Кіріспе
М. А. Happy Go Lucky – американдық әнші, әнші-күйші және музыкант Джон Мелленкамптың 14-ші альбомы. Ол 1996 жылдың 10 қыркүйегінде жарық көрді. Бұл 1994 жылы өткен жүрек шабуынан кейін шыққан алғашқы альбомы. Альбомдағы Мелленкамптың музыкасы өлімге бетке айқасқан тәжірибесін көрсетеді деп айтылады. Альбом Индиана штатының Белмонт қаласында, Мелленкамптың Белмонт Молл жазба студиясында жазылды. Альбомнан шыққан алғашқы сингл "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" Billboard Hot 100 хит-парадында 14-орынға жетті және бүгінгі күнге дейін АҚШ-тағы оның соңғы Top 40 синглы болып табылады. "Just Another Day" альбомының екінші синглы болды және Billboard Hot 100 хит-парадында 46-орынға тоқтады. Мелленкамп Associated Press агенттігіне Mr. Happy Go Lucky туралы концепциясын былай түсіндірді: "Осы пластинканы жасауды бастағанда, мен 90-шы жылдардағы қара музыканың ырғағын, яғни рэпті, және 30-шы, 40-шы жылдардағы қара блюз музыкасының дыбыстарын үйлестіргім келді. Роберт Джонсон сияқты гитарамен ойнап, астынан рэп ырғағы қосылса деп ойладым. Бәрі солай болмаса да, осы идеямен жұмыс бастадық". Mr. Happy Go Lucky альбомынан тыс қалған "All Night Talk Radio" әні Мелленкамптың 2017 жылғы Sad Clowns & Hillbillies альбомына енгізілді.
Mr. Happy Go Lucky is the 14th album by American singer songwriter and musician John Mellencamp. It was released on September 10, 1996. It was his first album released after his heart attack in 1994. Mellencamp's music on the album is said to reflect his brush with death. The album was recorded in Belmont, Indiana, in Mellencamp's Belmont Mall recording studio. The first single from the album, "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)," peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is his last Top 40 single in the United States to date. "Just Another Day" was the album's second single and stalled at No. 46 on the Billboard Hot 100. Mellencamp told the Associated Press of his concept for Mr. Happy Go Lucky: "When we started making this record, I thought I'd marry the rhythm of black music of the '90s, which is rap, and the sounds of black blues music of the '30s and '40s. We'd have Robert Johnson type guitar licks playing with this rap rhythm underneath it. It didn't always work out that way, but that's the place we started from." An outtake from Mr. Happy Go Lucky, "All Night Talk Radio," was included on Mellencamp's 2017 album Sad Clowns & Hillbillies.
Суретшілердің арасында айтыс
Бүкіл елдегі дүкендерге таратылғаннан кейін, Wal-Mart мұқабадағы Шайтан мен Иса бейнесін қорлаушы деп санады, сондай-ақ фотодағы нәресте өлгендей көрінетінін мәлімдеді. Меленкамп бұл баланың оның ұлы, Худ екенін, жай ғана ұйықтап жатқанын айтты; бірақ ол мұқаба өзгертілгеніне ашуланбады, себебі ол оны жасаған жоқ және шешім қабылдаған жоқ, сонымен қатар музыканы өзгертудің қажеті болмады. Жаңа нұсқалардың мұқабаларында Шайтан мен Исаның бейнелері алынып тасталды.
After being released into stores nationwide, Wal Mart found the depiction of the Devil and Jesus on the cover to be offensive, additionally stating that it looked as if the baby in the photo was dead. Mellencamp responded the baby was his son, Hud, who was only sleeping; however, he was not upset at the cover being changed since he did not design or decide on it, and since the music was not required to be changed. In newer versions of the cover art the Devil and Jesus have been removed.
Әндер
Мелленкамп 1996 жылдың қыркүйек айында "Индианаполис Стар" газетінде жарық көрген "Бақытты бол, бақытты бол!" атты мақаласында барлық әндері туралы пікір білдірді. Міне, Мелленкамптың жазушы Марк Д. Алланмен бөліскен ойларынан негізгі үзінділер:
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture (Увертюра): "Бұл жазбаны жасағанда, мен бұл әуендерді есте сақтаудың қаншалықты оңай екенін байқадым. Альбомды қалай бастау керектігін ойлағанда, Мириамға (Стурм, оның жаңа скрипкашысы) телефон шалып: "Мен саған бүкіл альбомды жіберемін. Әр әннің негізгі мелодиясын алып, біз үшін біріктіріп орындап берсең екен" дедім. Ол да солай істеді".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Jerry (Джерри): "Мен үшін ән жазу – түрлі тәжірибелердің жиынтығы. Жақсы ән жазғанда – және мен көп жаман әндер жаздым, сондықтан айырмашылықты білемін – бір сәт көтеріліп кетесің. Мен мұны қандай да бір мақтанышпен айтқым келмейді. Бірақ "Оны қазір жазып алсам жақсы болар еді" деп ойлайсың. "Jerry" және осы альбомдағы көптеген әндер сияқты, менде ешқандай ерекше ән жазу ниеті болмады. "Бүгін өсіп жетілмейтін жігіт туралы ән жазамын" деп ойлап, кірген жоқпын. Мен гитараны алып, бірнеше аккорд ойнаттым (және ән айттым): "Джерри айдағы адамға айқайлап жатыр". Бұл тек тәжірибе болды. Мен осы пластинкада әндерімді жеткілікті жазғанымды білгенше, солай істедім. Мен әр таңертең тұрып, сурет салу студиясына барып сурет салудың орнына, ән жазып шығатынмын. Кейін бір нәрсеге қол жеткізгенше немесе ештеңе алмайтынымды білгенше жұмыс істеймін. Содан кейін мен қайтадан келіп, түскі тамақты ішіп, қайтадан шығып, қайтадан бастаймын. Кейде үш, төрт, бес күн бойы ештеңе алмадым. Мен (әйелім) Элейнге: "Менің жазғандарымның бәрі қорқынышты" деп айтатынмын. Бірақ кейде "Толық апат" пен "Джерри" әндерін бір күнде жаздым деп ойлаймын. Бұл жақсы күн болды. Элейнге: "Бұл әндер жақсы емес. Бір күнде екі-үш ән жаза алмаймын" деп ойладым".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First) (Кей-Вест интермеццосы (Мен сені бірінші көрдім)): "Бұл Джордж (Грин) пен мен жаздық. Джордж екеуміз жазған жақсы әндер сияқты, бұл да үстел үстінде әңгімелесу арқылы жазылған. Джордж екеуміз "Қоңырқауға жаңбыр" атты шығарманы жазғанда, ол шаруалардың жағдайы туралы ұзақ әңгімелесуден туындаған. (Кей-Вест үшін) Джордж маған келесі күні таңертең қоңырау шалып: "Менде жартысы мәтіндер жинағы бар. Менің ойымша, бұл өте керемет" деді. Бұл әндерді топтағы жігіттерге орындауға келгенде, кішкентай сәбиді әкелгендей сезімдемін. Мен "Мен сені бірінші көрдім" деп ән шырқап, тіпті шырқап та көрмедім. Әннің өлуі үшін біреудің "Білмеймін" деуі жеткілікті. Егер өзіңізді осыған көндіру керек болса, келесі әнге көшейік. Менде көп ән болады, мен уақытты ысырап еткім келмейді. Барлығы да осы жерде отырып, мен ән салғанда, сөздерді оқиды. Мен оны екі рет ойнатам, ешкім ештеңе айтпайды. Кейін адамдар аяқпен соққылай бастайды немесе гитара алып, бірге ойнай бастайды. Ол тек қана өседі".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Just Another Day (Тағы бір күн): "Бұл әнді рекорд компания алғашқы сингл ретінде шығаруды қалады. (Олар): "Бұл маған таныс естіледі" деді".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
This May Not Be the End of the World (Бұл әлемнің соңы болмауы мүмкін): "Менің сүйікті әнім. Бұл біздің жазған соңғы әніміз. Біз Мо З.М.Д. деген баланы қолдандық, ол бағдарламалауды және барабанның бұрыштамаларын жасауға көмектесті. Ол қазір топта, оған қатты ұнады. Мен акустикалық гитарада әнді ойнап жүрмін: "Бұл әлемнің соңы болмауы мүмкін, бірақ сіз оны осында көре аласыз". Ол халық әніндей болды. Ол: "Не болып жатыр?" деп ойлаған шығар. Есіңізде болсын, осы жас балалардың бәрі әндерін үзіліспен бастайды. Бәрі ырғақтан басталады. Бұл біздің киетін соңғы киімдеріміз. Ол әнді естіп, студияға барып, бағдарламаны бастайды. Бір сағат ішінде ол менің ойымша, рекордтағы ең керемет күйді шығарды. Бізге орган керек екенін білгенмін. Барлық осы сақиналар клавиатурада бағдарламаланған. Мен: "Мо, орган ойнай аласың ба?" деп сұрадым. Ол кісі сонда шығады, бұл Билли Престонның Битлз тобындағы сияқты, үлкен, діни, евангелиелік дыбыс. Ол бір рет ойнатты, бұл сиқыр сияқты болды".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Emotional Love (Эмоционалдық махаббат) (Mellecamp бас гитары Тоби Майерс жазған, бұл Mellencamp өзінің топ мүшесінің әндерінің біреуін алғаш рет жазды): "Мен әрқашан топтағы әркімді, көп жылдар бойы, өз ісін жасауға шақырдым. Тоби көптен бері топта. Тоби әндер жазды, ол әндерді жазды. Бір күні ол маған: "Белмонтқа барып, ән жазсам бола ма?" деп сұрады. Мен "иә" дедім. Ол осында ойнап жүргенін білетінмін, бір күні түнде маған телефон соғылды. Ол: "Ей, кел, мен жазған бір сөзді тыңдасаң екен" дейді. Мен: "Мен кешкі асқа бара жатырмын. Мен балалармен ойнауға ниеттендім". Ол: "Мен үшін бұл өте маңызды" деді. Сондықтан мен осы жерге келдім. Ол осында жалғыз өзі жүр, барлық машиналары жұмыс істейді. Мен осы жерге келдім де, ол маған: "Маған осы әнді жазуға көмектес" деді. Сондықтан біз ән жаздық, ол өте жақсы болмады. Мен: "Осыдан көптерің бар ма?" дедім. Ол: "Жоқ, мен саған ойнағым келетін нәрсем бар" деді. Ол маған "Эмоционалдық махаббат" әнін ойнатты, мен (сенбедім). Біз оның трегін алдық, оның даусын алып, менікіні қостық, кейбір гитаралар мен фонограммалық бөлімдер қостық. Содан кейін Junior (Васкес, альбомды бірге өндірген) үзіліс пен перкуссия қосты. Ән мен үшін өте ерекше. Мен мұндай сызықтық емес ән жазбас едім".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Mr. Bellows (Мырза Беллоус): "Мен оны жазған күнін есімдемін, мен: "Бұл ән қайдан келді?" дедім. Мен тәжірибе жасап жатқанда, кенеттен: "Оның әлдешемелігі патшайым өте жақсы қыз/Оны Санкт-Петербургқа бір күні алып кетсем деймін" дедім. Ол бірнеше минутта келді. Мен оны Элейнге ойнаттым және: "Мен осыны жаза аламын ба? Сіз бұл тым ереке деп ойламайсыз ба?" дедім. Мен осыны жазғанда пикник үстелінде отырғанмын, шамамен осы уақытта өткен жылы. Мен "Сымпатия шайтанға" деген сөзді айтуым керек, өйткені мен Мырза Беллоус шайтан екеніне келдім. (Ән қарт адамдардың өмірі туралы сөйлейтін сәтте аяқталады, ал астында көңілді скрипка ойнайды). Мен Рикке, осы жерде жұмыс істейтін жігітке: "Таспа жазғыш алып, қарттар үйіне барып, осы адамдар бақытты ма деп сұраңыз. Не дейтінін көрейік" дедім. Мен 80 жастағы, қарттар үйінде тұратын адамның өмір туралы не ойлайтынын білуге қызығушылық таныттым. Содан кейін Мириам скрипка бөлімін жазды. Ол ешқашан адамдардың сөйлегенін естімеген. Мен: "Қарт адамдардың сөйлегені қалай естіледі?" дедім".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
The Full Catastrophe (Толық апат): "Бұл менің сүйікті әнім. Бір кезде жүрегім ауырғаннан кейін, мен психиатрға барып, "Мен бұған қалай төзе аламын?" деп ойладым. Бұл мен оның арасындағы әңгімеден туындады. Ол: "Өмірдің толық апатына төзе білуің керек, сонымен қатар оның қызығын да сезінуің керек" деді. Мен: "Иә, ол дұрыс айтады. Жаман нәрсені жақсыға айналдыруға тырысуға болады, шынымен осылай өмір сүруге болады, шынымен де: "Бұл (бұзылған) нәрсе, сонда не? Мен осыдан жақсы нәрсе жасай аламын" деуге болады". Соңғы екі-үш рет осы жігітті көруім, менің жасаған ең жақсы нәрсем болды. Ол мені осыған жетуге көмектесті. Мен одан: "Осы сөзді қайдан алдың?" деп сұрадым. Ол оның "Грек Зорбасында" екенін айтты. Мен "Грек Зорбасын" көріп, осы сөзді естідім. Ол: "Сіз үйленгенсіз ба?" деді. Ол: "Иә, үйлер, балалар, әйелдер. Өмірдің толық апаты". Мен: "Жарайды, иә. Мен оны қолданамын. Рақмет" дедім. Мен оны алғаш жазғанда, қазіргіден гөрі көңілді болды. Мен өзімнің тым көп бөлігін салдым. Сондықтан мен келесі күні қайтып, өзімді алып тастап, қайта жаздым. Ол әлдеқайда жақсы, кең әнге айналды".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Large World Turning (Үлкен әлем айналуда): "Бұл үш минутта жазылған әндердің бірі. Қазір оны тыңдасам, бұл альбомдағы ең жақсы әндердің бірі емес. Бірақ қызығы, әр әннің ретімен бір жұмысы бар. Ол өз жұмысын жасайды".
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Jackamo Road (Жакамо жолы): "Бұл ән топпен толық аранжировкаға ие болды, бірақ ол жақсы болмады. Ән ең болмағанда жақсы естілген жалғыз уақыт болды..."
Mellencamp commented on all the songs on Mr. Happy Go Lucky for a September 1996 feature in the Indianapolis Star. Below are the highlights from the insights Mellencamp shared with writer Marc D. Allan:
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Overture: "I noticed when we were making this record that these melodies were real easy to recall. When we were looking at a way to start the record, I called up Miriam (Sturm, his then new violinist) and said, 'I'm going to send you the entire album. See if you can't take the main melody of each song and put it together for us.' And that's what she did." Jerry: "Songwriting, to me, has turned out to be an assortment of noodlings. When you write a good song – and I've written a lot of bad ones, so I know the difference – you kind of become elevated for a moment. I don't mean that in any grandiose way. But it's like, 'I'd better get this down now.' When that starts happening, like it did with 'Jerry' and a lot of the songs on this record, I have to say that I really had no intention of writing anything in particular. I didn't go in and think, 'Today I'll write a song about a guy who won't grow up.' I just picked up a guitar, started playing some chords (and sang) 'Jerry's yelling at the man in the moon.' It was just noodling. And I did it religiously on this record, until I was satisfied that I had written enough songs. I would get up every morning and instead of going into the art studio and painting, I went out and wrote songs. Then I'd work until I had something or until I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anything. Then I'd come back in, eat lunch, go back out and start the process again. Sometimes there'd be days – three, four, five days – where I had nothing. I'd tell (his wife) Elaine, 'Everything I write is terrible.' But then there were days – I think I wrote 'The Full Catastrophe' and 'Jerry' in the same day. It was a good day. I remember telling Elaine, 'These songs can't be any good. I've never been able to write two or three good songs in a day.'" Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First): "It was written by George (Green) and I. Like all the songs that George and I have written that were any good, it basically was written out of table talk. When George and I wrote 'Rain on the Scarecrow,' it was out of a big, long conversation about the plight of the farmers. (For Key West) George called me the next morning and said, 'I've got about half a set of lyrics written. I think it's really great.' When I come to play these songs for the guys in the band, it's like bringing a little baby in. I was singing, 'I saw you first,' and barely even strumming. All it takes for a song to die is somebody to go, 'I don't know.' If you've got to talk yourself into it, then let's go to the next song. I'll have lots of songs, and I don't want to waste time. Everybody sits here, reads the lyrics as I sing. I'll play it two times, nobody says a word. Then all of a sudden people start beating on their legs, or they'll get a guitar and start playing along. It just grows." Just Another Day: "That was what the record company wanted to put out as the first single. (They said,) 'It sounds familiar.'" This May Not Be the End of the World: "My favorite song on the record. That was the last song we recorded. We were using a kid, Moe Z. M. D., to come in and do the programming and help with the (drum) loops. He's in the band now, he liked it so much. I'm playing the song on acoustic guitar: 'This may not be the end of the world/but you can see it from here.' It was like a folk song. He must have been like, 'What is going on?' Don't forget: All these young kids start their songs with a loop. Everything starts with the rhythm. That's just about the last thing we always put on. He hears the song, goes back there (in the studio) and starts programming. Within an hour, he had what I think is the coolest groove on the record. I knew we needed an organ part – all these grooves are programmed on keyboards. So I said, 'Moe, can you play the organ?' The guy goes out there and it was like Billy Preston with the Beatles, a big, religious, gospel sound. He played it through one time, and it was like magic." Emotional Love (written by Mellecamp's bassist Toby Myers, marking the first time Mellencamp recorded one of his band member's songs): "I've always encouraged everyone in the band, for years, to go out and do their own thing. Toby's been with the band for a long time. Toby has written songs forever One day he asked me, 'Is it all right if I go out to Belmont and record?' I said yeah. I knew he was out here messing around, and one night I get a phone call. He says, 'Hey, come out here, I want you to listen to something I wrote.' My reaction was, 'I'm having dinner. I had planned to play with the boys.' He said, 'It would really mean a lot to me.' So I come out here. He's out here by himself and he's got all the machines going. I came out here and he said, 'Help me write this song.' So we wrote a song and it wasn't very good. I said, 'Is this all you've got done?' And he said, 'No, I've got something I want to play you.' He played me 'Emotional Love,' and I (couldn't believe it). . We took his track, took his voice off and put mine on, added some guitars and some background vocal parts. Then Junior (Vasquez, who co produced the album) added a loop and some percussion. The song is so different for me. I would never write a song so non linear as that." Mr. Bellows: "I remember the day I wrote it, I said, 'Where is this song coming from?' I was noodling and all of a sudden it was, 'Her majesty the queen's a pretty nice babe/I'd like to take her down to St. Petersburg some day. 'It came in minutes. I played it for Elaine and I said, 'Can I write this? Do you think this is too weird?' I was sitting at a picnic table when I wrote it, maybe around this time last year. I have to give the nod to Sympathy for the Devil, because I came to the conclusion that probably Mr. Bellows was the devil. (The song ends with elderly people talking about their lives when a bittersweet violin plays underneath.) I told Rick, a guy who works here, 'Take a tape recorder and go to some old folks homes and ask these folks if they're happy. We'll see what they say.' I was curious to see what someone in their 80s, living in an old folk's home, might think of life. Then Miriam wrote the violin part. She had never heard the people talking. I said, "Play me what old people talking would sound like.'" The Full Catastrophe: "That's my second favorite song on the record. For a while, after I had my heart attack, I was going to see a psychiatrist, (wondering) 'How am I going to deal with this?' That came out of a conversation I had with him. He was saying, 'You've got to be able to suffer through, and enjoy, the full catastrophe of life.' I thought, 'Yeah, he's right. You can try to make the bad stuff good, you can really live that, really say, 'This is (screwed) up, so what? I can make something good out of it.' Consequently, seeing this guy a couple, three dozen times, was about the best thing I could have done. He helped me come to that realization. I finally asked him, 'Where'd you get that line?' He said it was in Zorba the Greek. So I watched 'Zorba the Greek' and there it is. He's asked, 'Are you married?' He says, 'Oh, yeah. Houses, kids, wives. The full catastrophe.' I thought, 'OK, yeah. I'll use that. Thanks.' When I first wrote it, it was much sadder than it is now. I put too much of myself into it. So I went back the next day, took myself out of it and rewrote it. It became a much better, broader song." Large World Turning: "That's one of those songs that took three minutes to write. Now that I listen to it, it's probably not one of the best songs on the record. But it's funny – each song in sequence has a job to do. It does its job." Jackamo Road: "That song had an entire arrangement with the band, but it just wasn't any good. The only time the song sounded remotely good at all was when I played it on acoustic guitar – the way it ended up on the record. We spent six days in here, 12–13 hours a day, sequencing this record. That was something I'd never done before. We'd always sequenced the other records in an afternoon – Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee and all those other records. There was about that much thought that went into it. When we got to the end of the record, I thought, 'We need something to happen here that hasn't happened.' So I just ran out and recorded 'Jackamo Road' in two minutes. I tried to sing it as country as I could, just to make it the opposite of the song I knew was going to come after it, 'Life Is Hard,' which is as urban sounding a song as we've got. I'm still agonizing over 'Jackamo Road' because I wish I'd said another word. I think it says, 'I'd like to buy you a cabin cruiser/we could sail around.' You don't sail a cabin cruiser. When I sang it, it never dawned on me. But when I got it home, I thought, I'm going to have to record it again. But then I thought, 'Nobody's going to know.'" Life Is Hard: "'Life Is Hard' was referred to as the worst song on the record by everybody. That song could have been replaced by any of four songs. I was doing an interview with Musician magazine; the guy was in the studio with us. I was in New York, doing mixing. I said, "What do you think is the worst song on the record?" I've known this guy a long time. He wouldn't make a commitment. So I said, 'I think 'Life Is Hard' is the worst song, so let's work on that.' I have to tip my hat to Junior. Junior saved that song. In a matter of two hours, it went from not going to make the record to one of my favorite songs on the record. He put a couple of loops on there and then we all sat there – me and Mike and Junior and Andy – and started cutting up these weird holes in the song. It was all Junior's inspiration."
Сыни қабылдау
AllMusic альбомға аралас баға берді, былай деп мәлімдеді: «Джон Мелленкамп өзінің ауыр жүрек шабуылына және өлімге деген қауіпке жауап ретінде «Mr. Happy Go Lucky» альбомын шығарды, бұл оның мансабындағы ең батыл әрекеті болды». Entertainment Weekly журналы да альбомды жартылай жағымды, жартылай жағымсыз бағалап, былай деді: ««Mr. Happy Go Lucky» үміттенгендей жаңалықтар әкелмейді, көңіл көншітпейді». Алайда, альбом көптеген жағымды пікірлерге ие болды, соның ішінде Rolling Stone журналы берген төрт жұлдыздық шолуда былай делінген: «Мұнда 1982 жылғы «Hurts So Good» сияқты назар аударатын ән жоқ, Мелленкамптың №1 хит болған «Jack and Diane» сияқты жасөсперімдерге арналған гимн де жоқ. Қазір 40 жасқа келген Мелленкамп ең жақсы 40-қа кіру үшін есептелген қадамдардан бас тартып, ересектей театрлық қойылымдар мен күшті дыбыстық үйлесімге бет бұрды. Сәл теңсіз болғанымен, өкінгендей емес, «Mr. Happy Go Lucky» - бұл жақсы мағынадағы аралас жиынтық: көшпенділермен, денсаулыққа пайдалы қорқынышпен және орта жасқа деген батыл қабылдаумен толы».
AllMusic gave the album a mixed review, claiming: "John Mellencamp responded to his massive heart attack and close call with death with 'Mr. Happy Go Lucky,' the most overtly ambitious album in his career." Entertainment Weekly also gave a mixed review, proclaiming: "Mr. Happy Go Lucky is, disappointingly, not the groundbreaker it promised to be." However, the album also garnered numerous positive reviews, including a four star review from Rolling Stone, which stated: "There's nothing here with the bull's eye appeal of 1982's 'Hurts So Good,' no adolescent anthems like Mellencamp's No. 1 single 'Jack and Diane.' Now in his mid 40s, Mellencamp has turned his back on calculated Top 40 gestures in favor of mature theatrics and a thick sonic gumbo. A little uneven but unrepentant, Mr. Happy Go Lucky is a mixed bag in the best sense: rife with ghosts, a healthy fear and a cocky embrace of middle age."