1976–1982: Performing as Johnny Cougar and John Cougar After 18 months of traveling between Indiana and New York City in 1974 and 1975, Mellencamp met
Tony DeFries of MainMan Management, who was receptive to his music and image. DeFries insisted that Mellencamp's first album,
Chestnut Street Incident, a collection of
cover versions and some original songs, be released under the stage name "Johnny Cougar", claiming that the name "Mellencamp" was too hard to market. Mellencamp reluctantly agreed, but the album was a commercial failure, selling only 12,000 copies. Mellencamp recorded
The Kid Inside, the follow-up to
Chestnut Street Incident, in 1977. DeFries eventually decided against releasing the album, and Mellencamp was dropped from MCA records (DeFries finally released
The Kid Inside in early 1983, after Mellencamp achieved stardom). Mellencamp drew interest from
Rod Stewart's manager, Billy Gaff, after parting ways with DeFries and was signed onto the small
Riva Records label. At Gaff's request, Mellencamp moved to London, England, for nearly a year to record, promote, and tour behind 1978's
A Biography. "The singles were stupid little pop songs," he told
Record Magazine in 1983. In 1982, Mellencamp released his breakthrough album,
American Fool, which contained the singles "
Hurts So Good", an uptempo rock tune that spent four weeks at No. 2 and 16 weeks in the top 10, and "
Jack & Diane", which was a No. 1 hit for four weeks.
Scarecrow was the first album Mellencamp recorded at his own recording studio, jokingly dubbed "
Belmont Mall," located in
Belmont, Indiana, and constructed in 1984. Mellencamp sees
Scarecrow as the start of the
alternative country genre: "I think I invented that whole 'No Depression' thing with the
Scarecrow album, though I don't get the credit." In the liner notes to Mellencamp's 2010 box set
On the Rural Route 7609, Anthony DeCurtis wrote of Mellencamp's influence on the No Depression movement: Shortly after finishing
Scarecrow, Mellencamp helped organize the first
Farm Aid benefit concert with
Willie Nelson and
Neil Young in
Champaign, Illinois, on September 22, 1985. Farm Aid concerts have remained an annual event over the past 39 years, and the organization has raised nearly $80 million to promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture. Prior to the 1985–86 Scarecrow Tour, during which he covered some of the same 1960s rock and soul songs he and his band rehearsed prior to the recording of
Scarecrow, Mellencamp added fiddle player
Lisa Germano to his band. Germano would remain in Mellencamp's band until 1994 when she left to pursue a solo career. Mellencamp's next studio album, 1987's
The Lonesome Jubilee, included the singles "
Paper in Fire" (No. 9), "Cherry Bomb" (No. 8), "Check It Out" (No. 14), and "Rooty Toot Toot" (No. 61) along with the popular album tracks "Hard Times for an Honest Man" and "The Real Life", both of which cracked the top 10 on the
Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart. As Frank DiGiacomo of
Vanity Fair wrote in 2007, "
The Lonesome Jubilee was the album in which Mellencamp defined his now signature sound: a rousing, crystalline mix of acoustic and electric guitars, Appalachian fiddle, and gospel-style backing vocals, anchored by a crisp, bare-knuckle drumbeat and completed by his own velveteen rasp." During the 1987–88 Lonesome Jubilee Tour, Mellencamp was joined onstage by surprise guest
Bruce Springsteen at the end of his May 26, 1988, gig in Irvine, California, for a duet of
Bob Dylan's "
Like a Rolling Stone", which Mellencamp performed as the penultimate song during each show on that tour. In 1989, Mellencamp released the personal album
Big Daddy, with the key tracks "Jackie Brown", "Big Daddy of Them All", and "Void in My Heart" accompanying the Top 15 single "Pop Singer". The album, which Mellencamp called at the time the most "earthy" record he had ever made, is also the last to feature the "Cougar" moniker. In 1991, Mellencamp said: "'Big Daddy' was the best record I ever made. Out of my agony came a couple of really beautiful songs. You can't be 22 years old and had two dates and understand that album." Mellencamp was heavily involved in painting at this time in his life and decided not to tour behind
Big Daddy. In his second painting exhibition, at the Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery in Indianapolis in 1990, Mellencamp's portraits were described as always having sad facial expressions and conveying "the same disillusionment found in his musical anthems about the nation's heartland and farm crisis."
1991–1997: Performing as John Mellencamp Mellencamp's 1991 album,
Whenever We Wanted, was the first with a cover billed to John Mellencamp; the "Cougar" was finally dropped for good.
Whenever We Wanted yielded the Top 40 hits "Get a Leg Up" and "Again Tonight", but "Last Chance", "Love and Happiness", and "Now More Than Ever" all garnered significant airplay on rock radio. In 1993, he released
Human Wheels, and the title track peaked at No. 48 on the
Billboard singles chart. Mellencamp's 1994
Dance Naked album included a cover of
Van Morrison's "
Wild Night" as a duet with
Meshell Ndegeocello. "Wild Night" became Mellencamp's biggest hit in years, peaking at No. 3 on the
Billboard Hot 100. The album also contained two protest songs in, "L.U.V." and "Another Sunny Day 12/25", in addition to the title track, which hit No. 41 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1994. With guitarist Andy York now on board as Larry Crane's full-time replacement, Mellencamp launched his Dance Naked Tour in the summer of 1994 but had a minor heart attack after a show at Jones Beach in New York on August 8 of that year. That heart attack eventually forced him to cancel the last few weeks of the tour. He returned to the concert stage in early 1995 by playing a series of dates in small Midwestern clubs under the pseudonym Pearl Doggy. In September 1996, the experimental album
Mr. Happy Go Lucky, which was produced by
Junior Vasquez, was released to critical acclaim.
Mr. Happy Go Lucky spawned the No. 14 single "
Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" (Mellencamp's last Top 40 hit) and "Just Another Day", which peaked at No. 46.
1998–2003: Recording for Columbia After the release of
Mr. Happy Go Lucky and a subsequent four-month tour from March to July 1997 to promote it, Mellencamp signed a four-album deal with
Columbia Records, although he wound up making only three albums for the label. Issued a day before his 47th birthday in 1998, his
self-titled debut for Columbia Records included the singles "Your Life Is Now" and "I'm Not Running Anymore", along with standout album tracks such as "Eden Is Burning", "Miss Missy", "It All Comes True" and "Chance Meeting at the Tarantula". The switch in labels coincided with Dane Clark replacing Aronoff on drums. In 1999, Mellencamp covered his own songs as well as those by Bob Dylan and
the Drifters for his album
Rough Harvest (recorded in 1997), one of two albums he owed Mercury Records to fulfill his contract (the other was
The Best That I Could Do, a best-of collection). In May 2000, he gave the Indiana University commencement address, in which he advised graduates to "play it as you feel it!" and that "you'll be all right." Following the delivery of his address, Indiana University bestowed upon him an honorary Doctorate of Musical Arts. In August 2000, Mellencamp played a series of unannounced free concerts in major cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest as a way of giving back to fans who had supported him the previous 24 years. With a lo-fi setup that included portable amps and a battery-powered P.A. system, Mellencamp, armed with an acoustic guitar and accompanied only by an accordionist and a violist, dubbed the jaunt "Live in the Streets: The Good Samaritan Tour". At these dozen shows, which ranged from 45 to 60 minutes, Mellencamp covered several rock and folk classics and sprinkled in a few of his own songs. In the early 21st century, Mellencamp teamed up with artists such as
Chuck D and
India.Arie to deliver his second Columbia album, ''
Cuttin' Heads and the single "Peaceful World". Cuttin' Heads'' also included a duet with
Trisha Yearwood on a love song called "Deep Blue Heart". Mellencamp embarked on the Cuttin' Heads Tour in the summer of 2001, before the album was even released. He opened each show on this tour with a cover of the
Rolling Stones' "
Gimme Shelter" and also played a solo acoustic version of the ''Cuttin' Heads'' track "Women Seem" at each show. In October 2002, Mellencamp performed the
Robert Johnson song "Stones in My Passway" at two benefit concerts for his friend,
Billboard magazine editor-in-chief
Timothy White, who died from a heart attack in 2002. Columbia Records executives, who were in attendance at the benefit shows, were so impressed with Mellencamp's live renditions of "Stones in My Passway" that they convinced him to record an album of vintage American songs, which ultimately became
Trouble No More. The album was a quickly recorded collection of
folk and
blues covers originally done by artists such as
Robert Johnson,
Son House,
Lucinda Williams and
Hoagy Carmichael.
Trouble No More was released in 2003, dedicated to Mellencamp's friend Timothy White, and spent several weeks at No. 1 on
Billboards Blues Album charts. Mellencamp sang the
gospel song "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" at White's funeral on July 2, 2002.
2004–2007: Words and Music and ''Freedom's Road'' Mellencamp participated in the
Vote for Change tour in October 2004 leading up to the
2004 U.S. presidential election. That same month he released the two-disc career hits retrospective ''
Words & Music: John Mellencamp's Greatest Hits'', which contained 35 of his radio singles (including all 22 of his Top 40 hits) along with two new tunes, "
Walk Tall" and "Thank You" – both produced by
Babyface but written by Mellencamp. In 2005, Mellencamp toured with
Donovan and
John Fogerty. The first leg of what was called the Words and Music Tour in the spring of 2005 featured Donovan playing in the middle of Mellencamp's set. Mellencamp would play a handful of songs before introducing Donovan and then duetting with him on the 1966 hit "Sunshine Superman". Mellencamp would leave the stage as Donovan played seven or eight of his songs (backed by Mellencamp's band) and then return to finish off his own set after Donovan departed. On the second leg of the tour in the summer of 2005, Fogerty co-headlined with Mellencamp at outdoor amphitheaters across the United States. Fogerty would join Mellencamp for duets on Fogerty's
Creedence Clearwater Revival hit "Green River" and Mellencamp's "Rain on the Scarecrow". in 2007. Mellencamp released ''
Freedom's Road, his first album of original material in over five years, on January 23, 2007. He intended for Freedom's Road to have a 1960s rock sound while still remaining contemporary. "Our Country", the first single from Freedom's Road'', was played as the opening song on Mellencamp's 2006 spring tour, and the band that opened for him on that tour,
Little Big Town, was called on to record harmonies on the studio version of "Our Country", as well as seven other songs on ''Freedom's Road''. Although Mellencamp had always been outspoken and adamant about not selling any of his songs to corporations for commercial use, he changed his stance and let Chevrolet use "Our Country" in Chevy Silverado TV commercials that began airing in late September 2006. Mellencamp sang "Our Country" to open Game 2 of the
2006 World Series, and the song was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance category but lost to
Bruce Springsteen's "Radio Nowhere". ''Freedom's Road
peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard'' 200 album chart by selling 56,000 copies in its first week on the market.
2008–2013: The T Bone Burnett Era On August 13, 2007, Mellencamp began recording his 18th album of original material, titled
Life, Death, Love and Freedom. The album, released on July 15, 2008, was produced by
T Bone Burnett. The first song with video, "Jena", was introduced on Mellencamp's website in October 2007. In an interview with the
Bloomington Herald-Times in March 2008, Mellencamp dubbed
Life, Death, Love and Freedom The album's first single was "My Sweet Love". A video for the song was filmed in Savannah, Georgia, on June 9, 2008. Karen Fairchild of
Little Big Town is featured in the video. She harmonizes with Mellencamp on "My Sweet Love". She also provides background vocals to three other songs on
Life, Death, Love and Freedom, which became the ninth Top 10 album of Mellencamp's career when it debuted at No. 7 on the
Billboard 200 the week of August 2, 2008. Like ''Freedom's Road
, Life, Death, Love and Freedom
sold 56,000 copies in its first week. In its list of the 50 best albums of 2008, Rolling Stone
magazine named Life, Death, Love and Freedom'' No. 5 overall and also dubbed "Troubled Land" No. 48 among the 100 best singles of the year. ,
New South Wales, Australia on November 29, 2008. On September 23, 2008, Mellencamp filmed a concert at the Crump Theatre in Columbus, Indiana, for a new A&E Biography series called
Homeward Bound. The show featured performers returning to small venues where they performed early in their careers. The program aired on December 11, 2008, and featured an in-depth documentary tracing Mellencamp's roots. Mellencamp participated in a tribute concert for
Pete Seeger's 90th birthday on May 3, 2009, at
Madison Square Garden in New York City, which raised funds for an environmental organization founded by Seeger to preserve and protect the
Hudson River. Mellencamp performed solo acoustic renditions of Seeger and Lee Hays' "
If I Had a Hammer" and his own "A Ride Back Home". While he was on tour, Mellencamp recorded a new album titled
No Better Than This that was again produced by
T Bone Burnett. The tracks for the album were recorded at historic locations, such as the
First African Baptist Church in
Savannah, Georgia as well as at the
Sun Studio in
Memphis and the Sheraton
Gunter Hotel in
San Antonio where blues pioneer
Robert Johnson recorded "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Crossroad Blues". Mellencamp recorded the album using a 1955
Ampex portable recording machine and only one microphone, requiring all the musicians to gather together around the mic. The album was recorded in mono. Mellencamp wrote over 30 songs for the record (only 13 made the final cut), and he wrote one song specifically for Room 414 at the Gunter Hotel.
No Better Than This was released on August 17, 2010, and peaked at No. 10 on the
Billboard 200, becoming the 10th top 10 album of his career.
No Better Than This is the first mono-only release to make the top 10 since
James Brown's
Pure Dynamite! Live at the Royal, which peaked at No. 10 in April 1964. On December 6, 2009, Mellencamp performed "
Born in the U.S.A." as a tribute to Bruce Springsteen, who was one of the honorees at the 2009
Kennedy Center Honors. "I was very proud and humbled to have been able to play 'Born in the U.S.A.' in a different fashion that I think was true to the feelings that Bruce had when he wrote it, "Mellencamp said. He performed "Down by the River" on January 29, 2010, in Los Angeles in tribute to
Neil Young, who was honored at the 20th annual MusiCares Person of the Year gala. Mellencamp sang the hymn "
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" at "In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement" on February 9, 2010. Mellencamp, who co-headlined 11 shows in the summer of 2010 with
Bob Dylan, launched the
No Better Than This theater tour on October 29, 2010, in
Bloomington, Indiana. On this tour, which ran through the summer of 2012 and covered the entire United States, Canada, and much of Europe, Mellencamp opened each concert with a showing of a Kurt Markus documentary about the making of
No Better Than This called "It's About You" before hitting the stage to play three different sets: a stripped-down acoustic set with his band, a solo acoustic set, and a fully electrified rock set. "It'll be like
Alan Freed, like the old Moondog shows," Mellencamp told Billboard magazine prior to the tour: Mellencamp played for over two hours and included 24 songs on his tour's setlist. He brought the
No Better Than This tour to Europe in the summer of 2011, opening in
Copenhagen on June 24. One reviewer called the opening gig of the European leg of the tour "maybe the best rock performance ever in Denmark." The
No Better Than This Tour returned to the U.S. for one final round of shows from October 25 to November 19, 2011. The tour finally concluded with a tour of Canada in the summer of 2012. Mellencamp took part in two
Woody Guthrie tribute concerts in 2012 as part of a year-long celebration surrounding the 100th anniversary of the folk icon's birth. On July 8, 2014, Mellencamp released a new live album called
Performs Trouble No More Live at Town Hall without any advance notice. The album captures his live performance at Town Hall in New York City on July 31, 2003, in which he performed every track from his 2003
Trouble No More covers album in addition to a rendition of "Highway 61 Revisited" by
Bob Dylan and reworked versions of three of his own songs. Two songs performed at the 2003 Town Hall concert, the 1962
Skeeter Davis hit "The End of the World" and the traditional folk song "House of the Rising Sun", did not make the final track list despite the album's official press release stating that the CD and digital versions "feature the complete 15-song concert."
2014–2018: Plain Spoken, Sad Clowns & Hillbillies and ''Other People's Stuff'' In October 2013, Mellencamp revealed that he was working on a new album. In January 2014, Mellencamp began recording the project, which would ultimately be titled
Plain Spoken and would become his 20th album of original material and 22nd studio album overall. The album was released on September 23, 2014. Although Mellencamp said that Burnett would serve as the producer of
Plain Spoken, Burnett was only credited as the "executive producer" of the album. Outside of the Plain Spoken Tour, Mellencamp's most noteworthy live performance in 2015 came on February 6, when he paid tribute to Bob Dylan at the annual
MusiCares Person of the Year event by performing a piano-and-vocal rendition of "Highway 61 Revisited" (Troye Kinnett from Mellencamp's band played the piano).
USA Today wrote:"The musical high point in a night of many highlights was probably John Mellencamp's interpretation of 'Highway 61 Revisited'; with a vocal tone and timbre that channeled Tom Waits,' he made this usually scorching rocker into a blues dirge. Never has Mellencamp sounded so artful." After a star-studded lineup paid tribute to Dylan with cover versions of some of his greatest songs, Dylan closed the evening with a 30-minute speech that included a reference to Mellencamp's 2008 song "Longest Days". Dylan said: "And like my friend John Mellencamp would singbecause John sang some truth today'one day you get sick and you don't get better.' That's from a song of his called 'Life is Short Even on Its Longest Days'. It's one of the better songs of the last few years, actually. I ain't lying." Mellencamp said Dylan's endorsement was worth more than 10 Grammys. On November 19, 2014, at the
Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Mellencamp performed an acoustic cover of
Billy Joel's "
Allentown" at a tribute event to
Billy Joel. In December 2015, Mellencamp began recording a duets album with
Carlene Carter, who was his opening act for all shows on the Plain Spoken Tour and would join Mellencamp for two songs during his set. Mellencamp and Carter's duets album, titled
Sad Clowns & Hillbillies, was released on April 28, 2017. "We wrote a couple of songs together, and she wrote some, and I wrote some," Mellencamp told
USA Today of the material on
Sad Clowns & Hillbillies. Mellencamp and Carter debuted two songs from the album, "Indigo Sunset" and "My Soul's Got Wings", during Mellencamp's concert in
Tulsa on April 1, 2016 (Carter served as the opening act for the show). "Indigo Sunset" was written by both Mellencamp and Carter. In contrast, Mellencamp wrote the music to "My Soul's Got Wings", giving life to a previously unheard lyric written by American
folk singer
Woody Guthrie. Carter was featured on only five of
Sad Clowns & Hillbillies 13 tracks and contributed to the writing of just two songs. Mellencamp released "Easy Target"the first single from
Sad Clowns & Hillbillies and a "reflection on the state of our country" on January 19, 2017, which was the eve of the 2017 Presidential Inauguration. In addition to his work on
Sad Clowns & Hillbillies, Mellencamp wrote the title song to the 2017 American war movie
The Yellow Birds, which was released on June 15, 2018, by Saban Films. On February 1, 2018,
Netflix began streaming a concert that took place on October 25, 2016, at the
Chicago Theatre as part of Mellencamp's Plain Spoken Tour. The 80-minute film is more of a documentary than a true concert film, as Mellencamp narrates the entire presentation with stories about his childhood, his early days in music, his relationship with his family, the music business and many more topics. Mellencamp released a compilation album of cover songs titled ''
Other People's Stuff'' on December 7, 2018. He began a 39-date theater tour in February 2019, dubbed "The John Mellencamp Show," that concluded April 30, 2019, in
Albuquerque,
New Mexico.
2019–present: Small Town musical, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack and Orpheus Descending In two separate 2018 television interviews, Mellencamp teased a musical he is working on based on his 1982 No. 1 hit "Jack & Diane". On June 12, 2019, Republic Records, Federal Films, and Universal Music Theatricals announced that the musical is officially in development. Mellencamp (music/lyrics) will team with
Naomi Wallace (book) to form the creative team behind the still-untitled musical, with
Kathleen Marshall, winner of three Tonys out of nine nominations, signed on to direct and choreograph. Mellencamp confirmed in 2021 that it will be a jukebox musical titled
Small Town and the story will involve two kids named Jack and Diane. Mellencamp said that he had not written any new material for the project. "I told them, I have 600 songs published. Surely you can find 12-to-15 songs that will work." Mellencamp told iHeart Radio in January 2022 that "Small Town" was scheduled to debut in
Louisville in September 2022, but that did not happen. The musical's future is unknown at this time. On February 27, 2020, Mellencamp's official social media accounts confirmed that he was currently recording an album at his Belmont Mall recording studio. In a September 2020 interview, Mellencamp guitarist Andy York said that ten songs have already been recorded and mixed for the album. However, a planned final session in April 2020 to complete the project was scuttled because of the
COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, Mellencamp wrote at least 15 songs. The album was scheduled for release in 2020, but the pandemic pushed its release time frame back indefinitely. In an extensive update on his website, Mellencamp said one of the songs he wrote for the record is called "I Always Lie to Strangers", and he shared a one-minute snippet of it on February 3, 2021. He also revealed that the album had the working title of
Strictly a One-Eyed Jack. He resumed recording on the project in March 2021, with plans to cut at least some of the 17 songs he wrote while in quarantine in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021, Mellencamp revealed that he recently finished the album and that Bruce Springsteen would make a guest appearance on the project. "Bruce is singing on the new record and is playing guitar," Mellencamp said. Mellencamp released a CD and documentary of his 2000 Good Samaritan Tour, which consisted of free lunchtime concerts in city parks, on August 27, 2021. The documentary is narrated by
Academy Award winning actor
Matthew McConaughey, who is an avowed Mellencamp fan. Written and produced solely by Mellencamp, "Wasted Days" is a song about aging and making the most of the time one has left. The album's second single, "Chasing Rainbows", was released on December 10, 2021.
Strictly a One-Eyed Jack was released on January 21, 2022. Mellencamp stated in 2021 that he had booked 80 shows for 2022, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic ultimately caused him to cancel his 2022 Strictly a One-Eyed Jack tour and push it until 2023. In the summer of 2022, Mellencamp confirmed through his social media channels that he was, indeed, working on the follow-up to
Strictly a One-Eyed Jack. On August 24, 2022, he shared the lyrics to a brand new song called "The Eyes of Portland" – a diatribe against homelessness that will be on the new record. During a performance in his hometown of Seymour, Indiana, on September 17, 2022, to benefit the Southern Indiana Center for the Arts, Mellencamp revealed the new record's title to be
Orpheus Descending. "The name of the new record is
Orpheus Descending," Mellencamp told the audience. "Do you guys know who
Orpheus was? He was a Greek god that came down, and he was the best singer, the best songwriter, and men wanted to be like him and girls wanted to be with him. What happened was the girl he fell in love with got sent to Hades, he went down and met with the devil, and bad things happened......You can read about Orpheus in Greek mythology."
Orpheus Descending, Mellencamp's twenty-fifth album, was released on June 16, 2023. Mellencamp launched a 78-date tour called "Live and in Person" on February 5, 2023, in
Bloomington, Indiana. The tour wrapped up on June 27 in
Milwaukee. Mellencamp debuted "Hey God" and "The Eyes of Portland", two songs from
Orpheus Descending, in his 2023 live set. "Hey God" is the album's first single and was released on April 21, 2023, followed by "The Eyes of Portland" as the second single on May 12, 2023. The Live and In Person tour marked the return of violinist
Lisa Germano to Mellencamp's band. Germano played with Mellencamp from 1985 to 1993 before leaving in 1994 to pursue a solo career. Germano also played violin on
Orpheus Descending, marking the first Mellencamp studio album she has played on since 1993's
Human Wheels. In May 2025 Mellencamp teases a snippet of a new song "Eden", of his forthcoming 26th album "Orphan Train", scheduled for release in 2026.
Collaboration with George Green Mellencamp co-wrote several of his best-known songs with his childhood friend
George Green, who, like Mellencamp, was born and raised in Seymour, Indiana. Green contributed lyrics to numerous Mellencamp radio hits and classic album tracks, including "Human Wheels", "Minutes to Memories", "Hurts So Good", "Crumblin' Down", "Rain on the Scarecrow", "Your Life is Now", and "Key West Intermezzo", in addition to songs recorded by Barbra Streisand, Hall & Oates, Jude Cole, Ricky Skaggs, Sue Medley, The Oak Ridge Boys, Percy Sledge, and Carla Olson. Mellencamp and Green's final collaboration was "Yours Forever", a song that was included on the soundtrack to the 2000 movie
The Perfect Storm. Mellencamp and Green had a falling out in the early 2000s, and Green ultimately moved from
Bloomington, Indiana to
Taos, New Mexico in 2001. "Like when you're married, when you're friends with somebody for a long time, the more things build up, the more things can go wrong," Mellencamp said in the liner notes to his 2010 box set,
On the Rural Route 7609. "There were personal problems, cross-pollinated with professional issues. George has written some great lyrics and we've written some great songs together, but I just couldn't do it any more." On August 28, 2011, Green died in
Albuquerque, New Mexico at the age of 59 after losing a battle with a rapid-forming small-cell lung cancer. "I've known George since we were in the same Sunday school class. We had a lot of fun together when we were kids. Later on, we wrote some really good songs together," Mellencamp told the
Bloomington Herald Times shortly after Green's death. "George was a dreamer, and I was sorry to hear of his passing." ==Reception==