âHello, Liza. This is John Mellencamp. What do you want to talk about?â Itâs a cold, cloudy East Coast afternoon, and, for so many reasons, including Johnâs 69th birthday on Oct. 7, itâs been tough for us to connect.Â
âI want to talk about you,â I say.
âBoy, that’s a boring topic,â he states.
I donât believe him, but I like him already. Heâs direct. Heâs salty. Heâs moody and sharp. He speaks with a gravely Southern lilt, even though born and raised above the Mason-Dixon line. Seymour, Indiana, as we all know from his 1985 hit âSmall Townâ, is a humble place, under 20,000 people, known, interestingly, for its downtown railroad which intersects the north/south, east/west lines. He currently calls hour-away Bloomington home, though heâs calling today from his house on South Carolinaâs Daufuskie Island, off the Georgia coast.
âYou’re going to find out that I have a lot of fucking opinions and I just want to clarify right now that these are only my opinions,â he tells me. âThey don’t make them true. They don’t make them real. It’s just what I think.â
âI know.â
âIt’s just what I think,â he says again. âI’m not saying that I know it all because I don’tâŠI don’t know shit, but I have opinions.â
âThat’s why I’m talking to you because I want to hear your opinions. I like your opinions. We align, we really do,â I say.
âThen you’re nuttier than a fruitcake,â he laughs.
âMaybeâŠbut so, what? You’re nutty too,â I say.
âYes,â he concedes. âI agree.â
Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
Quickly, we cover a lot of groundâthe trouble with men (and women) and the faults in human nature. Heâs actually not at all ânuttyâ, he stands strongly in his convictions and thatâs how heâs had a nearly fifty-year music career generously balanced with giving back. His songs are about real people, real issues, deep feelings. Even the ones that are just for fun have so much heart.Â
Our conversation turns to this undeniably crazy year.
âOh, don’t worry, Sister,â he says. âIt’s going to get crazier.â
As with all performers, heâs had to readjust his 2020 goals. âWell, I’m halfway done with the [new] record then the virus hit and I haven’t been in the studio since the virus started,â he says. âI had planned to have the record out now but I haven’t finished. I have 17 more songs to record. I’ve recorded 10 and I have 17 more to do and I’ll pick 10 of the 27 songs.â
Much, much later, heâll reveal that heâs had something like 700 songs published, and thatâs clearly not counting those discarded through the years. His first studio album, 1976âs The Chestnut Street Incident, was released under the name Johnny Cougar, with 5 of the 11 tracks covers of hits from the 50s and 60s, including âJailhouse Rockâ. It wouldnât be until 1991âs Whenever We Wanted when he could leave âCougarâ behind and finally sing under his birth name. Performing since he was 14, his Grammy (along with 12 nominations) and 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction donât define him, though some of his other awards just might: the Nordoff-Robbins Silver Clef Special Music Industry Humanitarian Award in 1991 honoring his commitment to social justice, the Woody Guthrie Prize in 2018 recognizing âartists across media who have used their talents to speak for those without a platformâ, and the ASCAP Foundation Champion Award in 2007 for artists ââmaking a differenceâ through social action on behalf of worthwhile causes or who has demonstrated exceptional efforts in humanitarianismâ. And weâre just getting started. In 2010 he won the John Steinbeck Award for according to presenter Dr. Paul Douglass: “His remarkable ability to give voice to the common man and to people on society’s marginsâŠâ In 2019 he was awarded the ASCAP Harry Chapin Award which, according to their site, âshines a spotlight on artists who have proven their commitment to striving for social justice and creating real change in combating hunger worldwideâ.
Naturally, none of that ever comes up. He does tell me heâs a realist. And I learn, according to him, that most people are liars. Including him.
âI lie all the time,â he says. âI always lie when it could get me out of trouble. That’s when I do my biggest lying. I lie to people all the time. I have a record that I’m working on right now, one of the songs is called âI Always Lie to Strangersâ. I always lie to strangers and I always lie to people I may know. People lie all the fucking time. My point is it’s not even fair for us to believe them. It’s not even fair because we know that they’re lying and we know that we lie. How are you supposed to get anything done with everybody lying to each other? The worst part about it is I think it’s innate in the human nature to do it. Japanese culture, âYes, yes, yes.â They don’t mean yes. They’re really fucking saying, âFuck you.ââ
âIs that true, you always lie to strangers?â I ask.
âSure.â
âAre you lying to me?â
âNot intentionally,â he says.
Bob Sacha/Corbis via Getty Images
The Luckiest Guy in the Fucking World
âI’m the luckiest guy in the world because I had spina bifida on the top of my neck when I was born,â he tells me. âIn 1951, they had no idea how to solve that problem. There were five kids at Riley Hospital who had the same thing that I did, but the hole in your spine was at different places. They operated on all five of us, the other four died, I’m still here.â
Unsure and overwhelmed, Johnâs parents handed him over to his grandmother Laura. âMy parents were young, they were 20-years-old and they just went, âHere take him!â to my grandmother and my grandmother raised me. She told me my whole life that I was the smartest, handsomest, toughest boy in the world and I’ll never forget it. She told me every day. I was 40-years-old, she was still calling me up reminding me of that. That’s how I grew up. I eventually moved back in with my parents, but for the first four or five years of my life my grandmother took care of me. I was a deformed baby and here I am at 69-years-old and I’m the luckiest guy in the fucking world.â
Iâd asked him the question âwhat is your crown in heaven?â, having heard that heâd asked the question himself of an interviewer decades before. After a moment of low snickering, where I imagine him slowly, sentimentally shaking his head, his answer revolves around Laura. âWhen Grandma died I was with her and she said to me, she said, âBuddy, try to live the decent life, don’t worry about a thing because I’ll be in heaven and when you get there itâll be set up for you, you’ll walk right in.â I said, âOkay.â So, the fix is in for me. If there is such a place as heaven, I’m in, because the one woman who loved me and I trusted was her. My ex-wife would go, âBoy, sometimes I hate your grandma.â Because she’s spoilt me rotten.â
âYou must miss her, your grandma,â I say.
âYes, I do,â he says. âOne time I had a motorcycle, I just got a brand-new motorcycle, and I was with Grandma and she goes, âWhere are you going to take me for a ride?â And she was an old woman. I thought, âYou’re actually going to get on here and ride?â and I figured out that she was 72 years old when she did that. So, she wasn’t that old.â
âI got 11 years left,â he says, believing his time is up at 80. âWell, I’m a confirmed smoker, I’ve been smoking since I was 14 and if I make it to 80, that’s always been my goal, make it to 80, and then anything past that is borrowed time so I have 11 years.â Heâs come to this belief because his grandfather who also raised him, a carpenter and a smoker, passed away at 80. âEasily, he lived to be 80 and he never exercised or did anything and he ate like shit.â
His song, âLongest Days (Life is Short)â is inspired by a conversation he had with his grandmother shortly before she died. âShe said a lot of stuff the day before she died. She said that line to me, she goes, âBuddy, you’re going to find out real soon that life is short even in its longest days.â Since she said that I thought, âFuck, I got to write that down.ââ
âDo you have a favorite song of yours or one that you just love to perform?â I ask.
âProbably that song,â he says. âProbably one of the better songs I’ve ever written.â
Itâs tough to imagine, after a career totaling 23 studio albums, the 2008 Q Awards Classic Songwriter Award winner and 2018 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, would admit that he never intended to become a songwriter. âNo, I never wanted to be a songwriter, never had any interest in it. Only started writing songs because the record company suggested it and I remember thinking, âFuck, there’s so many songs alreadyâŠwhy do you need more songs from me? Anything I say is going to be said before and probably said better.ââ By the time he was 14 in the mid-60s, John was making his own money singing for whoever would pay him. âAt 14, a song and dance kid at 14, playing fraternities and sororities and armories and race tracks and raceways, you name it, and even bars at 14,â he recalls. âI don’t know if today if a family would let their 14-year-old son go into the Chatterbox and play with a bunch of 25-year-old guys, which is what I was doing. There were five kids, they were glad to get rid of me. Somebody goes, âWhere’s John?â and go, âFuck if I know.â My dad used to joke and go, âWell, when he gets hungry, he’ll come home.ââ Growing up middle class, Johnâs music made him enough money to feel independent by the time he was in his mid-teens. âI left early,â he says. âThere were five kids in the house and dad was busy with his job and mom was busy trying to raise those kids. As long as we weren’t in jail, we were in good shape. Let me put it to the way I heard it: âAs long as you don’t insult the Mellencamp name, you’ll be alright.ââ
Not only didnât he intend to write songs, but he never set out to be famous, either. âI never did it to be famous anyway,â he says, of making music. âSee, I, unlike most people, I don’t have low self-esteem and so many people in the rock business have low self-esteem and they need to have that acceptance to tell them who they are. I’ve never needed that. I’ve never needed it, never wanted it. I never cared about what my fucking parents thought. I didn’t care.
I was lucky.
âI didn’t need the acceptance of my dad or my mom, I just didn’t. I don’t know why, but that’s the way I grew up. When you grow up needing that acceptance and looking for it, you’re never going to get it, to the extreme that you want, to the place that you think is, you’re never satisfied. It’s like âWell, you know what you want, right?â âYes, I do.â âWell, what do you want?â âI want more.â âWill you ever get enough?â âI haven’t yet.â That’s the conversation that I found myself in. I was like, âThis is bullshit.â
âI was making my own money by the time I was 14 anyway. I was in rock bands and we would play on the weekends and I’d make $40 on the weekends. $40 in 1966 was a lot of fucking money to a 14-year-old. I didn’t even want to write songs. No, I never cared about that.â
âWhat did you want then?â I ask.
âI wanted $40 for the fucking weekend and a girl to hug,â he says. âListen, let’s put it in perspective, I’m 14-years-old. I’m making $40 a weekend. I’m being very blunt: I was fucking 19-year-old girls. Come on. What kid would not take that deal? I’ll take it.â
âPretty good deal,â I say.
âIt was a damn good deal,â he says.
Ebet Roberts/Redferns
The Farmer & The Scarecrow
âI grew up in a town of 18,000 people with a whole bunch of little towns around it,â he tells me. âAs I got older, I saw that the little towns were turning to seed and going out of business. They all had grocery stores and had an active, sustainable little town, but then they all went out of business and they all got boarded up. I wondered why that was happeningâŠ.â
Through speaking with locals, John discovered that the dying small farming communities were, consequently, killing the towns. âI didn’t understand they were losing their farms,â he says. âI saw these towns being abandoned and falling down. I’m thinking of a town called Freetown. I knew some girls there and I used to go there to see those girls. They had grocery stores and they had a gas station and they had a lunch counter. Then all of a sudden they didn’t have any of that shit. They all closed down.
âAll these small towns were all small farming communities and all those small family farmers were being put out of business alongside the small, family-owned businesses that supported my town. If I go back to my town today, the town that I grew up in is all boarded up and the town has moved out by the interstate because that’s where all the corporate stores are. There’s no family-owned stores or small businesses in America anymore.â
In 1984 he sat down with his friend George Green and talked through some ideas for a new song, one that would serve as an anthem for a voiceless community. âHim and I wrote that song by having table talk in the kitchen and we just sat there,â he says, of Green, who passed away about 15 years ago. âHe was a kid I went to high school with. We just bounced lines back and forth and then I wrote the music and the chorus for it.â The result was âRain on the Scarecrowâ which appeared on 1985âs Scarecrow, Johnâs eighth studio album. It reached Number Two in the U.S and earned him a 1985 Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. There were a lot of hits on that album, including âR.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.â, âLonely Olâ Nightâ and âSmall Townâ, but âRain on the ScarecrowââRain on the scarecrow/Blood on the plow/This land fed a nation/This land made me proudâwould forever serve as a call to action for the plight of Americaâs farmlands. 2007âs âGhost Towns Along the Highwayâ (off of Freedom Road) completes the story, but is no means the end of it. Both songs and the stories that inspired them are tragically still more relevant than ever.Â
Shortly after âRain on the Scarecrowâ was finished, word got to Willie Nelson. âWillie was playing golf or something in Bloomington with some people I know and a friend of mine said, âJohn Mellencamp just made a record called Scarecrow that hasn’t been released yet.â That sparked the conversation with Willie. Willie thought that we should try to do something for the small family farmers in the conversation they were having. Later on that night he called me up and he goes, âHey, would you be interested?â That’s how I got involved in Farm Aid. Then Neil [Young] called the next day, so there was three of us who started Farm Aid, but make no mistake about it, it was Willie’s idea. Willie is the president of Farm Aid.â
In 2020 Farm Aid turned 35. To date, it has raised nearly $60 million to help small farmers keep their businesses. For all the great work they’re doing, what is the big change thatâs going to make the biggest impact for Americaâs farmers?Â
âI think that a lot of problems could be solved if we could get rid of corporate farming,â he says. âCorporate farming destroys the land. There is soil, which is what grows stuff, and then there’s dirt and dirt is dead soil. Corporate farming doesn’t give a fuck about soil. They care about dirt and they turn everything into dirt, and then dirt turns into sand and you can’t grow anything on it. It’s all about carbon. Carbon is in soil. If you stick your hand down into soil and you pull out a handful of soil, there are more living microbes, worms in your hand then there’s been people on this earth, in a handful of soil. That’s how alive the soil is. When you kill the soil, which is what Monsanto does, pesticides, all that stuff. Farming needs to change. All these farming bills that they passed really only help corporate farms. They don’t really help eco-friendly farming.â
So, what can be done?
âThe farm bill is like this,â he explains. âIf you grow corn or if you grow soybeans, the government pays you money. Those soybeans and corn that you’re growing are to feed livestock which are also corporately owned and they’re just kept in a big fucking pen, huge pens. Hundreds of them. They eat this food from corporate farming and then they slaughter the cattle which then we eat the food that they have put inside of this beef. We eat the same fucking shit that they put on the plants, the corn that the government paid them to grow, and we put it in our bodies and we get cancer. Anyway, the way to do it is the way it used to be done. I don’t mean to sound antiquated, but you have to take care of the soil. You do that by rotating. You got to have animals and you can’t just grow one crop. You’ve got to grow different types of crops and you’ve got to move your animals around. If you had 100 acres okay, âWe’re going to keep the animals here, because they’ll shit here and then their shit will become fertilizer.â It’s a whole act of nature in a circle. The way that we do it and the way it’s done now around the world, we just abuse the soil and turn it into dirt. When it’s dirt, it’s useless and then nobody refurbishes the dirt. We just move on to another place and take soil and make it dirt because it’s all about carbon. We’re carbon, the earth’s carbon, and when you steal the carbon from the soil, then you’re fucking with the circle of life. The government doesn’t care, so anywayâŠ.â
He warns against using the word âorganicâ too liberally. Many donât realize that there are chemicals in organic food, too. âI don’t like the word organic because really it’s just a bullshit word,â he says. âWhen you say organic I always want to interrupt people and go, âYou mean food?â Not genetically engineered food. I don’t know, organic is just another word to entice people to feel like they’re doing something. That’s not what they are doing.â The chemicals, he warns, are going to kill us. âThey already are,â he says.Â
So, whatâs the solution?
âI think the future, what we can do is hope that the next generation, not my generation because we’ve already proven ourselves to be greedy and gluttonous, hopefully, there’ll be a younger generation will come along and go, âHey guys, this does not work.â Perhaps they’ll change the face of the agriculture. It’s nothing that’s going to happen in 10 days. Not going to be able to pass a law and it’s going to change. It took from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now to make this happen. You’re not going to be able to clean up the world in 10 minutes. Actually, there should be no deserts. There should be no any of that stuff. It should all be grasslands. Look at California, perfect example. Huge corporate farming in California. It’s kind of like the question a farmer would ask, “Well, why should I not plant soybeans when the government’s going to pay meâŠ?â They’re guaranteed. âWhy would I want to plant carrots and then rotate next year and plant some other crop?â Because they don’t know.â
Could America lose its farms? âWe could lose all our small family farms, which is happening for sure, but we’ll never lose corporate farming because their job is to search and destroy. They’ll just cut down some more fucking trees and get rid of the carbon-seeking trees and leaves and grass and plant more soybeans, more cornâŠwe all get cancer earlier and we won’t be able to use the phony word organic and a whole bunch of stuff.â
So America could lose all its small, family-owned farms?
âYes,â he warns. âIt’s happening right now.â
Ebet Roberts/Redferns
A Better America
âI’m not real big on nationalism,â he says. âWe’re number one, USA. After the World Trade Centers got bombed, I think I was the first guy to play a show and I was playing in Boston. I did three nights in Boston outside and fucking everybody kept shouting, “USA!” Finally, at the third night, I got sick of it. âLook, if you guys are going to keep yelling that crap the show’s over.ââ He believes hypocrisy is the real downfall of America, leading to a heads-down, donât-get-involved culture. âLook at Germany, all these German people. Hitler was there. They all acted like, âWell, we don’t know what was going on.â What the fuck are you talking about? These death camps are right in the middle of a neighborhood. You didn’t smell anything? They all pleaded ignorant.â
Farm Aid 2020 was unlike any other, persevering as a virtual experience with only a small crowd of attendees. John performed on a humble wooden stage in front of a retro camper, perfect for his four-song set, beautifully slowed down and intimate, which opened with âLongest Daysâ, continuing with âJack & Dianeâ, then âEasy Targetâ and closing with âRain on the Scarecrowâ. His small, socially-distanced crowd was dressed in coordinating black clothing, many wearing âBlack Lives Matterâ T-shirts. âMy whole fucking life I’ve watched bigotry and hatred throughout this country towards minorities and Blacks,â he says. âI’m sick of this trashy behavior that we’ve allowed to go on.â At the end of âEasy Targetâ, John stepped to the edge of the stage, took a knee and raised a fist in the air. âWe’re just all these targets,â he explains. âYou know, easy to be manipulated, easily fooled, easily gullible. Like I said, we all lie, but we all want to play like and we all want to believe that we know something and that we know the truth, but it’s an illusion. It’s a trick we play on ourselves. That’s the worst trick that we have. It’s one trick to say you can’t come to school because you have a headache, but it’s another trick when you lie to yourself. That’s the biggest trick we play.â
He has a solution: The good neighbor policy.Â
âYou know what the Good Neighbor Policy is? You mind your business and I’ll mind mine and we’ll get along just fine. If you need a helping hand, I might help you out if I can. That rule applies all the way around. Like Vietnam. What the fuck are we sticking are nose in that one? Just like Iraq. What the fuck are we doing there? They had nothing to do with the World Trade Center. We got lied to. People think that Civil War was fought over slavery. It wasn’t. It was fought over the fucking ports. The Savannah Port was the biggest port in the world. Boston, New York was not getting the business that they wanted to get so they went down to Savannah and said, “Hey, how about you guys give us some of your fucking business so we can run our ports?” Savannah said, “Fuck you, we’re not giving you anything.” They said, “Well, then we’ll just take it from you.
âThey went back up north and they thought, âHow are we going to present this to the American people? We can’t tell them that we’re just going to go steal the fucking port.” We’ll make it about slavery. The North had slaves, the South had slaves. Nobody wanted to give up their slaves. They couldn’t really fight the war because they were going to steal business from the Savannah ports. I know that sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory.â
Does he think thereâs still slavery in America?
âOh, yes,â he says. âI keep quoting myself, but I just wrote a song along the lines and it’s from the fucking cotton fields to the playing fields.
âIt’s kind of like working for wages,â he explains. âOnce you start working for wages, all your dreams go away, and all of a sudden you’ve got to show up to work to make some money because you’ve got this bill. Then you’ve got to pay your bills, plus you got a couple kids now and where does your dream go? We’ve been talking about this for, I don’t know, my whole life.
âI live in two red states. This house that I’m in here, this is Trump Country. Indiana is a red state, but I’ve learned to live with it. I’ve learned to respect that people are nutty. Like I said, I don’t really believe them anyway. I don’t trust anybody. You have no control over what people are going to think. It’s ridiculous. I see a Trump sign and I just go, “Oh. Too bad for you.
âWe think that we’re so evolved,â he says. âBut we’re just not.â
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
The Good Samaritan
âThe Bible is full of shit stuff, but it does have a couple of really important things and one isâŠif you want a better world it starts with you,â John explains. âIt starts with you and it’s free. You don’t have to pay to join, you don’t have to wear a certain uniform, you don’t have to do anything. You could be yourself, but if you want a better world it starts with you.â
Around 2000, John spoke with then-wife Elaine Irwin about a new initiative for bringing music to the public. âIt was an idea that came about because of what Woody Guthrie had done in the ’30s,â he explains, referring to one of his greatest musical influences. âMy wife at the time and I said, âIf Guthrie was alive today where would he go play? He wouldn’t go play in the fields. Where are the workers?â We decided that the workers are in big tall buildings in the middle of cities so we should go play for free there and that’s how the whole thing started.â
The result became the Good Samaritan Tour. The idea was that John would simply show up and play, no press, unannounced. Completely free. âTo call it a tour is really not a true statement,â he says. âI guess that we were more or less vagabonds, just moving around.â The point wasnât to draw a crowd, the point was to create a spontaneous experience for whoever was there. âWe went to different towns and different cities and all the big office buildings and set up and played,â he says. âWe didn’t charge anything and we did it over lunch hour. We loaded upâme and Elaine, my two young boys at the time, and a couple of young musiciansâand we’d just head out with no plan of where we were going to go next. We’d pick the place and we’d play about noon so people would be on their lunch break and they could come down and have their lunch and see John Mellencamp play if they wanted to.â They started out in Boston. âWe played somewhere at one of the meadows in Harvard and people just were filing in, âIs that John Mellencamp playing?ââ This is just when the internet was just taking off and the idea of John Mellencamp offering free concerts spread fast. âThen radio stations got involved and started following. Find John Mellencamp. Where is he going to play? Is he going to be in our city? They’d start doing promotions and the record company got involved. By the time we got to Daley Plaza in Chicago, there were 30,000 people there. We were using little battery-powered amps about the size of your suitcase.âÂ
John was able to play some of his favorite songsâon his own terms. âI have a lot of favorite songs, songs that I used to play in the bands, then when I became a hippie I used to pass a guitar around. I used to always play a song called âThe Early Bird CafĂ©â which was written by The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, which is a little obscure San Francisco jam band, but I used to always play that song. That might be one of my favorite songs. I finally did record the darn record.â
Whatâs more, the restrictions that went with a paid event were lifted. âWhen I was very successful, I hated [performing live],â he says. âThere was too much expected of me, I had to show up on time, shit like that. I’m always late. Even sometimes for a concert. I just like to take my time, I don’t want to be rushed, I don’t want to be told what to do. Okay, so we start at 8:00 and when you’re on tour the guys start at 8:00. You can’t start at fucking 9:00, guys started at 8:00. That’s the deal, people paid money. See, that’s the thing, the people were paying money and here you act like a monkey so you got to go put your monkey suit on and go be a monkey. It’s like being a monkey on a string. I didn’t like it but nowâŠI like it. I like it a lot more now than I did then. [The Good Samaritan Tour] was fun. I could do what I wanted. I just did it for the love of music and the love of the audience and if I sucked, it didn’t matter because they didn’t pay anyway. âYou guys, this is fucking free, what do you expect? What do you want? It’s free, you get it? Didn’t cost you anything, all it cost you was an hour of your time.â I remember one guy goes, âWould you get started, it’s hot?â I said, âYou can fucking leave. If you’re too fucking hot, go home. If you don’t like it, fucking go home.â I’m not asking anybody for anything.â
Reminder: He doesnât need to play for free, he chooses to. And, truthfully, most famous rock stars donât. This kind of initiative is purely for the sake of doing something good, understanding that his role in the world is bigger than just him alone. âGo stand out in your yard and imagine them taking a picture from outer space and they’re not going to see youâŠ,â he tells me. âWe’re only here for a moment and for people to take themselves so seriously and work so hard to fuck other people over really is an unnecessary act. That’s why I say a better world starts with you.
âIf people were doing the best that they could we wouldn’t be in the mess that we’re in,â he says. âIf you want a better world it starts with you. We can all be better people and that is something that everyone can participate in. It doesn’t cost any money, it doesn’t take up much time just to be a better person, to be more polite, more understanding, more giving, more humility, and all of those things. It’s all free and it’s all there for us to do. That’s what you could do. That’s what we all could do.â
John Mellencamp
For John heâll simply never rest until heâs always doing his best. He may consider himself a realist, but only a true optimist would continue to invest so much, decade after decade, in human potential. When heâs not writing songs heâs paintingââthatâs all I do is paint,â he says. His art, in case you donât know, is as astounding and moving as his songwriting, influenced by his artist mother, and is a moody and meaningful reflection of his personality. He tells me heâs painted âliterally millionsâ of paintings. âI’ve done more paintings than I’ve written songs and I’ve got over 700 songs published. I’ve made something like 40 albums.â
When heâs truly nowhere near talking, he announces we need to wrap things up. âAll right, young ladyâŠwe’ve been talking for an hour 20 minutes, that’s my limit,â he tells me. âMy old famous girlfriend used to say, âOnce you talk over 45 minutes, you need to hang up.â I said, âWhy?â âBecause you can start shooting your fucking mouth off saying shit you don’t want to say.ââ
âOh, excellent,â I say.
He adds: âI said, âShit happens.ââ