The 1985 Project Pt. 3 - John Cougar Mellencamp - Scarecrow

This one is half great and all good

John Cougar Mellencamp – Scarecrow. I saw Johnny Cougar three times in 1979 – it seems every other concert I went to at a theater had him opening up that year. I don’t remember being very impressed at the time, though I was probably so New Wave-centric that I wouldn’t give him the fairest of hearings. After American Fool made him a superstar in 1982, I began to take notice but fell in love with his music on the 1983 album Uh-Huh. Suddenly, now that he had brought back his real surname, Mellencamp was one of the most committed rock’n’rollers of his time. Off the top of my head, he’s the only musician I know who chose to work harder at his craft for the simple reason that he realized he now had a huge audience.

Which brings us to Scarecrow. I think this album garnered enough votes to get him to no. 3 on the Pazz and Jop Poll in 1985 primarily because of the songs “Small Town” and “Rain on the Scarecrow” which wed his rocking sensibility to concerns for the plight of farmers and an awareness of rural life. In September, 1985, Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, and Neil Young organized the first Farm Aid concert, which did much to cement Mellencamp’s image as a political activist for life in burgs and hamlets. (As an aside – I remember switching channels back and forth that day between the Farm Aid broadcast and the infamous “Rock Porn” hearings in the Senate.)

Nothing has ever led me to think Mellencamp wasn’t sincerely interested in the state of farms and the people who relied on them. The bulk of this album, however, is more of a celebration of rock’n’roll than the call to action which took place at Farm Aid. The three guitars / bass/ drums line-up produces one of the most perfect sonic templates of the 80s. The guitar tones alone are spectacular – Mellencamp, long-time guitarist Larry Crane, and Mike Wanchic, aided on one track by none other than Ry Cooder, work indelible riff after indelible riff with a few short solos thrown in now and again. And Kenny Aronoff guaranteed himself a life-time of session work on drums with the impact of his gigantic sound and ability to accent the music while propelling the band.

I suspect I listened to side one much more often than side two forty years ago, as “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” aside, I’m not remembering the other cuts while playing it today. I also before today never heard “The Kind of Fella I Am” which was only released on the cassette version of the album. All the songs stand up, though, in the way Mellencamp arranges and performs them with this killer band. In those days, smoking hadn’t destroyed his voice – the rasp he has left now only hints at the powerhouse expressive singer he used to be. His songs aren’t melodically rich, but they have big hooks and his singing makes them work so much better than anybody else could do with the same material.

Between 1983 and 1993, Mellencamp was among my very favorite recording artists, and the three concerts I saw in the last five years of that range are among my favorite rock shows of all time. The secret of his artistic success was probably an adrenaline habit that kept him pushing harder and harder to express what he wanted to say. He made the band bigger, he made the lyrics richer, he eventually found in David Grissom the kind of lead guitarist who made the music even more profound. Scarecrow was a more serious album than Uh-Huh but it retained that album’s freedom to rock out. I think the mood of many music writers at that time was that he, along with Bruce Springsteen, was the best at bringing rock’n’roll verities to modern music. Hence a 3^rd place finish in the poll.

I can give this one an 8.5 out of 10. Maybe it would go up a half point if I gave those less familiar songs a couple more spins, but the Side One and “R.O.C.K” are all 10s to my ears.