John (Cougar) Mellencamp
John Mellencamp grew up in Seymour, Indiana. By seventeen he was
married, and at nineteen he was a father, pouring concrete for a
living and then working as a lineman for the telephone company.
He kicked around the local Seymour bar scene, and in 1975 -
with aspirations to make it in the music business - he took his
demo tapes to New York. Eventually he linked up with Tony DeFries,
David Bowie's manager, who got him a deal with MCA Records.
His debut LP, Chestnut Street Incident, was released
in 1976. John was surprised when the record came out to see the
name 'Johnny Cougar' on the cover. DeFries explained to John
that the name was just like Bowie using the character of Ziggy
Stardust . Nobody bought it.
Cougar was dropped from MCA before he could deliver a second LP
and met Billy Gaff (then Rod Stewart's manager), head of Riva
Records through his attorney.
His first Riva album, John Cougar (1979), was full of
tough but passionate songs, and Cougar's penchant for mining
real-life stories from the Midwest seemed palatable enough to
radio programmers hungry for a gravel-throated AOR heartthrob. I
Need A Lover became his first hit, and Pat Benatar later
covered it on her debut LP.
Cougar's next album, Nothin' Matters And What If It Did (1980),
was produced by Steve Cropper and yielded two singles; This
Time - a puff-pastry ballad a-la Rod Stewart's Tonight's
The Night - and Ain't Even Done With The Night.
But John was unhappy with the end-result and vowed to produce and
record himself next time around.
He pruned his band, The Zones, to a tougher
guitars-bass-and-drums outfit, shedding the horns and keyboards,
and with Don Gehman co-producing, American Fool (1982) became
the kind of album John knew he could make all along. It also
provided the mega-hit singles Hurts So Good and Jack
and Diane.
With some commercial success now under his belt, John had
sufficient clout to force the record company to compromise on
adding his real surname to his stage moniker. Uh-Huh
(1983) was released under the name John Cougar Mellencamp. By
Scarecrow (1985), the "Cougar" was gone
altogether.
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