John Mellencamp's - Jack and Diane Origanally About Interracial Couple

I did a search and nothing came up in this section about this.

I never knew about this until this weekend when I was listening to a rebroadcast of the Howard Stern show this past weekend.

John did a interview with him and brought this up.

Here is a story from 2014 about it.

John Mellencamp’s ‘Jack & Diane’ Was Originally Written About An Interracial Couple

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/john-mellencamp-jack-and-diane-interracial-_n_5868650.html

Little ditty about “Jack & Diane”: those two American kids growing up in the heartland were originally an interracial couple.

John Mellencamp’s 1982 hit — which he released under the name John Cougar — has since become iconic, along with its two characters, the football star and the debutante who spend their time “suckin’ on chili dogs outside the Tastee Freez.” But Jack was originally supposed to be a much different character, Mellencamp told HuffPost Live on Monday.

“Originally the line was Jack was not a football star, Jack was an African American,” Mellencamp said. “In 1982, when I turned the song in to the record company, they went, ‘Whoa, can’t you make him something other than that?’”

The singer-songwriter tried to stick with his original vision at first, but he was eventually persuaded otherwise, he told host Marc Lamont Hill.

“I said, ‘Well, I don’t really want to [change it]. I mean, that’s the whole point. This is really a song about race relationships and a white girl being with a black guy, and that’s what the song’s about.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no, no,’” Mellencamp said of the conversation with his record label. “So, anyway, through much debate and me being young, I said, ‘Okay, we’ll make him a football star.’”

A 2012 Vulture piece quoted a hardcore Mellencamp fan as saying the singer “abandoned that idea because he thought it was a little much for the early eighties.” Whether changing Jack’s race was ultimately Mellencamp’s decision or his record label’s, he told HuffPost Live that he doesn’t regret it because of how long the song has remained relevant.

“I think Jack and Diane became, as near as I could tell, the most popular couple in music, in that genre of music,” he said.

Listen to the lyrics and they take a different meaning.
Then you realize why the record company panicked

[YOUTUBE]h04CH9YZcpI[/YOUTUBE].
​

 

How cool would it be for him to rerecord this with the original lyrics?

 

I remembered that song...song. I loved it. Jm was running the 80's.Yeah it would've been interesting but it probably would've died.

 

Hmm.. Sounds like another song that had the lyrics changed completely :-?

 

I've always compared John Mellencamp to Bruce Springsteen as musicians and felt that while B-R-U-C-E got the hype, Mellencamp was criminally underrated and much more 'listen-able'.

(Don't hate, I grew up in an integrated suburb of the DMV...lol)

IMO Mellencamp represents the majority of White American in the USA, the working middle class and the working poor.

Glad he decided to break it down what that song was REALLY about.

He just went up a couple of notches in my fave pop musicians of alltime.

 

John Mellencamp's Cherry Bomb video featured an interracial couple dancing real close. In the song Pink Houses he mentioned a black man living in a white man's world(or hole).

The Authority Song could easily have been about a young black man and his struggle to be free to be himself.

Jack And Diane sounded so much like an anthem of young love. Especially the line, " Hold onto 16 as long as you can."

I would not have known it was about an interracial teenage couple.

But this was the 80's. A time of curiosity, discoveries, wonders and fear. Artistic courage was at a minimum because of the money and influence of the record companies.

 

Same here

 

On that Howard Stern interview where I first heard him talk about this.

He mentioned that his grandparents were IR.

His grandfather was a German born immigrant that knew no english and he married a American born Black woman.

Which means John is somewhat bi-racial.

 

I'm a bit confused there was nothing about that song that even remotely suggests that an interracial couple could have been the case...but I was thinking why would he say that if it weren't true..like whats the point


in any case I don't see why there were need to be black specific lyrics...unless JM wanted to make some point about society and perceptions this song would stay the same and the video's visual would have shown an interracial couple..



Little ditty about Jack and Diane
Two American kids growin' up in the heartland
Jackie gonna be a football star
Diane debutante backseat of Jackie's car

he's a varsity football player and she comes from a well to do family...

why the need to have race specific lyrics for this?? thats what doesn't make sense to me..

 

What would you say if it was the depiction of an interracial teenage couple instead of two white teenagers as it was intended?

 

I remember that too G.

 

Remember that song Brother Louie by the group Stories? That was the first song about interracial dating and the harsh reality of how families not aware of the changes in the times.
The part,"Ain't no difference if you're black or white. Brothers, you know what I mean."

I don't count the song Travelling Man. It was a white male fantasy.

 

The absolute BEST song about IR of alltime!!!:freehug:

[YOUTUBE]0s7fFTRXT0o[/YOUTUBE]
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8031
When a woman is writing a song in part about your cock, you really did something.

 

I like the bass parts of that song. Very prominent.

I was in the stage adaptation of Crimes Of The Heart. I played the black teenager involved with the white woman. His name was Willie Jay. I had opened the show with the song Solitude by Duke Ellington. I even taught an actress who played the women I was involved with how to play the tenor sax because she had a scene in which she plays a song. I taught her how to play The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

There was a group of photos taken of her and I in intimate poses.
We didn't go very far but we made sure that the pictures looked good.

She had a boyfriend and I knew him.

After the show, she wanted to learn how to play the tenor sax because of my teaching her.
The pictures were now in her possession.

 

Interesting back story. Never know this. Makes sense that Hollywood nixed the idea - society wasn't ready for the paradigm shift yet back in the 80s. I'm glad Mellencamp shared the true history and background of the song with the world; I'm sure some of the lyrics changed along with those rewrites.

Learn something new every day... Very interesting. Thx for sharing

 

Yeah so true.

 

I do remember the song Brother Louie back in 73 G. It was a great IR song. I read of Janis Ian's "Society's Child" it was controversial back in the 1960's.

 

G are you talking about Ricky Nelson's song or another artist?

 

Ricky Nelson's original recording. The songwriter wrote about having a woman in all parts of the world(except Africa or the West Indies).

 

I remember Janis Ian's At Seventeen. That was probably the best song about being an outsider. Ian is biracial(mother is black and father is white from Ireland). She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now. I guess she is still writing songs.