The John Cougar-produced Never Kick a Sleeping Dog album by Mitch Ryder served as a test run for The Shack to see if recording on native soil would work better for the devoted Midwesterner, who felt too crazy and distracted in fast-paced L.A. Mellencamp agreed to lend them the money on one condition: that he could first use the space as a recording studio. Mellencamp’s sister, Laura, and her husband-to-be owned the house and the hog farm it sat on, but ran out of money before they could finish renovating their home. Mellencamp, guitarists Mike Wanchic and Larry Crane, drummer Kenny Aronoff and studio bassists Willie Weeks and Louis Johnson (standing in at various times for newcomer Toby Myers) headed to The Shack, an unfinished, rundown farmhouse between Brownstown and Seymour, Ind.
Propelled by this creative surge, he called up producer/engineer Don Gehman, who had worked on American Fool and the largely forgettable John Cougar album, to come and record his next album. Mellencamp, still learning the craft of songwriting and arranging, sat down with a tape machine and described the man, and didn’t stop recording until he had “Pink Houses” fully written. “He waved, and I waved back,” Mellencamp told Rolling Stone. The Interstate ran within feet of the man’s front yard, but he didn’t seem disturbed by the commotion around him. After seven years of playing to near-empty dive bars, dealing with shady managers and having his name changed behind his back, he had finally achieved quantifiable commercial success.Īs he cruised along an overpass, he looked down and saw a black man sitting with a cat in his arms on the front porch of his weathered, pink shotgun shack.
He had won an American Music Award for Favorite Pop Male that year, as well as his first and only Grammy Award - Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male for “Hurts So Good” from his multi-Platinum breakthrough album, American Fool. And when he finally switched to using his birth name (with no big cats joining the fun this time) in 1991, Johnny Cougar was finally, unquestionably in his rearview mirror.Early one summer morning in 1983, a 32-year-old John Mellencamp, dba John Cougar, drove himself home to Bloomington, Ind., from the Indianapolis airport. "The most American artist I've seen since Bob Dylan," anyone? Mellencamp wasn't having it, and while he acknowledged his debut record wasn't any great shakes, he felt DeFries' strategy didn't do him any favors.ĭue to the failure of "Chestnut Street Incident," MainMan balked on releasing Mellencamp's follow-up album, "The Kid Inside." (They eventually put it out in 1983 in an obvious cash grab.) He was then dropped by MCA and by MainMan, leaving him holding the proverbial bag. Starting all over again after being "washed up and over by mid-twenties," Mellencamp went with a compromise of sorts when choosing a new stage name, calling himself John Cougar because, once again, he was a man who didn't do pet names. There was also DeFries' tendency to promote the raw, not-yet-polished Mellencamp with all sorts of hyperbole. Worse, the then-24-year-old was blasted by the press as a second-rate copycat of another young upstart who would also become legendary for his all-American sound - Bruce Springsteen.
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