No Cool Lines

If you were a teenager in Indiana in the late '70s and early '80s, you came to either hate or love John (Cougar) Mellencamp. As a local it didn't matter if the station was Top 40 or Album Oriented Rock (AOR) his music got played, even before he broke big on the national scene.

The record company tried to sell him as a teen idol (see the look in the video below) but it really didn't work. After four albums, and only moderate success, John was about ready to hang it up. But then he released American  Fool. I still remember being home from college in the spring of 1982, standing on my front porch talking to a friend from high school. He asked if I'd heard the new John Cougar album and I admitted that I had not.

I owned the self-titled John Cougar LP and Nothin' Matters and What If It Did LP. Both were solid efforts that I liked, but not enough that I was waiting the next John Cougar album with anticipation. My friend told me that I needed to pick it up soon; it was better than anything else John had done and a great album. So I did and he was right.

American Fool would become the best selling album of 1982 and would produce a number one single in "Jack and Diane". The album's first single, "Hurts So Good", would reach number two on the Billboard charts and "Hand to Hold On To" would crack the top twenty.  John had hit the charts before, "Ain't Even Done with the Night" had been his biggest hit and had also cracked the top twenty, but American Fool would make him a rock star.

It also helped to completely change his image. Gone was the teen idol. The video for "Hurts So Good" featured bikers and "Jack and Diane" was a melancholy song about living life in a small town. While on tour after the release of American Fool John was once asked why he wasn't a headliner. John laughed and noted that no one had guessed how successful American Fool would be.

I saw John live during this tour and actually felt sorry for Heart, who was the headliner. Not because John was so much better than they were, but because a third of the audience left after John was done and didn't even stick around for Heart (who, incidentally, put on a great show).

The success of American Fool allowed John to drop the "Cougar" pseudonym in favor of his real last name and John would continue to be successful for many years. In many ways the two follow ups to American Fool, Uh Huh and Scarecrow, are better albums but neither would quite match its success (Scarecrow would come close in album sales but not in chart singles).

Mr. Mellencamp will release a new album, Plain Spoken, later this month.