(His parents were also liberals, who encouraged him to speak his mind.) He has a single coming out this month: “Troubled Land.” It was officially unveiled during Mellencamp’s set at the Farm Aid concert last month. “I grew up in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, during Vietnam, and so my liberal views were pretty much cast during that time period through the music that I was listening to,” he said. It takes a dark look at mortality and the effects of a broken government. Mellencamp’s latest album, “Life Death Love and Freedom,” certainly captures his mood. It’s part of the reason he signed recently with Hear Music, a small label that focuses on and promotes core American artists. He’s disgusted with the record industry, which he believes cares only about teenage girls making pop music. (“Like this: sssssss,” he said, making the sound of a train whistle.) His bones ache. He leaned back into the chair and sighed. I have accepted that these cigarettes will kill me.”
“Cigarettes are not our friends,” said the 57-year-old singer. He opened a pack of American Spirit cigarettes and lighted up a smoke. Mellencamp, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, took a seat at a long pine table that he uses as a desk and glanced sideways at a reporter waiting there for him. A large easel is set up in the corner, where Mellencamp paints on oversized canvases (with a style reminiscent of Basquiat mixed with a bit of Robert Indiana).
PINK HOUSES LYRICS MEANING WINDOWS
A long bank of windows frames the wooded hillside. The space is light and bright, with high ceilings, white slip-covered furniture and bookcases (filled with art books and family photos - among them snapshots of Mellencamp’s model wife, Elaine, and their two teenage sons).
The morning after playing a charity show for a local crowd at the small Crump Theater in nearby Columbus, Ind., Mellencamp sat for an interview in the vast art studio on his lakeside property outside this college town. The singer’s unedited candor comes through in his music and in his casual conversation. He joked: “And I guess we found out he had an interest in girls too.”) (“He was much more liberal than any candidate that we have now, and he really had an interest in the poor people,” Mellencamp said recently. They’re still featured at some of Obama’s events, and that’s OK with Mellencamp, even though he was strongly behind former Sen. The message seems to have gotten through McCain has all but stopped playing Mellencamp’s songs, except for a few instances when the sound-booth guy accidentally cues the wrong track.
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