John Mellencamp - Collaboration With George Green

Collaboration With George Green

Mellencamp co-wrote several of his best-known songs with his childhood friend, George Green, who, like Mellencamp, was born and raised in Seymour, Indiana. Green was a gifted lyricist and contributed lyrics to numerous Mellencamp radio hits, including “Human Wheels,” “Minutes to Memories,” “Hurts So Good,” “Crumblin’ Down,” “Rain on the Scarecrow,” "Your Life is Now" and “Key West Intermezzo,” in addition to songs recorded by Barbra Streisand, Hall & Oates, Jude Cole, Vanessa Williams, Ricky Skaggs, Sue Medley and The Oak Ridge Boys among others. Mellencamp and Green's final collaboration was "Yours Forever," a song that was included on the soundtrack to the 2000 movie, The Perfect Storm. Mellencamp and Green had a falling out in the early 2000s, and Green ultimately moved from Bloomington, Indiana to Taos, New Mexico in 2001. "Like when you're married, when you're friends with somebody for a long time, the more things build up the more things can go wrong," Mellencamp said in the liner notes to his 2010 box set, On the Rural Route 7609. "There were personal problems, cross-pollinated with professional issues. George has written some great lyrics and we've written some great songs together, but I just couldn't do it any more."

On August 28, 2011, Green died in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the age of 59 after losing a battle with a rapid-forming small cell lung cancer. “I’ve known George since we were in the same Sunday school class. We had a lot of fun together when we were kids. Later on, we wrote some really good songs together,” Mellencamp told the Bloomington Herald Times shortly after Green's death. “George was a dreamer, and I was sorry to hear of his passing.”