It’s hard to imagine that the hit song Jack & Diane from John Mellencamp’s album American Fool almost never made it to the airwaves. The song had a rocky start, with Mellencamp himself almost giving up on it and record company executives insisting on lyrical changes before it could be released. Despite these setbacks, Jack & Diane went on to become Mellencamp’s greatest commercial success, and even after 38 years, it remains a beloved classic.
Originally, Mellencamp wrote the song about the rise of mixed-race relationships he was seeing around him, with Jack being an African American. However, he eventually caved in to pressure from the record company and changed the song so that Jack was a football star, which in turn changed the entire song to be more about small town life in the Midwest. This change proved fortuitous as it gave rise to Mellencamp’s “working man for Mid West America” persona, which resonated with audiences and helped propel Jack & Diane to fame.
One of the most interesting aspects of the song is Mellencamp’s desire to make it like Phil Collins’s In The Air Tonight – a ballad with huge drums coming in halfway through. To achieve this effect, Jack & Diane starts with a Linn drum machine, followed by Kenny Aronoff’s thunderous drum break. Gated reverb was used to make the drums sound even bigger, just like on In The Air Tonight. However, instead of the gated reverb being provided by a Lexicon 224 as in Collins’s hit, it was provided by the then-new AMS RMX16, which had an in-built Non Lin 2 gated reverb patch. The result was a powerful and memorable sound that helped cement Jack & Diane as a classic rock song.
Despite its difficult birth and the changes it underwent, Jack & Diane has endured as one of Mellencamp’s greatest hits and a beloved classic rock song.
