John Mellencamp- Scarecrow 40th Anniversary

John Mellencamp’s  Scarecrow  album released in August 1985 was loaded with hits, including “Small Town”,”Lonely Ol’ Night”, and “R.O.C.K. in the USA”.  His list of Top 20 hit songs is extensive enough to require the double-disc Words and Music  compilation,  but it was the album tracks starting with Scarecrow‘s  “Minutes to Memories”, worthy of inclusion in the likes of the great Paul Simon songbook, which to me revealed Mellencamp’s evolving songcraft.

On John Mellencamp’s Scarecrow, “Minutes to Memories”  has the first-person narrative and epic literary scope with dialogue to rival any Larry McMurtry novel; “Between a Laugh and a Tear” is an under-appreciated gem featuring Rickie Lee Jones harmonizing on the choruses; and the driving “Rain on the Scarecrow” pelted the public apathy toward the disappearing family farmer, providing a spark to ignite the Farm Aid effort with Neil Young and Willie Nelson that year.  All of the promise of the American Dream, and the contradictions, are evident in this gut check of the rural North American parallel universe forty years ago in this revealing series of classic rock interviews which I conducted with John Mellencamp over nearly a decade. -Redbeard