Today’s classic night song of the day comes from Hoosier native John Mellencamp, then going by the stage name of John Cougar. The song is “Ain’t Even Done with the Night” and it was released in January of 1981. It peaked, in May of that year, at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Ain’t Even Done with the Night,” written by Mr. Mellencamp, was the second single from his fourth album, Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did. (The first single was “This Time,” and it stalled at #27 on the Billboard charts.) The album was produced by Steve Cropper of Booker T. and the M.G.’s fame. The song was, in Mellencamp’s recollection, his attempt at writing a soul tune:
“I wanted to write something that was soulful and had an R&B feel to it, and being a young guy I thought we should get Mr. Stax Soul himself (Cropper) to produce the record. That song even has a drum part we lifted straight off an old Motown record.”
Speaking of that drum part, there’s a story behind it. Mellencamp had just hired a cat named Kenny Aronoff as his new drummer, to replace original band member Tom Knowles. I’d known Kenny from our shared days at Indiana University when he played with some friends of mine in a band called Streamwinner. That band, and Kenny’s playing, was very jazz fusion inspired; my recollection is that Kenny played very fast and used a lot of toms and cymbals. He was a monster.
Well, a few short years later, Kenny was hired to play with Mellencamp and had to undergo a complete change in style and approach. Mellencamp required simpler, harder hitting rock and roll drumming, and Kenny had to adapt.
In the spring of 1980, Kenny flew with Mellencamp and the rest of the band to Los Angeles to record the artist’s upcoming album. It was Kenny’s first time in a big-time LA recording studio and the whole scene was new to him—as was adapting from a jazz fusion approach to Mellencamp’s straight ahead rock style. Unfortunately, producer Steve Cropper only had a limited time to record the album, and Kenny just wasn’t cutting it. So they “fired” Kenny from the recordings and brought in session drummers Ed Greene and Rick Schlosser to cut the rhythm tracks.
Instead of getting all pissed off like anyone else would have, Kenny took this as a humbling and learning experience. He begged Mellencamp to let him stay in L.A. (they were going to fly him home) and attend the recording sessions as a fly on the wall, which he did. Kenny learned a ton from the session pros and applied it to his own style going forward, turning a negative experience into a positive one.
I don’t know too many other musicians who would have sucked it up and taken it the way Kenny did in that situation. This solidifies my opinion of Kenny as not just a great drummer but a true stand up guy and role model. (For what it’s worth, I interviewed Kenny for my Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Drums book, and he was a joy and an inspiration to talk to. As busy as he is, I’m glad he found the time to talk to me!)
In any case, “Ain’t Even Done With the Night” was just one of many hit singles for Mr. Mellencamp, who hails from Seymour, Indiana. My next door neighbor in my dorm my freshman year in nearby Bloomington, Indiana, knew Mr. Mellencamp from high school and didn’t think much of him. Mellencamp made his much-publicized debut, as Johnny Cougar, in October of 1976, with a big splash in the local southern Indiana papers. His initial album, Chestnut Street Incident, didn’t chart, and the guy next door thought Cougar/Mellencamp was nothing more than a flash in the pan. Well, history has proven that guy wrong, although it took Mr. Mellencamp a few years to gain notoriety and respect. He ended up notching ten Top Ten singles, from 1982’s “Hurts So Good” (with my old pal Kenny on drums, finally) to 1994’s “Wild Night.” Not a bad career and Mr. Cougar—excuse me, Mellencamp—is still going strong at age 72.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, the former Johnny Cougar, soon-to-be-John Mellencamp, then known as John Cougar, and his music video for “Ain’t Even Done with the Night.” (No, Kenny’s not in this one, either.)
