It seems like your new record is a little more commercial compared to the previous...

Commercial? You mean thought, made to become a hit? I don't even know how to make a record like that! Anyway there's something true in the things you say and it's true for everybody not only for me. Fifteen, twenty years ago you could have made a good record regardless how many copies you sold. Today that's impossible. If you want to make a good record you have to sell it, otherwise you just don't make it. It may be sad but that's the way it is. But if you mean with your question that my songs make people "move" I don't feel guilty for that. Where's the sin?

OK but everyone knows a Mellencamp "style", now less evident...

Yes but you know if I have a "style", as you call it, it's to attempt new roads, to keep searching. I have to change because repeating myself over and over is senseless. And I don't see the fun in it.

But what you say it's strange because right now your "style" has a lot of success in the States: Hootie and the Blowfish, Mountain Boys, Wilco...

No I don't think is strange. I've already done that sort of things, I've already tried those roads. If you have a "rock attitude" you can't stop yourself from exploring new ways.

You're not the only restless rocker, think about Springsteen, Steve Earle... but you're moving in a different direction. Is it because you think that popular music has nothing else to say?

No I think that popular music still has a great power of communication, makes people grow. But, you know, popular music is not only folk music. In my background there's mostly soul, I have soul in my veins and I find that hip hop is the music that best interpret soul at the moment. If you want that's another meaning of my last work. Do you know when I've  discovered  soul music? Many years ago when five white english guys, the Rolling Stones, played black music to us, white boys from Indiana...that's enough to understand what's wrong in the music world.

So the language is changing but you're still the Mellencamp of "Authority song", singing about the immorality of the majors...

If you're asking about me and my record company I have to say that things are going a little better now. But it wasn't long ago that I hated my boss and he was hating me. He once said that I was the "old goat" of the company and he had doubts about the fact that I was a good bargain for them...but my music never suffered any interference. I wouldn't allowed it.

Talking about abuses...what about your support to the Midwest farmers?

Yeah... you know... ten years ago I was thinking "if we join together we can change the way things are". Now it's all different...and it's not about growing or getting older, I do still believe the same on a lot of things, it's about if is it worth for me to change your mind, if is it fair. You know I just put my mind, my opinions, my ideas in a song, in a painting, in a movie...If that makes you think I'm happy but it ca be that your thought leads you to a different conclusion and that's OK too.

Why are you refusing the "political-rocker" label?

Because I'm not political and don't want to be. From time to time I hear people saying that I'm a "song writer" of the average american. I don't know if this is true but I don't like labels, I can't "control" everything is written about me.

OK but what about Farm Aid, your songs, your characters...wouldn't you call it "committed music"?

Yes but what do you mean with political? In my country it means to join a party, to be elected or to try...that's all. It seems that here in Europe you give the word a different meaning. If being against racism, against fascism, against violence and its roots means to be political then it's OK you can say that I'm a "political-singer" but in my country political means everything but try to change things.

Do you really think, about this, that in your country it's all the same? Reagan, Clinton...

What I know is that we begun Farm Aid eleven years ago to raise money for the farmers without land and income. What I know is that we have to do another Farm Aid concert this year.

In one of your last songs there's a guy called Jim Picato, who is he?

He is a real person, he's not a friend of mine but he really exists. He has 40/45 years and he doesn't work because he don't want to...You can call him an old hippie, he has no rules, he lives in a bar, at home, down the road...more or less as I would have liked to live but I never did.

Again your rock spirit...

Yeah the spirit that pushes you to search and to always think that the things you've done could have been done in a different way.

And now? What's your next challenge?