JOHN COUGAR X-R7’S ENTIRE MIDWEST METROPOLIS

JOHN COUGAR X-R7’S ENTIRE MIDWEST METROPOLIS

FEATURES

("Louisville Gets It Next," Quips Once And Future Mellencamp)

by

Richard Riegel

Renegade Stories Down Thru The Years: CINCINNATI, OHIO, October, 1976: As I’m unpacking the latest shipment of promo records from MCA, my ever-hopeful attention span locks onto the title of one “Johnny Cougar.” Chestnut Street Incident, it’s called, and the cover art, which features Mr. Cougar’s pouting, pompadoured visage stark against a moody gray background, strikes me as a direct cop of Lou Christie’s Lightening Strikes, one of my all-time top ten LPs. I rush to my stereo and cue up Cougar’s disc, which turns out to be an intriguing mix of oddball covers (everything from the Doors’ “Twentieth Century Fox to somebody’s “Jailhouse Rock”), and of original songs which are virtual parodies of Bruce Springsteen’s then-reigning slice-ofnight melodramas, all done up in Cougar’s aggressive, throaty, hardrocking growl. The bio’s even more tantalizing: Cougar’s a smalltown boy, from Seymour, Indiana, who just happens to be managed by Tony “Main Man” DeFries, hot off his successful installation of David Bowie into every U.S. "household with alternating-current electricity. I grab the CREEM review assignment on Chestnut Street Incident, and I close my piece (January 1977 issue) with a backhahd celebration of Cougar: “What a divine find he’ll be in the bargain bins of 1984!”

"We can eat in the car. Don't make me no nevermind!"

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA, April, 1977: Johnny Cougar’s a faint memory by now, amid the rushing, snowballing punk scene in England and New York; I seem to have heard, somewhere that Cougar’s album stiffed, and that he’s parted company with DeFries. Tonight Teresa and I have driven over to Bloomington to monitor our Great Midwest’s organic solution to punk, the Gizmos, who are embarking upon their World Tour in the cozy Monroe County Library. We’re sitting there enjoying the startling dadarock presence of the nominal openers, MX-80 Sound, when in walks Johnny Cougar, compact and muscular, unmistakable in his sculptured hair and leather jacket and James Dean stances, the Christiesque album cover incarnate. Cougar chooses a seat right in front of me, and I shrink back into my own small town persona, reluctant to introduce myself to this rocker-from-the-night whose debut album plummeted into oblivion, apparently at the behest of my smartass ambivalence. I stare at that intricate hairdo practically in my lap, and I’m certain that the brain beneath is foiling with lust and revenge for rockwriters. I believed all that stuff I read in Cougar’s bio, and I know he’ll punch me out, and drag me down Chesnut -St. behind his Harley, if anybody rats on me tonight. I don’t dare move a muscle. But when Cougar goes on stage, to introduce ‘my friends, the Gizmos,” he’s halting and shy, he’s scratching that hairdo as though Bloomington and its ragtag punk partisans are just too urbane a throng for a boy from Seymour to face; I stay tuned.

LONDON, ENGLAND, June, 1978: I’ve finally made it to the Mecca of modern rock ’n’ roll, courtesy of Warner Bros. Records, as I’m writing up their new acquisition Thin Lizzy for predicted U.S. glory. Warner promo man Gary Kenton takes me by the London WE A office, to check out what avantgardeties his corporate cousins in the U.K. are up to. Gary is excited over an original Radar pressing of Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model, but I meanwhile notice, in an inconspicuous corner, a pile of brand new singles by a “John ’Cougar.” “So I didn’t finish off that dude after all!” I smile to myself.

CINCINNATI, OHIO, January, 1980: J. Cougar’s first U.S. album since Chesnut Street. Incident, the new image 'John Cougar, was released last summer on Riva, a Phonogram-distributed label so exclusive that even Riva headliner Rod Stewart’s not recording on it in the colonies yet. John . Cougar’s incessantly infectious “I Need A Lover” has made a bit of noise on the radio, especially after further exposure through Pat Benatar’s version. And I finally caught the Coug live, when he opened for the Kinks at Music Mall last fall. But that’s all academic tonight, as Teresa and I shiver out the coldest Midwestern winter since at least 19-ought-79. With out thermostat patriotically lowered to some subtemperate degree, we’re too cold to stay up, too cold to make our own fun in bed. I check the TV Guide for inspiration, and note that John Cougar will be appearing on Jukebox (nee Twiggy’s Jukebox) tonight. We shiver patiently through hostess Britt Ekland’s weekly digs at Rod le Shag, and are rewarded with a sizzling videocassette dramatization of Cougar’s “Miami”, shpt on location, amid all the surf, hot sand, bikini-clad asses, and highrises of all descriptions, that define the burg. John Cougar’s face is encapsulated in a ball bouncing along his lyrics speedboats and more bikini bottoms. This film brings Cougar’s insistent vocal to life for me better than the finest-graphiced lyric sheet ever could, and I’ve got to play my record of “Miami” now. Suddenly it seems like Miami’s 85 in the gloom of our Edwardian igloo, and we drop off to balmy dreams of the coming spring.

Cool ain't got nothing to do with rock 'n' roll anymore!

CINCINNATI, OHIO, September, 1980: No more chance encounters, this time I’m going to do John Cougar up right. He’s opening for the Kinks on their swing through Cincinnati again this autumn, and for the past week I’ve been living with and cultivating a test pressing of the brand new Cougar LP/Nothin’ Matters And What If It Did. I’m meeting with the big cat himself at his motel shortly, and I’m planning to own up to my hatchet-job-by-default on Chestnut Street Incident at once.

Phonogram publicist Sherry Ring introduces us smalltown boys, and I confess my true identity in best Abbie Hoffman noble activist style, as I pump John Cougar’s manly paw. “Hey, man,” says the Coug, his bright blue eyes fondly sarcastic, “That was one of the better reviews!” Sherry and I hop into Cougar’s gold Pontiac Firebird FORMULA (complete with what is undoubtedly John’s favorite accessory, the Indiana license tag on back), and he zooms Us out of the motel lot, careening onto Central Parkway for a run to a real record company-paid three martini lunch! Which is suddenly right on top of us, as John roars into the driveway of...Frisch’s Big Boy! “Make sure you hit the speedbumps,” I caution John. “Could be another song in it.”

John parks behind the Big Boy, and lapses into the patois known to us cornfed types: “We can eat in the car. Don’t make me no nevermind!” But I’m not ready to indulge my Midwest ethnic that much today, so we adjourn to Frisch’s dining room, where I wolf down a Buddie Boy while John polishes' off a cherry coke and explains his rock ’n’ roll ambitions.

Cougar’s proud of his accomplishments, especially because he’s been able to stick to his own, Bloomington-based scenario to stardom, ever since the misfire of Tony DeFries’ grand designs upon him. But he put career objectives on hold for now, preferring to talk about origins. A^hen he discovers that I hail from Washington Court House, Ohio, identical in size (12,000 souls) to his Seymour as we were growing up, “God’s Country” is written all over his face. “Sure, John, We had a.Big Boy in Washington, too...” I remark, “...and a Tastee-Freez!” finishes John, his eyes beginning to glaze over with memories of endless summer in the land the surf never reaches.

Back at the motel, John Cougar’s ready to chase his r ’n’ r future again. He shows me John Cougar & The Zone’s hefty RV/camper, complete with video recorder for those long days between one-nighters I notice a prerecorded cassette of James Dean’s Rebel Without A Cause jn John’s collection, and it’s comforting to know that real rockstars need to resort to image tuneups over the lpng haul, too. “I paid 8G bucks for that in L. A.,” says John, “and then it was on TV the next week. I coulda taped it.”

John tunes his video recorder and shows me the promotional cassettes for his new album, directed by Biruce Gowers, who also made the “Miami” film of Jukebox fame. Cougar recruited veteran John Waters actress/national monument Edith Massey to star both in the cover photos of Nothin’ Matters and in the “This Time” cassette, and her role in the latter production very closely parallels the part she played in Mutant Monster Beach . Party, as the workaday-hag nightmare reality Joey Ramone woke up to, after his dreams of bringing Debbie Harry to a nuptial bed had evaporated. John’s “This Time” is a “Rod Stewart song,” as the Coug’s admitted right off (before I’ve had a chance to kid him about it), very similar in its honeyed cynicism to Rodbod’s “You’re In My Heart.” So John-camps the parody to the max in his video, with passionate lipsynch serenades to Massey for the true love he’s found (this time), deep in the beanbag chairs of her flesh.

The other new video, spotlighting “Ain’t Even Done With the Night,” is an equally camptown-racy vehicle, as it shows the Zone dressed as soul brothers-for-a-day in authentic Temptations suits from the 60’s, and sends these manic Hoosiers gyrating around strutting John Cougar, in traditional T.A.M.f Show slow motion workouts, Cougar’s flicks are such great audiovisual fun -that I’m getting Betamax fever on my View-Master pocketbook.

"I need a lover who'll SIT ON MY FACE!"

But so much for convincing the alreadyconverted; local Phonogram promo man Don George appears at the door of the RV, and advises Cougar that it’s time to go talk that talk to the radio stations. I keep quiet as we drive toward WEBN, Cincinnati’s immemorial arbiter of hip taste. WEBN was Cincinnati’s first FM album rock outlet, in the heady days of 1967, but lost its vanguard cutting edge a year or two later, and has been coasting on its rep ever since. Not that the ratings have suffered; WEBN programs the perfect Led Zep/Ronstadt/ Seger/Springsteen/Tull/Who middle common denominator to keep us great Midwesterners fat & content. And the DJs “tell clever frog non sequiturs between\ records; I’m certain that these ’EBN permahippies’ll still be chuckling over the latest Nixon jokes as they’re laid out in their Izod Lacoste shrouds. Play new wave? Are you kidding?

Still, and all, for all my ranting about WEBN over the years, this is my first chance to infiltrate the heart of the beast, to enter their legendary “Hyde Park Meadow” studios, and my eyes are smalltownboyagog at the tons of promo goodies .they’ve accumulated over the years—these guys were raking in huge RSO-animal ceramic planters, and lifesize cardboard cutouts of Jeff Beck, while I was humbly grateful for my plastic box of Ramones Road to Ruin pushpins!

Don George locates the WEBN deejay he * promised us, makes the introductions, and we all retire to the station’s library, to use the turntable tucked away in the corner. Cougar and George attempt to acquaint the jock with the manifold virtues of Nothin’ Matters And What If It Did, while Sherry Ring and I scan WEBN’s teeming album stacks. Under a row of 12-inch singles is the curt legend: “DISCO: DON'T REMOVE.” And there are other signs here in WEBN’s coffers of the breakdown of the FM democratic-rock dream of ’67, as for instance a total lack of Pere Ubu albums— the alphabetical stacks jump from Alan, Parsons to Pink Floyd. Shoot! And I was gonna call in and request Ubu’s “Life Stinks” this weekend!

The deejay is nodding and shuffling in place to Nothin’ Matters, in a good-humored R. Crumb-like caricature, but even the flesh & blood John Cougar remains a rather invisible quantity before the wealth and power of these massed record albums. We file back out of the studio, unsure of the effectiveness of this promo .gesture, out as we tune in the station on the car radio, some honey-liberal ’EBN voice or other is going on, “.. we were assembling our costumes for WEBN Day at the Zoo, and John Cougar just stopped in the studio. The people you run into up here...” And damned if they don’t play “I Need A Lover,” and plug the concert, a few minutes later.

Across town the more sedate WSAI-FM, Chrysler to WEBN’s General Motors in Cincinnati’s hip-quotient rating wars, John Cougar’s transparency seems on the increase. Don George introduces each of us to the harried program director, stressing the synthetic “JOHN COUGAR” monicker more than once, but the P.D. gives us a quick glance and says cheerfully, “So you’re all in town to see the Kinks show tonight?” “No,” says The Coug, his voice cool and level, as motorcycle throttles meanwhile start revving up in the pupils of his eyes, “I’m playing it.”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 38

Earlier today John Cougar had related the saga of his new song “Cheap Shot” to me. “Cheap Shot” happens to be a bitterlycharged attack on big rock and big record companies, a furious lashout of a tune drawn from the fathomless resentments of a smalltown boy who’s been used like a toy in his time. Phonogram was understandably not overly thrilled to be releasing the song, but Cougar insisted upon it with fuck-myown-career idealism, and was able to record it with the lyrics intact, his only concession being to drop the “(The Record Co. Song)” subtitle from the printed listings of “Cheap Shot” on the album package.

Now, with the Phonogram promo man and the WSAI program director discussing the lowered expectations of all of us here in Rock Recession 1980, John Cougar suddenly spits out his “Cheap Shot” lyrics, with the proud precision only their composer could give them: “Well the P.D’s they won’t play the record/They’re too worried about that book/And the DJs.they all hate the song/But they’re in love with the hook.” The P.D. says he agrees with John’s ideas, but meanwhile why do the record companies spend So much money hustling inferior product? he wants to know. More philosophy on business-as-usual. Cougar throws in a tantalizing “Cool ain’t got nothing to do with rock ’n’ roll anymore!” at some dialectic moment. Finally the promo man and the P.D. are agreed on the most crucial item of business at this stop: the correct spelling of the name of one the station’s deejays, for the comp list at tonight’s show.

GROUND ZERO, 1980 & Beyond: John Cougar and the Kinks have moved from the ornate, high culture Music Hall, to the socialist-monolith University of Cincinnati Fieldhouse, for this year’s show. The Zone’s equipment up on stage appears dwarfed as much by the living legend Kinks’ gear surrounding it, as by the flaring cementblock architecture looming over us all.

Still, John Cougar wastes no time in seizing the day of the centerstage, as he snakes through the Zone, and leaps directly into “Hot Night In A Cold Town,” the lead cut on Nothin’ Matters And What If It Did. The Coug’s dressed in slim black vest (his ever-ready pack of Marlboros nudging out of the pocket) and jeans, with sleeveless teeshirt underneath, to keep his bulging biceps free for easy product identification. Cougar’s virtuoso neo-Hoosier hairdo and his pumping iron arms overshadow his trim little ass and legs, giving him mythic proportions up on stage; he Suggests either a Brecht-Weill American-roustabout antihero, ca. 1929, or maybe even the (distanced) country cousin of the macho man saluting from the back cover of Lou Reed’s Transformer.

John Cougar struts from end to end of the stage, in and out of the hardrocking Zone, dramatizing “Night Dancin’ ” and “Sugar Marie” with his gritty, incisive vocals. By the closing verses of the latter song, Zone keyboardist Doc Rosser seems half-berserk, as he flails away at his piano, somewhere to the left of Cougar’s spotlight. John told me earlier that Rosser was, an instructor in Classical Piano at Indiana U. just a few months back, until he glibly surpassed a gang of more r ’n’ r-conventional keyboardists in auditions to join the Zone. Tonight, by virtue of his balding skull, his dark glasses, and the horrible facial grimaces he makes as he bops to his own fingers, Doc Rosser could easily pass as the brand new albino Stevie Wonder.

Everybody’s in showbiz, after all, as the old-enough-to-know-better Ray Davies never fails to remind his young tourmate John Cougar—“He’s always saying, ‘You should do this, and you shouldn’t do that,” Cougar volunteered to me earlier—and tonight John borrows a slick stage move from those latter-day arena-packers calling themselves the Kinks. The Zone play the lengthy instrumental intro of Cougar’s best-known song, “I Need A Lover,” then hesitate for a charged moment of silence, a la the Kinks’ patented “Lola”-intro sleightof-hand—are they or aren’t they gonna do • it?—and then, with the instruments reduced to a near-silent hum, John Cougar suddenly leaps onto guitarist Mike “Chief” Wanchic’s shoulders, and bawls out an exuberant “I need a lover who’ll SIT ON MY FACE!!!” as the Zone roar back to full volume. Cougar jumps down from Wanchic, smiles at his sacrilege of his own lyrics for just a sec, and then gets on with those. “I Need A Lover” verses we need so much again.

Cougar follows this outburst with the bittersweet moodiness of his tribute to his homeland,/‘The Great Midwest,” and then turns up the B.T.U.’s with his new “This Time.” The Kinks-kultish audience members are growing more heated in their ; applause. Cougar indulges the crowd’s new enthusiasm with a pair of Great-Midwestem oldies, “Louie, Louie” (twice released by the mythical Kinks, of course) and “Hang Oil, Sloopy.” John-Boy’s even more inclined to lyrical revisionism now: “Sloopy let your tits hang down, let ’em hang down on me,” he sings, still the perfect cornfed, foul-mouthed, Lou Christie-choirboy archetype.

John Cougar holds up his arm and flexes his bicep toward the audience,-as though he’s yanking on the airhorn of a raging Peterbilt 18-wheeler, and shouts “I hope you got what you came for!” He then takes a huge leap into the crowd, but miscalcualates his angle of incidence, and lands right in a milling throng of freebies—radio and recordstore folk-front row late-arrivals who are too busy gawking around *to see which of their beautiful-peep friends are also here tonight, to notice the actual star of the evening among them.

So much for dancing in the aisles. Cougar nimbly scrambles back onto the stage, and exits the back, but he and the Zone are immediately called to return by the shouts and applause from the paid seats. They respond with a lusty, rabblerousing “Cheap Shot” (screams all over the arena for “Price the records too damn high!”) , and close out a supremely rousing set with the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues”.

The fans want more, but the Kinks are contractually entitled to the stage now, and Cougar and the Zone make to the dressing room for good. Later, while the shower fresh John Cougar brushes and reshapes his trademark ’do (he uses herbal Agree shampoo, kids), guitarist Larry Crane and I discuss the finer points of sprintcar racing (the consummate Hoosier rite of passage), at legendary tracks like Salem and Winchester.

The “Great Midwest”? It’ll do real well, for tonight.