By the time they are approaching their sixties, most rock starts are either working on their pension plans (see The Rolling Stones) or have been reduced to churning-out sad parodies of their former glories (see Bruce Springsteen). John Mellencamp, however, is still trying to change the world... one chord at a time!

Although Mellencamp's early work was straight-out rock and roll, his political agenda nevertheless emerged fair early in his career. Once the success of American Fool had ensured him the necessary degree of artist freedom, it was 1983's Uh Huh which broke the ground for a life-time of musical activism centered around the political and social concerns of his native mid-west.

The early political works were, however, largely critical of an America that Mellencamp felt had let-down the common man - they are tales of banks that foreclosed on small farmers, men and women dealt a raw deal because of the color of their skin, and authorities that care for little except themselves and their own.

It is a picture we all recognise of America, and one which Mellencamp himself has helped to shape - the America of ruthless self-interest, and blind indifference to anything except where the next donut is coming from.

But with Freedom's Road, Mellencamp sets out to write a NEW story - a story of the America *he* knows - a progressive America of freedom and tolerance. It is actually quite startling to hear him sing:

I'm an American...
I respect you and your point of view

Mellencamp wants us to understand that there is another America - not that of George W Bush and Halliburton; but that of hard-working, honest and progressive values. That is *his* America... and he wants it back!