Ain't That America... For You and Me

Was busy all last week as usual...but when not dodging the loud strafing fighter jets of The Blue Angels who annually buzz our city, I did manage to catch a more peaceful teensy slice of Freedom.

That bit of blissed out Americana was from the opening day of the 7th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park on Friday afternoon...


Before the bitter Jeff Tweedy could attempt to put me to sleep, who to my wondering eyes should appear much to my surprise but Little Johnny Cougar...

It was cool to catch him play just a handful of songs, but he strutted onto that stage and immediately lifted the spirits of thousands, and got the place rocking for the first time all day.

Backed by a beyond capable musical crew including T-Bone Burnett, and Doyle Bramhall II, and even Neko Case on backing vocals as well as two drummers including one Jim Keltner on one of the kits, they played a new song about the troubles in Jena Arkansas.

lyrics:

An all white jury hides the executioner’s face
See how we are, me and you?

Everyone here needs to know their place Let’s keep this blackbird hidden in the flue Oh oh oh Jena, Oh oh oh Jena, Oh oh oh Jena, take your nooses down

So what becomes of boys that cannot think straight. Particularly those with paper bag skin. Yes sir, no sir we’ll wipe that smile right off your face.

We’ve got our rules here and you must fit in. Oh oh oh Jena, Oh oh oh Jena, Oh oh oh Jena, take your nooses down. Some day some way sanity will prevail. But who knows when that day might come.

A shot in the dark, well it just might find its way to the hearts of those that hold the keys to kingdom come.

Oh oh oh Jena, Oh oh oh Jena, Oh oh oh Jena, take those nooses down.

Oh oh hey Jena, Oh oh Jena, Oh oh Jena, take your nooses down.

Take those nooses all down.

Please click here to view more from John, including the video on Mellencamp.com




The most well received song of the three he performed last Friday afternoon though was a song dating back to the 80's, when Cougar first hit the American radio mainstream, a song that tapped a fertile reservoir of sentimental solace, Pink Houses.

"Ain't That America... For You and Me"

I'm sure yer all familiar with that AOR rock staple, or at least should be. So in the interest of keeping it lively, here's the song in a slightly more revved up context. It's a version by Richmond Virginia's Avail. I used to live down the cul de sac from singer Tim Barry when we were in high school. In fact when this song was rulin' the airwaves, Tim lived on a diet of Iron Maiden & Ozzy, while I would more likely be sneakin' out late at night and skateboarding over to neighborhood girls' houses with a cassette of Scarecrow cranking in my headphones. Anyhow, this came out via the reissue of the Avail Dixie CD awhile back, released via Jade Tree/Touch and Go.

Avail - Pink Houses


I guess Cougar, well he's been back to Mellencamp officially for many years since ...but I still love that bitchin' Cougar moniker thrust on him by the old Mainman management team. No doubt calling MainMan a "team" would even be a stretch... The main MainMan guys' name was Tony DeFries. He had lackeys, lotsa gay cracked actors and hot chicks on the payroll of course, but he was their cigar chomping shot caller in the 1970's for shizzle.

By the mid 1970's, John Mellencamp was a struggling guy in his mid 20's with a wife and young daughter back in Seymour Indiana when he went to New York with a demo tape of his former glam band "Trash" and a dream. He came across the operation of one Tony DeFries, a rock manager with a reputation for excesses.

Here's Bowie , Iggy Pop & Lou Reed at a press conference with DeFries lurking in the background...


DeFries had previously taken former Warhol Factory hanger ons like Wayne County to Broadway stages and even London. He had also most infamously hit the jackpot when he built up David Bowie into superstardom. The way DeFries operated was certainly shrewd, if not all together ethical. He created the illusion of Bowie as "Rock Royalty", but as Bowie would later claim the management company called MainMan, simply existed for Bowie to be "fucked royally".

The agreement the broke and drug addled Bowie had entered into was one that basically swallowed all his incomes and held them for DeFries to dispense as he saw fit. Court records show that of the intital $56,000 advance RCA gave Bowie, he only received less than $10,000, with DeFries holding the rest. While Bowie himself was kept on a 100 pound a week stipend, and housed in a modest flat in Haddon Hall in London's Beckenham district, the rest of Bowie's dough ended up paying for any and everything DeFries saw fit. The numerous expenses included Iggy Pop's methodone, even Bowie's occasional bi-sexual dalliance Wayne County's "upkeep", and of course MainMan's offices in London, Tokyo and of course the 14 room suite off Park Avenue in New York, as well as DeFries 20 room estate in Connecticut. Bowie even paid off a $500,000 settlement to a disgruntled former DeFries business partner.

By the time Mellencamp signed on, DeFries was also embroiled in numerous business activities, including having established a conflict of interest laden P&D deal with MCA, not too mention some lawsuits and injunctions from his former clients Bowie and T-Rex. DeFries ever flashy and yet reclusively sneaky at the same time, took a shot at reinventing the Indiana lad.

Former MainMan VP, the late Jaime Andrews, whose previous conquests included producing Fame for Broadway in 1974, explained the stage name MainMan gave the diminutive Mellencamp in a Seventeen article,

"We wanted something uniquely American, something hot and wild. Johnny Indiana was one of our choices, Puma, Mustang--but nothing was as hot as Cougar!"

Apparently MainMan saw something they could market in Mellencamp, With DeFries himself making statements like, "He's so American, the most American artist I've seen since Bob Dylan, and I think he will capture the same kind of thing Dylan did."

DeFries was definitely a starmaker, a money whore galore, a guy who boosted David Bowie out of the hippy dippy UK folk rock milieu and into the superstar stratosphere.
Supposedly DeFries loathed drugs, but one cannot say the the same for his charges & their entourages. DeFries fueled the illusion of rock royalty by using bodyguards, entourages, limos, press conferences and copious amounts of cocaine to bullshit the press and public into believing the guy was a somebody. DeFries controlled the artists & the press and made his acts exclusive interview subjects by declaring them unavailable unless they were getting big spreads in influential rags.

Leee Black Childers discussed DeFries tour style circa 1974 in a Hit Parader article, describing the simultaneously lavish spending of all the money DeFries had taken in from his main cash source David Bowie. He would put the crew in one mid rate hotel, the Star & MainMan "execs" in extravagant suites in another, and the press would be scuttled off to a smaller property.

There are many people both in and out of the industry who are very curious about Mr. DeFries. He is, of course, the other mind (besides Bowie’s) responsible for the staggering success Bowie has realized in these past two years. He is also the creator of MainMan complete with all its policies and eccentric demands. To say he has revolutionized the music industry (which has more revolutions than any Latin American country) would be just playing with words. But, there are a lot of other management and record companies who have taken second looks at their own policies after having a gander at his.

Anyway, there isn’t much I can tell you about him beyond this. He is not a public person and never, never leaves himself open to scrutiny. I can however, describe to you the scene upon entering his suite at the Hotel Windsor Arms since I find it typical of all times I have entered his suite, in all the grand hotels in cities all over the world. First of all, unless something unforeseen arises, it is always the largest suite in the hotel and in this hotel nothing unforeseen had arisen...

Here's Mr. Iggy Pop on Tony DeFries, when Iggy was made one of the firm's babysitting projects for a spell in the early 70's:

"I thought, People will go for this guy. He had a big cigar and a big pointed nose and a great big Afro and a smug look on his face and an English accent and a big fur coat and a belly. And to the people who were running the American industry it just spelled 'Hot Manager'!"

(Quote lifted from Barney Hoskyn's Book "Glam!")

Another couple quotes from the MainMan organization from an Iggy interview by Arthur Levy:

"DeFries had received, for my services, one hundred thousand dollars from CBS Records, payable to MainMan as a production company. I had an employee contract so I had no right to touch a penny of it, and that was huge money in 1972, big, serious money. DeFries would play each of us against the other. Bowie would ask him, 'Well, where's my money?' and DeFries would say, 'Well, Iggy needed some dental work.' And Bowie'd get flipped out. Meanwhile, I'd wonder, 'Where's my money?' and I'd see Bowie on-tour and Mott The Hoople on-tour and I'd know they couldn't be making money on these tours, and I'd see five or six employees at the MainMan office and I'd think, 'There's my money.' (laughter)"

With all the employees on the road with them, and at the venues, DeFries liked to give off a certain impression of impending frenzy, and thusly, extra security would be employed to set a certain mood. Said Childers in an old Hit Parader magazine from December 1974:

From the looks of the place with its many, uniformed guards, and buzzers that let you move slowly through a series of doors as you prove your validity with various bits of identification, , it looked like we were preparing for an appearance by a highly unpopular political figure rather than a pop star.

Childers, a rock photographer who was drinking the kool-aid (or at least snorting it), was eventually given a position as VP of MainMan's NY office. The President was Tony Zanetta.

Zanetta has done a book on the Bowie era, and was there the night these managers decided to take on Iggy Pop as a client at Max's Kansas City in late 1971. MainMan would hole up clients like Iggy and Bowie in the Warwick Hotel and take 'em shopping for expensive clothes. Iggy was able to spend $400 on two pairs of pants for his first MainMan spending spree in late '71.

Here's Zanetta's description of DeFries style to former Mojo magazine editor Paul Trynka :

“He was very very detail-oriented. Very thorough. As I said, he was courageous: he could get anyone on the phone, he had that kind of dreamer thing but he wasn't afraid to take action. And he had a real hard-ass side to him: he could be very cold. He had a killer instinct that you need in business: we were all la dee dah and he wasn't afraid to do what was necessary. Tony gave us tremendous confidence - if he asked you to do something you wouldn't doubt him. He did create this family, he and Bowie had a very close relationship and discussed everything to death.. they were mutually dependent. Defries made you feel so special. And he did more than that, he put his money where his mouth was.

Well it didn't work out so great for Johnny Cougar, and apparently Mellencamp was disgusted that he was given the teen idol name Johnny Cougar, and was pissed off to find out his album was released under that title. In fact he claims the first he knew of his new name was when he saw the album cover.



Johnny was quickly dropped by MCA after one LP release sank without a trace. The debut disc, "Chestnut Street Incident" was a collection of mostly weak cover songs chosen by DeFries and his increasingly out of touch staff in 1976. Still Johnny Cougar eventually made it, and better yet, it was on his own.

He signed to Riva, a Polygram subsidiary out of London, where he had a new album out by 1978, and one John Cougar track was gaining traction in Japan of all places. The song was "I Need A Lover", and while John Cougar never hit any stateside radio play with it, a long island based female hard rocker named Pat Benatar took into the US charts.

Pat Benatar - Pat Benatar I Need A Lover mp3

Interestingly enough, after being dropped by MainMan and MCA he eventually found a kindred spirit in another former MainMan management client, that being Mick Ronson, Bowie's former guitarist who appeared on John's big 1982 hit track Jack & Diane from the album American Fool.


John Cougar w/ Mick Ronson - Jack and Diane

Once he dropped the Cougar moniker, he went officially on with his career as John Mellencamp, and was finally taken seriously as an artist and songwriter after more than a decade in the biz.

Mellencamp's career hasn't been without it's controversies, which have generally resulted from his political stances, including his Farm Aid charity and unabashed outspoken statements against the hypocrites he sees preying on the people from their powerful outposts in Washington D.C.

John Mellencamp - To Washington

In May of this year, Mellencamp got himself in more trouble by saying in an interview that he had smoked weed in the 80's with his childhood friend and basketball superstar Larry Bird, as well as teammate Kevin McHale backstage after a concert at Boston Garden...

The sports figures then promptly issued denials...

Although, while the former Boston Celtic's players were in denial... Bostonians didn't seem to mind, turning out in droves for the massive free outdoor concert over July 4th this year on the Boston Commons with the city's famed Boston Pops orchestra, where Mellencamp was the special "patriotic" guest.

This version of his song Love and Happiness, is taken from his quasi-acoustic Rough Harvest CD, with material recorded at Belmont Mall studios in Indiana, and was originally released in 1999. By 2005, the label formerly known as Mercury had been swallowed up by the regrouped Island / Def Jam empire and the disc was reissued after a Bob Clearmountain remastering job which you can perhaps hear in this sample track.

John Mellencamp - Love and Happiness



Here's some more music from Mellencamp, done later on the lil bastard's own terms, 2001's funky Cuttin' Heads, featuring Chuck D of Public Enemy:

John Mellencamp - Cuttin' Heads








My pal Chuck Prophet, prolly coulda used a power mongering rip off manager at some point in his career, at least to add to the collection of stories.

Chuck has a new record out, but as far as I know he's just flogging it himself, sans overpaid PR firms & managerial bloodsuckers. For over a decade now, Chuck, generally only has had his own self, or at least fate to blame for most of his career fortunes. That's not to say he hasn't had his share of ups & downs, and downers & uppers at one time or another. However there hasn't been too many Machivellian power plays, lawsuits, and whatnot. Sure there are a handful of folks who could talk some sorta shit bout him, but any guy in any bar band in America could probably find himself a scapegoat in some stupid story. If not, they should probably hang up their hat and call it day.

Drama.. it sells more records than being well liked by your Mama.

Chuck Prophet's relatively drama free backing band is The Mission Express, and they are on tour throughout this month. There is no separate dressing rooms or hotels, no nose powdering entourages, no extravagant costume budget. Everyone is packed in the same rented van and happily playing the oldies but goodies and of course cuts off their new release.

They blitzed through the UK last week, opening up an American Music Festival with two nights in London amongst other gigs, and made it into Belgium by Friday after a Thursday night in Leicester. They'll be back in San Francisco by the end of Rocktober...but they gotta win the hearts and minds over there first...

Chuck wrote me that last night he was Amsterdam, but I suspect avoided all the red lights, hashish & heroin...

WE did a webcast last night from the world famous Paradiso in Amster-Damn... Yeah, I don't know about all that web cast junk. I mean, like where's the mystique? I don't know if that's how I'd want to see Leonard Cohen, ya know?

Those old vaudevillian act's were wiped out by TV. They used to do the same basic act, but once you expose the world to it on the boob tube, they've seen it, got the DVD, the t shirt and they've moved on... fuggit.

I found a Belgian blogger who'd caught the band in front of an intimate audience in Eeklo. Leave it to the Belgians to have a town called Eeklo...

Here's a portion of the tour tale from that blogging Belgian reviewer and a track from Chuck Prophet's latest release, "Soap & Water" his first for the mighty lil' Yep Roc label, it's an album that's getting the 4 out of 5 star salute from all the relevant mag-o-zines like Mojo. Q etc.

Listen for the Methodist Children's Choir y'all

Chuck Prophet - Doubter Out of Jesus ( All Over You)

Here's the word on the show from the Belgian blogger at the Villa in Eeklo...

Certainly the best rock performance I've witnessed since the Drive-by Truckers at the same venue back in 2004 and quite astounding considering they had traveled down from playing in Leicester in the UK the night before...It rocked big time! There were a couple of more mellow moments such as "Would You Love Me?" (see video clip below) and "Solid Gold" (Age of Miracles") played solo and acoustic as opener for the encore. Bit of a shame that only about 50 wise ones turned up to see one of the best contemporary exponents of the Telecaster play but it was one of the gigs of the year. I might get to the Brussels gig with any luck.