When John Mellencamp was a glam rocker
John Mellencamp’s understated blues-infused sound bought heartland rock to the mainstream with hits like ‘Pink Houses’ and ‘Jack and Diane’. Ever the underdog, the chain-smoking singer never quite received the acclaim bestowed upon roots rocking peer, Bruce Springsteen.
Despite operating slightly in Springsteen’s shadow, Mellencamp’s style has always been easily recognisable. Whether it be in the Delta-blues twang of his guitar or his frank portrayal of blue-collar life, Mellencamp is every inch a heartland musician. This makes it all the more surprising that he spent the early-70s in a glam rock band, covering David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and The Stooges’ ‘I Need Somebody’.
Towards the end of 1972, he formed Trash, a distinctly Bowie-inspired glam rock outfit. Trash never wound up going anywhere, although it provided fertile ground for his songwriting. During this period, Mellencamp wrote a Lou Reed tribute called ‘Loser’ and the souped-up Stooges influenced ‘One Way Driver’. A year after, it became clear Trash would never take off, so Mellencamp opted to record a solo demo. With grit and determination, he took it around New York’s most prominent record companies, being soundly rejected by them all.
As a last resort, he decided to try Bowie’s management because if you’re going to be rejected, it may as well be by your idol’s boss. Instead, Bowie’s manager Tony Defries (who also represented Iggy and the Stooges) signed him to MainMan Management.
His first record, Chestnut Street Incident, followed in 1976. Mellencamp hadn’t realised his name had been changed to Johnny Cougar until he saw the mock-ups for the album cover. He objected, but Defries told him the LP would be released with that name or not at all. The New York crowd were convinced his name wouldn’t sell and told him he sounded like a hillbilly.
The 1977 record The Kid Inside, however, was a disappointing follow-up and was rejected by MCA and dropped by MainMain. Nevertheless, following his later success in the 1980s with Scarecrow, Defries released it. As for the glam-rock covers of The Stooges and Bowie, it remains unclear when they were recorded. Mellencamp’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ cover usually appears on reissues of The Kid Inside, and Chestnut Street Incident reissues house the ‘I Need Somebody’ cover.
It remains a somewhat bizarre quirk that Mellencamp, who later on in his career developed a very strong sense of self, spent the beginning of it trying out genres (and names) that seems almost entirely the opposite of what he does so well. In the end, though, he traded the glitz and excess of glam rock for a rougher, more accessible sound that he later came to perfect.
