John Mellencamp

And don't forget, I had never written a fucking song.

Yeah.

Never written a song, so I grew up in public.

And if you listen to my songs now, so much more mature than those young.

I got so sick of it that I wrote a song called Pop Singer in like 90, 91.

Never wanted to be no pop singer, never wanted to sing no pop song.

Never wanted to have a manager hang out after the show.

I just, you know, it was, I wanted to be a musician and not a clown, which, you know, if you remember back, Joe, and I'm not putting anybody down, but there were a lot of clownish guys from MTV.

Sure.

You know, that were like, what?

Yeah.

You know.

And a lot of sexism and stuff from MTV and no black people for a while.

They didn't play any black people.

They might play Michael Jackson, but other than that.

Right.

But they just didn't.

And I remember talking to Sykes about it.

Sykes, me, Don Henley, and somebody else went and did.

They were going to drop MTV off a whole bunch of stations, and we got on a plane and went there, went to all these different stations that were going to drop MTV and talked to them why they couldn't do it, and it worked.