Rocking into Middle Age

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

There are exceptions, but in general, when a veteran rock 'n' roller gives a new album his own name, he's looking to make a career statement. John Mellencamp's latest album, John Mellencamp (Columbia), is no exception. These are difficult days to be John Mellencamp. Rock is on the run, youth is on the rise, and his brand of rural rock skews a little old even for the VH1 set. But Mellencamp, 47, is soldiering on, trying to re-establish his name, his image and his music. He has left Mercury Records, his label for some 20 years, and signed with Columbia. He has a new book of artwork out, Mellencamp: Paintings and Reflections (HarperCollins; $40). And he's willing to be unusually candid about almost anything he's asked.

What, for example, does he think about his former label? "[Mercury] had a terrible distribution problem," he says. "I've had humongously huge hit records, and I'd walk into like the local Target and--no stock." Nor is he fond of Jay Leno's Tonight Show: "I was on that show once and it was like, 'Ahhhh! This is brain damage!'" And like many of the ordinary folks who make up his fan base, he's fed up with the situation in Washington. "I don't understand how they got those [Clinton grand jury] tapes on TV," he complains. "Where's Nixon's tapes at? Why don't we hear Nixon's tapes?"

Mellencamp doesn't spare himself either, laughing as he looks back at the evolution of his stage name. He started out Johnny Cougar, became John Cougar Mellencamp, and now goes by his given name. Says Mellencamp: "I don't know if there's been a more ridiculous transformation in the history of rock 'n' roll."

Although he's made some fine pop albums in the past, notably Scarecrow (1985) and The Lonesome Jubilee (1987), Mellencamp says he's been moving beyond arena-filling pop. "Scarecrow is a square record," he says. "There's no countermelodies. Just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus. Square songs can be the most beautiful songs in the world. [But] around '88 and '89 I got tired of making square records."

Mellencamp had a heart attack in 1994, and as he tours for this record, the thought of his heart giving out is in the back of his mind. Still, he says, he's happier than he's ever been. The excesses of his youth, he claims, are gone. The twice-divorced Mellencamp is married again (to model Elaine Irwin), and he says he's through chasing women. He's gone from singing pop fluff to voicing, in mid-career, his concern for farmers, small towns and, of late, humankind in general.

On his new record Mellencamp is wistful for the past but satisfied with the present. In the album's best song, Your Life Is Now, he sings, "Your father's days are lost to you/ This is your time here to do what you will do." At the end of an interview, the now comfortably mature rocker leans forward and, with a conspiratorial grin, confides, "Guys aren't worth a f___ until they're 40."

--By Christopher John Farley