MELLENCAMP: Well you know, I don't really see it as a contradiction itself. Like Roger Miller has a song called "More and More I Miss You Less and Less," you know, that kind of, like, contradiction. GROSS: You know, it's funny that, you know, your grandmother would've said life is short in its longest days, because one of the things I like so much about the song is that hook, and it's so - although this isn't a country song, per se, there are so many country songs that have that kind of contradictory language in its title. And then she turned to me and looked at me right in the face, and her face all of a sudden looked like a little girl, and she goes Buddy, life is short in its longest days.Īnd I always remembered that line, and I thought well surely, someday I'll be able to work that line into a song. MELLENCAMP: You're ready to come home, Buddy's only 45, he's not ready. And so she starts praying, and she says God, you know, Buddy and I are ready to come home. So I'd lay in bed with her, and we'd talk sometimes, and you know, she was great up until about 99, and then she started kind of dementia and stuff like that.Īnd one afternoon, I was laying in bed with her, and she said let's pray, and I said okay. You know, I was like 45 years old or something, and my 100-year-old grandmother, but she called me Buddy, and she'd go Buddy, come and lay down with me. I used to go see her in the afternoons, and sometimes she'd make me lay in bed with her. ![]() My grandmother lived to be 100 years old, and it's a funny - not a funny, ha-ha story, but this is how the line came about. The song - the song actually was that line. Sometimes you really need songs like this. It was the middle of winter, and it really spoke to me. When I first started listening to the song, I think I was kind of depressed. It's just so much about mortality and things that aren't necessarily ever going to get better. I have to say, you know, I just wasn't prepared for this song that opens the new CD. GROSS: John Mellencamp, welcome to FRESH AIR. That's when life is short even in its longest days. Sometimes you get sick, and you don't get better. I was too busy raising up Cain.īut nothing lasts forever. I walked like a hero into the setting sun. ![]() My vision was true, and my heart was too. JOHN MELLENCAMP (Singer/Songwriter): (Singing) Seems like once upon a time ago, I was where I was supposed to be. Mellencamp is going to perform some old and new songs for us, but let's start with the opening track of his new CD. New York Times music critic John Pareles wrote: It's an album present like a deathbed testament, bleak, solitary, bluesy and unbowed. Mellencamp has a new CD called "Life, Death, Love and Freedom," which has some great songs about mortality. At the Obama inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, Mellencamp sang his song, "Pink Houses," the one with the refrain, ain't that America for you and me. You probably know my guest, John Mellencamp, for his hits from the '80s like "Jack and Diane" and "Small Town," and of course for his song, "This is Our Country," that first became famous when it was used in a Chevrolet ad.ĭemocratic and Republican candidates have used his songs in their campaigns.
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