The receptionist was also from Indiana, and made sure DeFries gave him a chance. Some of his earliest recordings, now featured as bonus tracks on his 1976 debut Chestnut Street Incident, were covers of Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and the Stooges’ “I Need Somebody.” But Mellencamp never really tried for the glam rock look, and it was his Midwestern roots that got his foot in the door when he took his demo to the New York offices of DeFries’s company MainMan. “I was a singer in a bar band, and we were doing Iggy & The Stooges cover songs,” he says another early band was named Trash, after the New York Dolls song. His old friend Bruce Springsteen flew out to Indiana to work on three songs on the album, including the single “Wasted Days.” And though Springsteen’s voice has also been weathered by time, he sounds smoother and softer in comparison to Mellencamp’s craggy tone.Īlthough Mellencamp would eventually become synonymous with the concept of “heartland rock,” thanks to songs about small town life like “Pink Houses,” glam rock and proto punk were in the air when his career got started. “I always thought as a young man that my voice was too high,” Mellencamp shrugs, over the phone from his home in Indiana a few days after the album’s release. It’s a far cry from the bright, anthemic songs like “Hurts So Good” that made him one of the biggest stars of the ‘80s, but that’s clearly fine with him. It’s gotten glowing notices from critics, but it’s almost certainly the first time Tom Waits has been name-dropped in many of Mellencamp’s reviews. Strictly a One-Eyed Jack is Mellencamp’s 25 th studio album, starkly minimalist and full of downbeat songs like “I Am a Man That Worries” that make excellent use of the newfound gravitas in his voice. And he’d comment on it, ‘How much of this growl do you want on the track?’ And I would always just smile and go, ‘Well, the cigarette smoking’s starting to pay off I guess.’” “He takes care of my voice on the records. But as he was recording his new album, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, he and his engineer noticed how much more leathery that familiar voice had become. ![]() There’s always been a slight rasp in John Mellencamp’s singing. ![]() “And I go, ‘Me?’ They go, ‘No, it’s Louis Armstrong.” Then they played something else that sounded similar, and asked him what it was. In 2019, Hunter joined Def Leppard on stage during their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction for a performance of “All the Young Dudes.A year or two back, John Mellencamp walked into his Indiana studio one morning, and his engineer, the same one he’s worked with since the ‘80s, asked him, “You wanna hear something fuckin’ wild?” The engineer and one of his band members played back an isolated vocal from one of Mellencamp’s new songs. ![]() He also wrote its anthemic glam rock title track, which he shared with the band after they refused his Ziggy Stardust classic, “Suffragette City.”įollowing the disbandment of Mott the Hoople in 1974, Hunter released his self-titled solo debut and dozens of albums since, including Man Overboard in 2009, and three more releases with The Rant Band through 2016. Around this time, Hunter was also often collaborating with David Bowie and his guitarist Mark Ronson during the Ziggy Stardust era.īowie-who initially encouraged the band to stay together in the early ’70s when they were close to breaking up-went on to produce Mott the Hoople’s fifth album, All the Young Dudes. Along with longtime collaborator and guitarist Andy York, the two used only a computer, a small keyboard, a guitar, and a V5 piano.įorming Mott the Hoople in 1969, the band released seven albums together from their eponymous release in ’69 through their final The Hoople in 1974. Using the lockdown to get back to work, Hunter began writing a collection of new songs in the basement of his Connecticut home. ![]() The album first started coming together in early 2020, shortly after Hunter kicked off a run of shows celebrating his 80th birthday, which was cut short by the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
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