.

Joe Rogan 1:39:17 That's incredible.

John Mellencamp 1:39:18 Yeah, it's gonna be... It- you know, and I'm-- And now, I'm looking forward to it-

Joe Rogan 1:39:23 Yeah

John Mellencamp 1:39:24 ... because I have not played "I Need a Lover" in 25 years on stage. I'm not playing-

Joe Rogan 1:39:29 So it's fresh.

John Mellencamp 1:39:30 Yeah, it's a brand-new song.

Joe Rogan 1:39:32 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:39:32 I'm gonna be playing it in a way that nobody's ever imagined. Wait till... If you come, if you come and see me, wait till you hear "Jack and Diane." I have jammed it up, and it's a soul song now.

Joe Rogan 1:39:45 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:39:46 Yeah, it's, I, uh, uh, there's a term for it. Smash, a smash.

Joe Rogan 1:39:50 Mm.

John Mellencamp 1:39:51 Sm- what do they call it? Smash something. Anyway, we turned it into a soul song. I mean, what would it be like if "Jack and Diane" was a soul song? So you leave the melody the same, but you put the instruments around them differently.

Joe Rogan 1:40:07 Mm.

John Mellencamp 1:40:08 You know?

Joe Rogan 1:40:08 To make it interesting for you.

John Mellencamp 1:40:10 Well, and, and to the audience, 'cause when the chorus comes in, they're gonna be singing that chorus.

Joe Rogan 1:40:15 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:40:16 'Cause i- if I play it now-

Joe Rogan 1:40:19 He's trying to push that thing up to your face.

John Mellencamp 1:40:21 If I play it now, you know, it's just usually me and acoustic guitar, and, and it's good because [chuckles] a little ditty, and I don't have to sing anymore. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:40:33 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:40:33 They sing the whole song.

Joe Rogan 1:40:35 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:40:35 And I might go, "Oh, yeah," and that's it, and then they-- the audience sings it, which is great. Which is great.

Joe Rogan 1:40:43 It's gotta be really cool. I gotta come see you live. Are you in Texas at all?

John Mellencamp 1:40:50 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:40:51 You don't know? [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:40:56 I-

Joe Rogan 1:40:56 When d- when did you drop the Cougar? Uh, because at first, you were John Cougar Mellencamp, and I remember that. I was like, "What is going on?" Like, why does he have another name? Like, it was confusing to me.

John Mellencamp 1:41:09 Well, I was trying to... And, and I think I did it successfully.

Joe Rogan 1:41:12 It was a good transition.

John Mellencamp 1:41:14 I, I, I didn't... You know, I could call up somebody and go, "Hey, it's John Mellencamp," they wouldn't take my call. I could call back two seconds later and go, "It's John Cougar," and then they would take my call.

Joe Rogan 1:41:24 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:41:25 So I figured it, this will have to be a slow change. Uh, Elvis Costello tried to do the same thing and didn't work. 'Cause-

Joe Rogan 1:41:31 What was his real name?

John Mellencamp 1:41:33 I don't, I don't remember, but-

Joe Rogan 1:41:34 Oh, wow

John Mellencamp 1:41:34 ... that's not his real name.

Joe Rogan 1:41:36 Oh.

John Mellencamp 1:41:37 But, you know, he was tired of being Elvis Costello, and he-

Joe Rogan 1:41:40 Right

John Mellencamp 1:41:40 ... he went back to his real name, and people just wouldn't accept it. But with me, it was such a slow-burn thing to get over, so... It, it, you know, it, it, it, it-- Again, what? Lucky.

Joe Rogan 1:41:59 It was the first time that I'd recognized that, uh, artists were forced to change their name, was you. I didn't know.

John Mellencamp 1:42:04 Really?

Joe Rogan 1:42:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had no idea.

John Mellencamp 1:42:06 Do you know that-

Joe Rogan 1:42:07 I was a kid

John Mellencamp 1:42:07 ... d- do you know that every fucking movie star that we ended up watching on those black-and-white things, that's not any of their real names? [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:42:17 Right. Right.

John Mellencamp 1:42:17 They're all changed.

Joe Rogan 1:42:18 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:42:18 They're all changed.

Joe Rogan 1:42:19 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:42:20 You think Rock Hudson was his real name? [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:42:22 Sounds good.

John Mellencamp 1:42:23 Yeah, it sounds great. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:42:24 Yeah. No, yeah, somebody decided they wanted to come up with a catchier name, which is interesting for a guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger, that kept his real name, as bizarre as it was, and hard to pronounce.

John Mellencamp 1:42:37 Yeah, yeah. What... And I just saw him smashing, uh, the president.

Joe Rogan 1:42:45 Yeah, he's always smashing somebody. I think he's bored. [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:42:50 [chuckles] Yeah, he needs to get back in run, run, running.

Joe Rogan 1:42:52 He was a great governor. He really was. He did a really good job with California. California's a fucking mess now. When you, um-... transition to John Cougar Mellencamp, and then eventu- like, how long did, were you John Cougar Mellencamp before you became John Mellencamp again?

John Mellencamp 1:43:12 I think the last John Mellencamp, John Cougar Mellencamp record was a record I ca- it was called Scarecrow, and it had Small Town on it, and it, it had Small Town on it. It had five hit-- f- f- can you imagine five? It had five fucking hit records off that one album.

Joe Rogan 1:43:39 Pretty amazing.

John Mellencamp 1:43:41 Yeah. Lucky. And don't forget, I had never written a fucking song.

Joe Rogan 1:43:47 That's what's crazy.

John Mellencamp 1:43:48 Yeah. Never written a song, so I, I grew up in public, and if you listen to my songs now, so much more mature than, than those young-- I, I, I got so sick of it that I wrote a song called Pop Singer in, like, '90, '91. "Never wanted to be no pop singer, never wanted to sing no pop song."

Joe Rogan 1:44:11 I remember that.

John Mellencamp 1:44:12 "Never wanted to, uh, you know, uh, have a manager hang out after the show." I, I, I just, you know, it was... I wanted to be a musician and not a clown, which, you know, if you remember back, Joe, and I'm not putting anybody down, but there were a lot of clownish guys-

Joe Rogan 1:44:37 Yeah

John Mellencamp 1:44:38 ... from MTV.

Joe Rogan 1:44:39 Sure.

John Mellencamp 1:44:40 You know, that were like, "What?"

Joe Rogan 1:44:43 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:44:44 You know, and a lot of sexism and stuff from MTV, and no Black people for a while. You know, they didn't play any Black people. They might play Michael Jackson, but other than that-

Joe Rogan 1:44:55 Right

John Mellencamp 1:44:56 ... but they, but they just didn't. And, and I remember talking to Sykes about it. Sykes, me, Don Henley, and somebody else went and did-- They were gonna drop MTV off a whole bunch of stations, and we got on a plane and went there, went to all these different stations that were gonna drop MTV and talk to them why they couldn't do it, and it worked.

Joe Rogan 1:45:23 Why were they dropping MTV?

John Mellencamp 1:45:26 Uh, too lewd, too- [laughing] I wanna tell you something else, young man. I wanna tell you something else. I showed that, by accident, in a video, and MTV wasn't gonna play, wasn't gonna play the, the video because-

Joe Rogan 1:45:50 Because you had a tattoo?

John Mellencamp 1:45:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:45:52 That's hilarious.

John Mellencamp 1:45:53 Yeah, because I, you know, I had a tattoo. Anyway-

Joe Rogan 1:45:56 That's hilarious!

John Mellencamp 1:45:58 [laughing] I know.

Joe Rogan 1:45:59 Oh, my God. It's so funny when you think about what music is like now, and then especially, like, in the late '80s, when hip-hop really took off, and then gangsta rap took off. It's-

John Mellencamp 1:46:13 Well, and, and, and now you know why, because, uh, you know, what we ta-

Joe Rogan 1:46:17 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 1:46:17 ... we're talking about, about SoundScan and stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:46:20 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:46:20 That's how, that's how all that happened. And my deceased friend, Tim White, who I loved dearly, told me it was going to happen. So, and, and I just sat back and went, "I can't, I can't believe that this is right."

Joe Rogan 1:46:33 Wow.

John Mellencamp 1:46:33 "I can't believe that that can happen." We're-- you know, rock is too, too important to the culture, too important, you know... And there's a lot better songwriters than me, and we all got eighty-sixed. I mean, like, the fucking Rolling Stones just put out a new album, and I never heard it. You never heard it.

Joe Rogan 1:46:52 No. I saw them live a, a couple of years ago here.

John Mellencamp 1:46:57 How was it?

Joe Rogan 1:46:57 They played at the Circuit of the Americas. It was fucking incredible. It was like having an out-of-body experience. It's like you couldn't believe they were really there.

John Mellencamp 1:47:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:47:06 I remember watching Mick Jagger on stage, and my friend was talking to me, and I was watching him, and a- he's like: "Isn't this fucking incredible?" I was like: "I can't, I can't believe it's really him." It's like they are so iconic, and here he is in his fucking 80s, just jamming. The guy brings two trailers, two whole trailers, that are just gym equipment-

John Mellencamp 1:47:30 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:47:31 ... everywhere he goes. Works out every day.

John Mellencamp 1:47:33 Every year, uh, uh, we, we, we, we started Farm Aid in 1985, and every year, 'cause w- you have a-- at Farm Aid, you have a, uh, press conference in the beginning, and then I don't go on until, like, 9 o'clock, so I got all day. You know what I do half the day? "Neil, can I use your [laughing] fucking gym equipment?" 'Cause he's got a, a, a trailer like, you know, you would haul groceries and couches and shit.

Joe Rogan 1:48:09 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:48:09 And it's full of gym equipment.

Joe Rogan 1:48:11 Mm.

John Mellencamp 1:48:12 "Can I use your..." So I, I use his, his, not his weights so much, but, uh, but his, uh, you know, his, what do you call it? I call it the lazy machine, where you can be lazy.

Joe Rogan 1:48:24 Elliptical?

John Mellencamp 1:48:25 Yeah, elliptical-

Joe Rogan 1:48:25 Yeah

John Mellencamp 1:48:26 ... cross-trainer.

Joe Rogan 1:48:26 Hey, listen, it's better than nothing.

John Mellencamp 1:48:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:48:29 But it ju- I mean, watching Mick i- in his 80s, dancing around on stage and doing a, you know, a two-hour concert with full energy, it's, it's so impressive. It's so inspirational that this guy still loves it that much. I mean, he wasn't phoning nothing in, you know? I mean, it was fucking him dancing and, "Button your lip, baby!" I mean, it was full on. It was like, wow! It was amazing.

John Mellencamp 1:48:55 A- and what I find amazing, and I don't know why I find it amazing, but I find it amazing that people relate to music in that fashion, 'cause I didn't know that as a kid.... I just thought, you know, I thought I'd make two records, and that'd be done. That's why I stayed in Bloomington. I had a little bit of money. I didn't know how much more I'd have, s- you know, how much longer I was gonna last, so let's try to, like, buy a little house. And [exhales] I talked to, uh-- I'm good friends with Bruce, and him and I both just kind of just look at each other and go, "Can you fucking believe it?" 'Cause he's from a real little shitty town in New Jersey, and we both just look at each other and go, "Fuck, can you believe it?" [laughing] It's unbelievable.

Joe Rogan 1:49:50 Well, gratitude's an important thing. It's kind of co-opted today with a lot of, like, this-

John Mellencamp 1:49:55 [clears throat]

Joe Rogan 1:49:55 ... spiritual movement. You know, people say it, and it kind of sounds hollow and fake, but real gratitude and real thankfulness for a life that you've been so lucky to have, and I've been so lucky to have, it's, it's, it's very important. It's an amazing thing. I mean, how could you not look back at your life and not think, "Can you fucking believe it?"

John Mellencamp 1:50:13 Yeah, and, and you know, the thing of it is, is that I sometimes ask my audience, I go: Where are you right now? And most of you probably say, "I am at a John Mellencamp concert in Austin, Texas." And my answer is, yes, but also, where you really are, you're on a fucking rock that's going around the fucking sun, that has been here for millions of fucking years, and so we are only here for a blink of an eye. So stop worrying about everything so fucking much. It doesn't fucking matter. Don't beep your horn because the fucking guy in front of you didn't take off right when the light turned red. It's not that important. Don't take yourself so fucking seriously, and try to, try to have some humility. You know, that's what I hate about politics today. There's no fucking humility!

Joe Rogan 1:51:21 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:51:21 How about some humility? I don't care what party you're with, I don't give a fuck. But show some humility and some, you know, respect for each other, which they just don't.

Joe Rogan 1:51:31 Right. No.

John Mellencamp 1:51:32 They just don't. It's terrible.

Joe Rogan 1:51:34 Yeah, there's a lot of that. If we could get more people to recognize how brief and fleeting this moment al- alive is...

John Mellencamp 1:51:43 It's, it's, it's so-- Well, I got it tattooed right here on my arm, and my grandmother told me this when she... She lived to be 100, and I would go over and I'd lay in bed with her when she was, like, 99, 98. And one day she said to me, she goes, "You know, John, if you don't stop this cussing and wild living, you're not gonna get into heaven." And I went, "Ah, Grandma." She goes, she goes, "Yes, you, you know, you, you, you need to change your ways a little bit." And I said, "Yeah, well, you'll get me into heaven. Don't worry about it." And she said, "No." She said, "You're gonna find out real soon. Now, listen, life is short, even in its longest days."

Joe Rogan 1:52:43 It certain feels short when you look back, right?

John Mellencamp 1:52:45 Oh, yeah. But just think, just think about those words-

Joe Rogan 1:52:48 Mm-hmm

John Mellencamp 1:52:49 ... coming from a hundred-year-old woman.

Joe Rogan 1:52:51 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:52:52 You know, life is short, even in its longest days. Really, the opposite end of the spectrum: "Oh, yeah, life goes on!" [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:53:01 Right, right, right. Right.

John Mellencamp 1:53:03 So I wrote a song called Life is Short, and, and, uh, and I love playing it. I love playing it, uh, because it, it really hits the nail on the head of, of, you know, getting-- But how old did you say you were?

Joe Rogan 1:53:17 58.

John Mellencamp 1:53:18 58 years old. You're still a kid.

Joe Rogan 1:53:21 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 1:53:22 You're still a kid.

Joe Rogan 1:53:24 How old are you now?

John Mellencamp 1:53:25 74.

Joe Rogan 1:53:26 Wow. Well, you look great.

John Mellencamp 1:53:27 Thanks. Maybe we can go on a date tomorrow. What do you think? [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:53:32 [laughing] Does-- Is singing and performing, is it different now? Do, do you, do you appreciate it more now than when you were younger?

John Mellencamp 1:53:43 Uh...

Joe Rogan 1:53:45 Is it a different feeling because, like, you've done so much, and it's-

John Mellencamp 1:53:49 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:53:50 ... the scope of it is so big now, in retrospect?

John Mellencamp 1:53:55 Well, like I said, I'm really looking forward to going out and doing a greatest hits tour. I've never done one. I, I, I can't even imagine thinking back to when I was, like, 35. That idea would be like, "Shut the fuck up. I'm not doing that."

Joe Rogan 1:54:11 Right.

John Mellencamp 1:54:12 But now, at my age, it's kind of like... And I, I was-- I did a thing with Sean Penn, and Sean and I were talking, and he goes, "John, just go do it." 'Cause I was on the fence about doing it. He goes, "Uh, what's wrong with you? Yes, go do it. Don't you think that if I could, like, show the best parts of my movies to people, that I would do it?" And I go, "I don't know." He goes, "Yeah, 'cause it, it, it's, it, it's, you're, you're, you're, you're really sharing something."

Joe Rogan 1:54:43 Well, it's also not a whole lot of people have ever done it before, right? Not a whole lot of people have ever had the kind of hits that you've had. So the opportunity to go out there and do two and a half hours of-

John Mellencamp 1:54:54 I've nothing but hits

Joe Rogan 1:54:55 ... fucking hits-

John Mellencamp 1:54:56 I know, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:54:56 -is amazing.

John Mellencamp 1:54:58 And as, uh, I have to-- Like I said, I walk in my house, and I go, "I can't believe I get to live here." And, you know, I feel good about... You know, I'm the only father in the world that does not encourage their kids to work. [laughing] It's like, "Why do you want to go to work?"... you know, my son graduated from Duke, and it's just like, "Ah, fuck that work stuff. Do what you wanna do. You're 31 years old. You're handsome. You're 31 years old, you could beat anybody up in the room," you know? W- w- why do you wanna- But I think he's getting to the age where he wants to get a job, and I don't want him to leave 'cause he still lives in my-- on my property, and it's nice. I love having him in there. I love having Hud live with me. Uh, he doesn't live with me, he lives in a different house, a different building, and I-- but I love having him there because I know that I can pick up the phone and go, "Hey, Hud," and he's there. And I'm telling you, having kids was one of the best things I ever did.

Joe Rogan 1:56:04 It's interesting, too, because having a kid when you're in high school, a lot of people think is like a death sentence for your career, you know?

John Mellencamp 1:56:12 Well, it was a death sentence for my kid. [laughing] 'Cause, you know, I was 18 years old, I was on drugs. You know, my idea of, uh, raising a kid back then when I was in college was throwing water balloons at her. [laughing] That's all I knew, was like, "This is fun!" You know, but it turned out... You know. But, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I, uh, I, uh, really enjoy my kids, and my dad told me that. He told me, "Have as many kids as you can, because when you get older..." 'Cause, see, I had-- I don't know about you, but I had seven of my best friends die in 18 months.

Joe Rogan 1:56:58 Wow!

John Mellencamp 1:56:59 Yeah. Because they couldn't get off the party.

Joe Rogan 1:57:01 Oh.

John Mellencamp 1:57:02 They just couldn't get off the party 'cause they were drunk all the time. I mean, if you drink Crown Royal every fucking day-

Joe Rogan 1:57:09 Yeah

John Mellencamp 1:57:10 ... it's gonna fuck up your liver and-

Joe Rogan 1:57:13 100%.

John Mellencamp 1:57:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:57:14 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:57:15 And that's what they did. I mean, you know-- Except Tim, Tim had a heart attack. Tim White, the, the guy I was telling you about, he died on an elevator ride from-- in New York, from the ground floor to his office, and by the time he got up there, he was dead.

Joe Rogan 1:57:33 Wow.

John Mellencamp 1:57:35 But he would call me up every day and go, "Man, my chest really hurts. My back really hurts."

Joe Rogan 1:57:39 Ugh.

John Mellencamp 1:57:40 You know, and I would go, "Tim, your dad died of-- at, like, 49 from heart disease. Don't you think you better go to the doctor?" "I don't wanna go." And that, that's what, that's what most guys do, they don't wanna go to the fucking doctor.

Joe Rogan 1:57:54 Yep. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 1:57:56 You know. But I do. [laughing] I go to the doctor.

Joe Rogan 1:58:00 Does the doctor tell you to stop smoking?

John Mellencamp 1:58:03 Eh, all the, all the time. But, see, here's, here's the thing about cigarettes: find something you love, and let it kill you. [laughing] Find something you love, and let it kill you.

Joe Rogan 1:58:26 Yeah, I don't know. [chuckles] It's not killing you yet. I mean-

John Mellencamp 1:58:33 And I just had a, uh, I just had a, um, a heart mammogram and all that stuff, and the doctors go-- 'cause the heart is shaped like this, you know, like that.

Joe Rogan 1:58:50 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:58:50 And then what happens is, is that as you, the longer you smoke, it flattens out, and that way, it's full of crap.

Joe Rogan 1:58:59 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 1:59:00 Mine's still like this. And he said, last-- and this was two years ago, he said, "Well, I'd like to tell you, you need to quit smoking, but if you've been smoking as long as I know you have, uh, the only thing that's really happened is, is that your heart looks like a teenager's and your voice sounds Black," so... [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:59:23 Do you think it's 'cause you smoke American Spirits? I talked to a doctor that said that to me, and she, Suzanne Humphrey, she was like: "I think that one of the things that's killing people is cigarettes with all the additives in it, all the, the different chemicals that they put in those-"

John Mellencamp 1:59:36 120 chemicals! I-

Joe Rogan 1:59:39 Crazy.

John Mellencamp 1:59:40 I-- My girlfriend hates that I fucking smoke. Of course, she knew I was smoking when she met me, but now that we've been together for three years... Uh, and my wife of 20 years, Elaine, never smoked a cigarette in her life till she met me, and then [chuckles] she started smoking. She, on one hand, just said, "Well, fuck it. If you can't beat them, join them," so she started smoking. But Kristen hates cigarettes, and I, I don't know what to tell her, 'cause, you know, the-- I don't do much good, but I'm really a good smoker. [laughing] Really good at it.

Joe Rogan 2:00:21 What is it that you love about cigarettes so much?

John Mellencamp 2:00:26 They're part of me. Uh, I don't know how to put it. I mean, I smoked my first cigarette at 10.

Joe Rogan 2:00:35 Wow!

John Mellencamp 2:00:36 At 10.

Joe Rogan 2:00:37 64 years of smoking.

John Mellencamp 2:00:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:00:40 That's crazy.

John Mellencamp 2:00:42 I was-

Joe Rogan 2:00:42 And you're okay.

John Mellencamp 2:00:43 I was addicted in high school.

Joe Rogan 2:00:45 Wow!

John Mellencamp 2:00:46 I used to wake up in the morning, and my parents had a great big house, and I would go down in the basement, go into the fucking storm cellar, and smoke, not knowing that I came out of that little area smelling like a cigarette ashtray. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:01:01 Right. [chuckles]

John Mellencamp 2:01:02 And my parents, you know, was like, "Have you been smoking downstairs?" "Yeah." But they never said anything.

Joe Rogan 2:01:09 Well, maybe it's better than having the stress of not smoking. One of the things about smoking, and I'm not an advocate, I'm not telling people they should smoke, but maybe one of the things about it is that at least it relaxes you. I think one of the worst things for people is just stress.... I was talking about a friend of mine who's going through something pretty heavy right now, and, uh, he's had a couple of heart attacks, and there's nothing wrong with him. He's had heart attacks just from stress, where his fucking arteries just lock up, his whole body's just locked up just from anxiety and stress, and he's had heart attacks because of that. Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, takes care of himself, and just the l- the problems in his life are so overwhelming. There's gotta be-- there's a benefit, there's gotta be a benefit to just relaxing, just enjoying something and relaxing, and not having that overwhelming stress.

John Mellencamp 2:02:04 Well, it's amazing how much cigarettes take you away from-- 'cause you've gotta, you know, nowadays, if you're a cigarette smoker, you, you know-- I'm lucky to be here with you, that I can smoke in your area, but most people would go, "Yeah, "

Joe Rogan 2:02:20 Go outside.

John Mellencamp 2:02:20 Go outside.

Joe Rogan 2:02:21 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:02:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:02:23 Yeah. Wow.

John Mellencamp 2:02:23 But I'll tell you a funny story about Johnny Cash and me. [clears throat] John, uh, John, I-- John and I knew each other, and I would go down and, and I would see him in Jamaica, and then he got really sick. But John quit smoking, and John and I did, um, did something for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and i- this is another funny story. Um, we were standing around doing-- getting ready to do soundcheck, and there was a whole bunch of people playing, a whole bunch of people. And the Eagles were on sound checking, and they were taking, uh, taking forever because Don Henley is a, a perfectionist: everything's gotta be just right. And I was standing with John and June, and John was getting irritated 'cause we were like 40 minutes-- you know, we'd been standing there ready to sound check for 40 minutes. So while we're standing there, I was smoking, and John goes, "You're going to have to quit that smoking, John. It's gonna catch up with you someday." I said, "Well, you fucking smoke." And he goes, "Well, I used to, but I saw this guy from London, and he, he got me to quit smoking." I go, "Maybe I should see that guy." He goes, "Okay, yeah, I, I will." "Uh, you will." Anyway, [chuckles] so, so anyway, we finally get on the, to sound check, and John sound checked without me, uh, 'cause I just sang one song with him. I-- and then when it came time to sound check, I went, "You know, John..." You know, 'cause like, he was irritated. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you knew Johnny Cash or not-

Joe Rogan 2:04:19 No.

John Mellencamp 2:04:19 ... he had a fucking temper. You know, you didn't fuck with John Cash. You just didn't. Anyway, I says, "You know, John, uh, you know, I got this song." And we were doing 'Ring of Fire.' I said, "I know that song. It's easy." He said, "You sure?" And I said, "Yeah. Yeah, I got it. I got it." He goes, "Okay, well, thanks, 'cause, you know, I'm sick of fucking being here." So [chuckles] the next night, we get up there, and John come, and he introduces me, "My friend, John Mellencamp," and he starts the song. [singing] I fell into... I didn't realize that he had changed the fucking key from him smoking to a lower key, so I couldn't hit the note, 'cause it was, [singing] I fell into, to I fell-- I couldn't find the fucking note because it was not the note the song was written in.

Joe Rogan 2:05:26 [chuckles]

John Mellencamp 2:05:26 I was singing right along with the song. And I look over there, and there's Chuck Berry going... [laughing] And I look over there, and there's Springsteen going... And all these people on the side of the stage, right? And they're, they're all giving me a look like, "You're fucking up, man." It was like, "Yeah, I know it." And so anyway, as soon as the song was over, I ran offstage. I was totally humiliated, right? So I ran offstage and got to my trailer. I j- I just get back there, and all of a sudden, [knocking] knock on the door, and I answer it, and it's John. And he said, "Can I come in?" And I go, "I don't know why you'd want to, but yeah, come on in." He goes, "I told you we should have sound checked." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:06:12 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 2:06:16 Anyway, so that conversation led on to, "I know this guy who will get you to quit smoking," and so he gives me all the information. And me and two other guys fly this guy over from London, and, um, Joe, here was his solution for not smoking: He gave me a good talking to.

Joe Rogan 2:06:42 That's it?

John Mellencamp 2:06:43 That was it. I was smoking on the way back to Indiana. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:06:48 [laughing] My friend Ron White's been smoking his whole life, and he just stopped, and he went to a hypnotist. Same hypnotist-- he, he quit drinking a few years back, went to a hypnotist, quit drinking easy. He said it was so easy. And then, uh, just recently, like within, um, last three or four weeks, quit smoking, and he's almost 70. Just said the hypnotist got him and said now he doesn't have the desire. He goes, "Sometimes," he goes, "after sex," he goes, "after a meal, sometimes I have, like, a-- for a brief second-"

John Mellencamp 2:07:18 Well, I, I don't have to worry about that. I'm too old for sex. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:07:21 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 2:07:22 I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Joe Rogan 2:07:24 Well, I guess Ron still gets after it, 'cause after, uh, the-- but he said it's just a brief second, and then it goes away.

John Mellencamp 2:07:31 Well, I, I'll tell you, uh-... I was friends with, uh, the Newman family, and Paul quit smoking and died.

Joe Rogan 2:07:44 Right afterwards? Was the smoking contributing to his health problems? Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:07:51 And it was just like, he was older. It was like, you know-- I mean, he was, like, 80s. I don't know. Can you see how old [chuckles] he was when he died? Uh, anyway, so, you know, I just kinda went-

Joe Rogan 2:08:06 Find what you love and let it kill you.

John Mellencamp 2:08:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:08:08 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:08:09 Find what you love and let it kill you.

Joe Rogan 2:08:11 Eighty-three.

John Mellencamp 2:08:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:08:14 I fucking loved that guy. Hustler, one of my favorite movies of all time.

John Mellencamp 2:08:18 Well, I'm really good friends with Joanne, who now is... I love Joanne, and, uh, once Paul died, I became her boyfriend. And, uh, she and I would talk all the time on the phone, and whenever I was in New York or, or the town she lives in, North New York, I'd, I'd take her to plays, and we'd go to plays, and we'd do, uh, do stuff, and I'd pinch her on the ass, and she- [laughing] ... she'd, you know, she'd look at me like- But then, when she started call-- when I would call her, and she started calling me Paul-

Joe Rogan 2:09:00 Ah.

John Mellencamp 2:09:01 I would have to go, "Joanne, it's not Paul. I'm just John."

Joe Rogan 2:09:05 Oh.

John Mellencamp 2:09:06 And now she-- now I still go see her all the time. Not all the time, not as much as I should. But she-- I can't remember the name of the fucking town she lives in. Uh, anyway, she's-- she can't talk.

Joe Rogan 2:09:20 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:09:20 She, she can't... You know, she has a, what do you call it?

Joe Rogan 2:09:24 Dementia.

John Mellencamp 2:09:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:09:26 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:09:26 And she can't talk, and she, she can-- You know, I take my guitar, and I'll play and sing for her. She'll [humming]

Joe Rogan 2:09:36 God, that's sad.

John Mellencamp 2:09:39 But, you know, she's always happy to see me. I think she realizes that it's me. Uh, but I love her. I mean, uh, she was just, she was just great. She was a great woman. How I met her was at a Democratic thing for-- Who was the guy that ran for president? John-

Joe Rogan 2:09:59 John Kerry?

John Mellencamp 2:10:01 John Kerry. And it was at Radio City, and I have a son named Hud, and Paul Newman starred in the movie Hud. And so Newman walked in to my dressing room and goes, "I'm looking for Hud Mellencamp." And he was with me, but he was running around Radio City somewhere. Have you ever been to Radio City?

Joe Rogan 2:10:24 Yes.

John Mellencamp 2:10:25 Have you been backstage?

Joe Rogan 2:10:26 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 2:10:27 There's all kind of shit going on. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:10:29 Yeah. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:10:30 You can go anywhere in that place.

Joe Rogan 2:10:31 Right.

John Mellencamp 2:10:32 Anyway, so Hud was running around there, and I just let him go wherever he wants. And I'm sitting there talking to Paul, and I go, "This is pretty cool." And then Joanne walked in and was like, "All right, Newman, uh, hey," [chuckles] 'cause she was beautiful. I mean, Jo, you cannot-- She must have been in her late 50s, something like that. She, she was gorgeous, like one of the prettiest women I'd ever seen. And I, and, uh, so I just kinda like, "Well, it's nice meeting you, Paul." "Hey, Joanne." [laughing] And that's how we became friends. And even before he died, her and I were talking on the phone, and, yeah, I, I, I love Joanne. I hope she lives forever, but I-- you know, I know that people take care of her, and it's sad.

Joe Rogan 2:11:21 It's just hard to see someone in a deteriorated state like that as they get older.

John Mellencamp 2:11:26 Well, you know, have you ever seen the movie, uh, uh... God, I can't think. The Fugitive Kind.

Joe Rogan 2:11:34 What is it?

John Mellencamp 2:11:34 The Fugitive Kind.

Joe Rogan 2:11:36 I don't think so.

John Mellencamp 2:11:38 Rogan, you gotta watch it.

Joe Rogan 2:11:39 Yeah?

John Mellencamp 2:11:39 It's great. You'll love it. Uh, it's called The Fugitive Kind. It stars Brando and Joanne Woodward, and it, it's just such a-- It's written by Tennessee Williams.

Joe Rogan 2:11:52 Oh.

John Mellencamp 2:11:53 It's really, really good. Really good. It's one of my favorite movies ever made, The Fugitive Kind.

Joe Rogan 2:11:59 I'll check it out.

John Mellencamp 2:12:00 Yeah. Yeah, and, and I, I know a lot about old movies 'cause I don't watch new movies. If it's not in black and white, I'm not watching.

Joe Rogan 2:12:11 Really?

John Mellencamp 2:12:12 Yeah. I don't-

Joe Rogan 2:12:12 Has it always been the case, or is that a new thing?

John Mellencamp 2:12:14 No, it's always been the way-

Joe Rogan 2:12:16 Really?

John Mellencamp 2:12:16 Yeah, I- my girlfriend Kristen will talk to me, "You know that actor?" And I'll go, "No." [laughing] I don't, I don't know anybody in the, in the entertainment business anymore, except guys my age, you know?

Joe Rogan 2:12:32 That's probably a good thing.

John Mellencamp 2:12:34 But I don't know any of them. You know, I know Sean, you know, but I've, I've known Sean since he was a kid, before Ridgemont High.

Joe Rogan 2:12:43 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 2:12:44 That's how long I've known that guy.

Joe Rogan 2:12:46 Wow, that was a fucking great movie.

John Mellencamp 2:12:48 Yeah, it was.

Joe Rogan 2:12:49 They can't make a comedy like that anymore.

John Mellencamp 2:12:51 Oh, no, they couldn't even get it-- They, they, they wouldn't make it again.

Joe Rogan 2:12:54 Not a chance.

John Mellencamp 2:12:54 No.

Joe Rogan 2:12:55 Not a chance in hell.

John Mellencamp 2:12:56 Not, not up there.

Joe Rogan 2:12:56 That's the thing with political correctness and then the woke movement. That's the thing that really died, was the great comedy movies, the inappropriate movies.

John Mellencamp 2:13:05 Well, you answer me this question:

Joe Rogan 2:13:06 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:13:07 Why did anybody give a shit anyway? I mean, you know, '86, and what was the senator, uh, the guy, the comedian that wrote for Saturday Night Live, who was just-

Joe Rogan 2:13:20 Al Franken?

John Mellencamp 2:13:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:13:21 Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:13:22 I'd have said, "Fuck you guys."

Joe Rogan 2:13:23 Yeah, should have. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:13:25 Yeah, I mean, why, why did he let some other-

Joe Rogan 2:13:28 I don't know. The climate got crazy. People lost their fucking minds, and I think it's kinda turned around, and people are kinda recognizing that it was a massive overcorrection.

John Mellencamp 2:13:37 It was.

Joe Rogan 2:13:38 ... uh, the problem is the comedy films, like if you go back and watch, l- you know, like Tropical Thunder or a- any of those kinda crazy movies that were, like, really outrageous and funny, like, you know, you can't make them today. Nobody wants to fund them and finance them. Nobody wants the heat. Nobody wants to deal with the criticism. They, they've essentially killed comedy mus- movies.

John Mellencamp 2:14:01 Well, and that's what I was asking you. How is, how is doing stand-up?

Joe Rogan 2:14:05 You can't kill stand-up. The problem with stand-up is, like, people will come to see you, and that's all that matters. People come to see you, and they laugh. That's all that matters.

John Mellencamp 2:14:14 Mm.

Joe Rogan 2:14:14 Like, y- the critics don't matter.

John Mellencamp 2:14:15 Well, who, who, who's your favorite stand-up comedian now?

Joe Rogan 2:14:18 Alive? Uh, there's so many good ones right now. I mean, Chappelle's probably the greatest, uh, if- one of the greatest of all time, and we're lucky we have him alive now. But, uh, you know, Bill Burr is great, uh, Shane Gillis. There's... I- it's an amazing time for stand-up. Dave Attell is probably, like, the most unheralded great comic that's alive today. There's so many great comedy-

John Mellencamp 2:14:40 What about-

Joe Rogan 2:14:40 ... so many great comedians now, because-

John Mellencamp 2:14:42 What about Jim Jefferies?

Joe Rogan 2:14:44 Jim Jefferies is funny. There's, I mean, the Australian guy. There's, um, you know, more comics now that are huge than I think have ever been alive in the history of comedy because of YouTube and in, y- Instagram, and definitely Netflix, 'cause there's just more comedy to see. There's more comedy to, to go watch. There's more comics right now who are selling out arenas than ever in the history of stand-up comedy.

John Mellencamp 2:15:14 Yeah, I've se- I've seen it on television.

Joe Rogan 2:15:16 You just can't worry about what the haters think. You can't worry about that. You just gotta just d- do what you think is funny and what you think the audience is gonna think is funny, and work real hard at it. That's all you have to do, and just don't pay attention to the criticism. If you do, it'll kill you.

John Mellencamp 2:15:31 The best stand-up comedian movie I ever saw was the first Richard Pryor.

Joe Rogan 2:15:40 Oh, Live on the Sunset Strip changed my life.

John Mellencamp 2:15:42 Well, that-

Joe Rogan 2:15:43 Changed my life.

John Mellencamp 2:15:44 That was the third one.

Joe Rogan 2:15:45 Was it?

John Mellencamp 2:15:46 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:15:46 So Wanted was before that, right?

John Mellencamp 2:15:49 Y- yeah, and that took place in New Orleans.

Joe Rogan 2:15:51 Okay, there was one he filmed in Long Beach.

John Mellencamp 2:15:54 That is-

Joe Rogan 2:15:54 Yeah

John Mellencamp 2:15:55 ... the one I'm talking about.

Joe Rogan 2:15:55 Phenomenal. Phenomenal.

John Mellencamp 2:15:57 Un- unbelievable.

Joe Rogan 2:15:58 Phenomenal.

John Mellencamp 2:15:59 Uh, uh, unbelievable.

Joe Rogan 2:16:00 And while he's getting on stage, people are still coming in and sitting down.

John Mellencamp 2:16:03 I know!

Joe Rogan 2:16:04 He's fucking with people as they're coming in and sitting down. [chuckles] I don't think he had an opening act. I think he just came right out.

John Mellencamp 2:16:08 No, he did.

Joe Rogan 2:16:08 He did?

John Mellencamp 2:16:08 He had a... Yeah, he had, uh... What, what's the woman's name, the singer? Uh-

Joe Rogan 2:16:14 Oh, he had a musical opening act?

John Mellencamp 2:16:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:16:16 Interesting.

John Mellencamp 2:16:17 Um, I can't remember who it was, but he thanked them. He thanked her.

Joe Rogan 2:16:23 Oh, okay.

John Mellencamp 2:16:24 But I saw that in, like, 19- whatever year it was, '79, when it came out.

Joe Rogan 2:16:30 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 2:16:30 And I was in Florida, and I had to go into the Black part of Miami to see it, and I took a couple guys in my band with me. And this one guy named Ferd in my band was just an idiot. We walk in there, and there's nothing but Black people. So I'm okay, except Ferd walks in like this. And I go, "What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck?"

Joe Rogan 2:17:05 He walked in grabbing his dick?

John Mellencamp 2:17:07 Yeah. [laughing] 'Cause he wanted to show them that he was-

Joe Rogan 2:17:14 Uh, Patty LaBelle

John Mellencamp 2:17:15 ... Patty LaBelle. Yeah, that's who opened up.

Joe Rogan 2:17:16 There it is. Nice.

John Mellencamp 2:17:19 Yeah. So [chuckles] anyway, he's grabbing his dick walking in, and I'm looking at him going, "Are you out of your fucking mind? Stop, stop doing that." [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:17:27 My parents took me to see Live on the Sunset Strip when I was a kid. I was in high school, and, uh, I guess I was, like, 15 at the time, something like that. And, uh, I remember looking around at all the people laughing, and I couldn't believe how funny it was. I couldn't believe how funny it was. I couldn't believe that this guy could just be on stage talking, and it would be that funny.

John Mellencamp 2:17:48 Well-

Joe Rogan 2:17:48 But I'd seen all these comedy movies that were really funny, but nothing ever made me laugh as hard as this one man on stage talking. I'll never forget it. I was little. I was, like, looking around the crowd, and people were just falling out of their seats, [laughing] laughing, slapping each other. Couldn't, couldn't believe how funny it was.

John Mellencamp 2:18:07 Well, you know the backstory on that, on that?

Joe Rogan 2:18:10 What's the backstory?

John Mellencamp 2:18:12 The backstory was that was take two.

Joe Rogan 2:18:15 Oh, yeah, he bombed the first one. Yeah.

John Mellencamp 2:18:17 Well, he, for whatever reason-

Joe Rogan 2:18:19 Yeah, I did hear that

John Mellencamp 2:18:20 ... he decided to do the show backwards. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:18:24 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 2:18:25 So he started with, you know, how he ended and was gonna work his way forward. And I don't know why he did that, but apparently, people that, that knew him told me that he would always do shit like that.

Joe Rogan 2:18:39 Well, it was creative. I had heard that he was working it out at the Comedy Store, and then he would come in on a Monday night, and it was bombing. And then by Friday night, he was destroying with the same material. He just figured out a way to tweak it. You know, that was back when he was working with Paul Mooney. Paul Mooney was one of his writers, who was a guy that I knew really well. I worked with him at the Comedy Store, and so Mooney and him would just figure out what the beats were and-

John Mellencamp 2:19:00 So did you play the Comedy Store a lot?

Joe Rogan 2:19:02 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was my home club in LA.

John Mellencamp 2:19:07 And how did you get in?

Joe Rogan 2:19:08 I got in, I, I auditioned in 1994. You know, I came from LA, uh, I came from New York, rather, to LA, uh, to do a sitcom, and I didn't really give a shit about the sitcom. That wasn't really that important to me. I, I was only doing it for money. But while I was there, I was like: God, I gotta go to the Comedy Store. 'Cause that... When I lived in, uh, Boston, when I first started stand-up in '88, they would talk about the Comedy Store like it was a religious experience. It was like Mecca. 'Cause this was after Sam Kinison had made it. Of course, Richard Pryor had come from there. Bill Hicks had come from there. David Letterman, so many people had come from there, Robin Williams. And so they just talked about it with, like, hushed tones, like: "Man, you gotta get to the Comedy Store." It was like a pilgrimage, like you had to get there.

2:19:50 ... and I got there in '94 and never left, you know, until the pandemic.

John Mellencamp 2:19:55 Yeah, I was friends with, with Letterman, 'cause he's from Indianapolis.

Joe Rogan 2:19:59 Mm-hmm.

John Mellencamp 2:20:00 And, uh, his mom used to come down to my house in Bloomington, and we'd have-- his mom and his stepdad would come down and have dinner with me at my house. And so, Letterman, I, I, I did a couple things on Letterman, where I cooked a cake with his mom [laughing] in Indianapolis and brought the cake to David for his birthday, and I, I, I like, I like Letterman. He was al- he's always been nice to me, and his mom told me a story. I don't know if it's true or not, but I had just released my first album, and David was still doing the weather locally in Indianapolis.

Joe Rogan 2:20:45 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 2:20:46 And he said to his mom, "If that kid can go out and do it-

Joe Rogan 2:20:52 No.

John Mellencamp 2:20:52 -I can, too."

Joe Rogan 2:20:53 Oh, wow!

John Mellencamp 2:20:55 That's what his mom said. So I don't know if that's true or not. His mom told me that. I never asked Dave about it.

Joe Rogan 2:21:00 You shouldn't even ask. Let it live in legend.

John Mellencamp 2:21:03 Yeah, I, [chuckles] I like the story.

Joe Rogan 2:21:05 John, thank you so much, man. This was a lot of fun. It was a real pleasu- pleasure meeting you. I really enjoyed it, man, and I've been a big fan of yours for years, so this was a, it was a real treat for me.

John Mellencamp 2:21:13 Well, great. I'm glad, I'm glad to be here, and I hope you come and see me play.

Joe Rogan 2:21:18 I would love to. I definitely will.

John Mellencamp 2:21:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:21:20 Is your tours on your website? Is it-

John Mellencamp 2:21:23 I, I don't know

Joe Rogan 2:21:23 ... johnmellencamp.com or something like that?

John Mellencamp 2:21:25 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 2:21:26 [laughing] We'll find it. We'll find it.

John Mellencamp 2:21:28 Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 2:21:29 We'll find it. Thank you.

John Mellencamp 2:21:31 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 2:21:31 Thank you very much.

John Mellencamp 2:21:31 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 2:21:31 It was really fun. Thank you. All right.

John Mellencamp 2:21:33 And you're gonna hate those fucking tattoos.

Joe Rogan 2:21:35 Nope, I don't think so. I like them.

John Mellencamp 2:21:39 Yeah, I thought I liked mine, too. [upbeat music]

Joe Rogan 2:21:41 [laughing]

John Mellencamp 2:21:42 I thought I liked mine, too.

Joe Rogan 2:21:44 Bye, everybody. [upbeat music]