Hurts So Good

John Cougar

John Cougar never wanted to be called John Cougar he wanted to be called by his real name John Mellencamp. The record company didn’t want to hear fuck all about John Mellencamp so he was marketed as John Cougar. It didn’t take long to hit the big time and as soon as his American Fool album went to No1 on the Billboard 200 he could pretty much call himself what he liked.

I recall a classic story I heard in an interview with John Mellencamp. He reckoned that he is a very lazy guy and all he wanted to do was sit around all day and listen to records. His dad was one of those ‘wearing a vest and clutching a bottle of moonshine’ type dudes and he told John he needed to get a job cause he wasn’t ever gonna make a living playing records. John set out to prove him wrong and became a successful DJ, then the classic bit… John reckons I started playing guitar and singing cos DJ-ing was too difficult, too much work 🙂

JAMES DAUBENEY