Why did John Mellencamp change his name?
When mainstream audiences first got a taste of American heartland rocker John Mellencamp, it was while he was performing under the stage name “John Cougar”. His first top-ten hit, ‘Hurts So Good’, wasn’t released until 1982, by which time the 31-year-old singer had already been attempting to make a career in the music industry for a decade.
Mellencamp started out by playing glam rock during his college years. He caught the eye of David Bowie manager Tony DeFries, who eventually signed Mellencamp to MainMan Management in the mid-1970s. There was only one condition that DeFries had before taking Mellencamp on: he needed to change his name.
“That was put on me by some manager,” Mellencamp claimed in a 2005 interview with American Songwriter. “I went to New York, and everybody said, ‘You sound like a hillbilly.’ And I said, ‘Well, I am.’ So that’s where he came up with that name. I was totally unaware of it until it showed up on the album jacket. When I objected to it, he said, ‘Well, either you’re going to go for it, or we’re not going to put the record out.’ So that was what I had to do… but I thought the name was pretty silly.”
John Mellencamp became ‘Johnny Cougar’, with his first album, Chestnut Street Incident, coming out in 1976. Mellencamp attempted to quickly record a follow-up, but after MCA records dropped him from their roster, The Kid Inside wouldn’t be released until 1983. Briefly moving to London, Mellencamp released his final album as Johnny Cougar, A Biography, in 1978.
The single ‘I Need a Lover’ had seen success in Australia, eventually rising to prominence when it was covered by Pat Benatar on her debut album In The Heat of the Night in 1979. That same year, Mellencamp released his self-titled third album under the name ‘John Cougar’. Mainstream success still proved elusive, but 1980’s Nothin’ Matters And What If It Did wound up producing two Top 40 singles in the US – ‘This Time’ and ‘Ain’t Even Done With The Night’.
“I take no credit for that record. It wasn’t like the title was made up – it wasn’t supposed to be punky or cocky like some people thought,” Mellencamp told Record Magazine in 1983. “Toward the end, I didn’t even go to the studio. Me and the guys in the band thought we were finished, anyway. It was the most expensive record I ever made. It cost $280,000, do you believe that? The worst thing was that I could have gone on making records like that for hundreds of years.”
It wouldn’t be until 1982’s American Fool that Mellencamp finally found success on his own terms. ‘Hurts So Good’ was a number two hit, setting the stage for Mellencamp’s sole number one hit, ‘Jack & Diane’. While recording 1983’s Uh-Huh, Mellencamp insisted that his real surname be added to his stage name. By 1991’s Whenever We Wanted, Mellencamp had fully excised the ‘Cougar’ from his albums, continuing for the rest of his career under his birth name.
