THE BELMONT MALL STUDIO SESSION - CLASSIC FM RADIO BROADCAST FROM HIS 1980s PEAK In 1975, Mellencamp finally found someone receptive to his music and image in Tony DeFries of MainMan Management. DeFries insisted that Mellencamp's first album, Chestnut Street Incident, a collection of covers and a handful of originals, be released under the stage name Johnny Cougar, suggesting that the bumpy German name "Mellencamp" was too hard to market. Mellencamp reluctantly agreed, but the album was a complete failure, selling only 12,000 copies. He then signed onto the tiny Riva Records label and released 1978's A Biography. The record wasn't released in the United States, but it yielded a hit in Australia with I Need a Lover. Riva Records added the track to Mellencamp's next album released in the US, 1979's John Cougar, where the song became a No. 28 single in late 1979. In 1980, Mellencamp returned with the Steve Cropper-produced Nothin' Matters and What If It Did, which yielded two Top 40 singles This Time (No. 27) and Ain't Even Done With the Night (No. 17). In 1982, he 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. In 1985, Mellencamp released Scarecrow, which peaked at No. 2 and spawned five Top 40 singles; it was the first album he recorded at his own recording studio, jokingly dubbed "Belmont Mall," located in Belmont, Indiana and built in 1984. Mellencamp's next LP, 1987's The Lonesome Jubilee, was also recorded at Belmont and in the wake of the recording came the fascinating studio session contained on this CD. The performance was recorded in the very same studio on 10th July 1987, just after work on the album concluded but a month prior to its general release, and broadcast on the nationally syndicated radio show Timothy West s Rockstars Radio.
