When you’re just starting out as a songwriter, finding your own voice (especially in a full band arrangement) can be an overwhelming challenge, one that John Mellencamp would later say contributed to “Jack and Diane” being so difficult to record. Because even though the song gives off an iconic, easygoing attitude, the writing process was anything but.
Despite being one of his most commercially successful hits of the early 1980s, Mellencamp has had a complicated relationship with the track, even going so far as to say he “detested” the song well into the 2020s.
The Struggle To Translate “Jack and Diane” To A Full Band
For many songwriters, the purest version of any song they write is the version with their lone voice and primary instrument. John Mellencamp’s creative process was no different on his 1982 single “Jack and Diane.” Unfortunately, this made fleshing out the full band arrangements a greater challenge than the Indiana native originally anticipated.
In a 2008 interview, Mellencamp called “Jack and Diane” a “terrible record to make. When I play it on guitar by myself, it sounds great; but I could never get the band to play along with me. That’s why the arrangement’s so weird. Stopping and starting, it’s not very musical” (via Ultimate Classic Rock). “I owe [former David Bowie guitarist] Mick Ronson the hit song.”
“Mick was very instrumental in helping me arrange that song,” Mellencamp continued, “as I’d thrown it on the junk heap. All of a sudden, for “Jack and Diane,” Mick said, ‘Johnny, you should put baby rattles on there.’ I thought, ‘What the f*** does put baby rattles on the record mean?’ So, he put the percussion on there, and he sang the part, Let it rock, let it roll, as a choir-ish type thing, which had never occurred to me. And that is the part everybody remembers on the song. It was Ronson’s idea.”
John Mellencamp Also Struggled To Find His Authentic Voice
Translating a solo acoustic song into a 1980s radio-worthy full band arrangement wasn’t the only challenge John Mellencamp went up against while cutting “Jack and Diane.” Mellencamp was still performing under his pseudonym, John Cougar, at the time, and the fake stage name seemed to reflect his ongoing struggle to balance finding his voice and satiating record executives’ need for a commercially viable hit.
The song’s lyrics were another example of Mellencamp’s creative tug of war. “Originally, the line was ‘Jack was not a football star, Jack was an African-American,” the songwriter told HuffPost in 2014. “In 1982, when I turned the song into the record company, they went, ‘Woah, can’t you make him something other than that?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t really want to. I mean, that’s the whole point. This is really a song about race relationships and a white girl being with a black guy, and that’s what the song’s about.”
Nevertheless, Mellencamp’s label pushed back until he changed the lyrics. In a 2022 interview with Forbes, Mellencamp admitted, “I always detested that song until the last couple, three years. I watched a football game this past weekend, and 80,000 people were singing that song at halftime. Can you imagine? I thought, ‘Shit.’ I said, ‘How do all these f***ing people know this song?’”
When Forbes’ Steve Baltin pushed back, insisting the “Rain On The Scarecrow” singer must have known the cultural significance of his song, the musician replied, “I don’t, because I’m not really part of the club. I’m alone on top of this mountain. I don’t really pay attention to popular culture.” And to Mellencamp’s credit, when you play a significant role in the shaping of that popular culture, it must become less pertinent to keep up with it.
Photo by Alex Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock
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