The peculiar moment that John Mellencamp had to ask Bob Dylan to stop incessantly calling
Bob Dylan: hero, genius, oddball.
The so-called original vagabond dragged the revolution of the 1960s up by the bootstraps with stirring prose that will never be forgotten. Then by the end of the next decade, he was picking up hitchhikers and telling them about Jesus Christ.
As his friend Keith Green recalled in his memoir, “They never recognised him because they drove a beat-up old car, and he wore a knit ski hat over his famous curls.” It proved particularly comical when his songs would crackle onto his crappy radio and he’d quip about preferring ‘his’ older stuff.
As strange as incidents such as this might seem on the surface, in my view, they actually illuminate the image of a man at odds with the sentiment that idolatry is tied to some nebulous form of responsibility. Four chords and the truth might have made him a hero, but they did not make him any more than an ordinary man who still likes to have a laugh.
Plenty of people seem to have stumbled over this ostensibly puzzling thought over the years, John Mellencamp being one of them.
Not many can claim such illustrious musical feats as Mellencamp. Known for his accessible form of Heartland rock, the Indianan musician rose to prominence in the 1980s, scoring a host of hits that include ‘Hurts So Good’, ‘Jack & Diane’, and ‘Crumblin’ Down’. A Grammy Award winner, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and an artist that has sold 60million albums worldwide, Mellencamp has hit the heights that only a select few have.
But even despite this success, he struggled to reconcile the strange ways of his personal hero, Bob Dylan. After Mellencamp and Dylan first met, they eventually became good friends, with the latter regularly calling the former for songwriting advice. However, after a while, Mellencamp had to ask him to stop..
A lifelong fan of Dylan, Mellencamp regularly played covers of songs by the ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ songwriter when he was still cutting his teeth. “Some people go to a bar one night a week, maybe two,” he recalled to American Songwriter. “I was in a bar every night playing with a band.”
“I was a Bob Dylan jukebox,” he continued. “I could play every Bob Dylan song.” Even after he had ‘made it’ in the industry, Mellencamp would periodically turn to songs by the old master in concert. “When you put someone up against Bob Dylan, he is the only singer/songwriter,” Mellencamp said later. “With Bob, it’s God’s mind to Bob’s fingers. There’s just nobody else.”
So, why did Mellencamp have to ghost God’s folky conduit?
Well, simply put, Mellencamp had to ask him to stop because he felt he wasn’t a reliable sounding board, as he likes “everything” Dylan does. “Bob Dylan used to call me up in the middle of the night and read his lyrics to me that he was working on for new records,” Mellencamp revealed to Billboard.
“I finally told him, ‘Bob, would you quit calling me because I’m not gonna say anything. I’m not a good sounding board because I like everything you do’,” he recalled. “‘I’m happy to hear this stuff, but I’m not that great of a sounding board.'”
In truth, while Dylan might have been surprised, it wouldn’t have lasted long. He’s used to the pedestal he’s been placed on. In fact, one stirring story springs to mind whereby Bob recalled how even when he walks into a star-studded restaurant, he’ll notice a change in the demeanour of the celebrities present when they spot him.
Despite giving Dylan a reality check, Mellencamp is still grateful for being friends with one of the musicians he loves the most. “There’s very few guys I ended up admiring, musically,” he said. “Bruce [Springsteen] and Bob are definitely two of those guys, and I’m happy to say I have a good relationship with both of them.”
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