Sometimes you get sick, and you don't get better. At the risk of kind of killing the lyric, let me just, like, read a few lines. GROSS: Now, I mean, you're obviously feeling that song that we just heard, "Longest Days," but it's also great songcraft. And I thought, well, surely someday I'll be able to work that line into a song. And she goes, Buddy, life is short in its longest days. And her face all of a sudden looked like a little girl. And then she turned to me and looked at me right in the face.
MELLENCAMP: Grandma, you're ready to come home. And so she starts praying, and she says, God, you know, Buddy and I are ready to come home. And one afternoon, I was laying in bed with her, and she said, let's pray. And then she started getting kind of dementia and stuff like that. And, you know, she was great up until about 99. So I'd lay in bed with her, and we'd talk sometimes. And she'd go, Buddy, come and lay down with me. And my hundred-year-old grandmother - she called me Buddy. You know, I was, like, 45 years old or something. I used to go see her in the afternoons, and sometimes she'd make me lay in bed with her. And it's a funny - it's not a funny ha-ha story, but this is how the line came about. The song actually was - that line - my grandmother lived to be a hundred years old. Sometimes you really need songs like this. It was the middle of winter, and it really spoke to me. When I first started listening to the song, I think I was kind of depressed. It's just so much about mortality and things that aren't necessarily ever going to get better. I have to say, you know, I just wasn't prepared for this song that opens the new CD. TERRY GROSS: John Mellencamp, welcome to FRESH AIR. That's when life is short even in its longest days. I walked like a hero into the setting sun.
My vision was true, and my heart was, too. MELLENCAMP: (Singing) Seems like once upon a time ago, I was where I was supposed to be. Here's the opening track from that album, a song called "Longest Day" (ph).
If you're still there, would you please come down?īIANCULLI: Terry spoke with John Mellencamp in 2009, when his album called "Life, Death, Love And Freedom" was released. If you're still there, would you please come down? Hey, God. No one could imagine the sight of so many dead on the floor. JOHN MELLENCAMP: (Singing) Weapons and guns - are they really my rights? Law was written a long time ago. His new album, his 25th, is called "Orpheus Descending," and it reflects on many of the issues facing Americans today, like massive social inequality and gun violence in the song "Hey God." John Mellencamp is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a Grammy winner and a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His song "This Is Our Country" first became famous when it was used in a Chevrolet ad. His hits in the '80s include "Jack & Diane" and "Small Town." At Obama's inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, Mellencamp sang his song "Pink Houses," the one with the refrain, ain't that America for you and me.
John Mellencamp has been performing and writing songs for 4 1/2 decades.
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