You would think a man who has made his living performing for 50 years would have a thick skin.
Unfortunately, a March 17 show in Toledo, Ohio, proved that John Mellencamp is unable to handle even the tamest of hecklers.
As seen in a video shared to TikTok, the “Jack & Diane” singer was so affronted by an interruption from a member of the audience that he briefly left the stage, leaving those in attendance to wonder if the show was truly over, The Blade reported.
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Per The Blade, Mellencamp was taking time between songs to tell stories and set up the next track, rather than playing straight through from song to song.
In the TikTok video, Mellencamp was in the middle of telling a story about his grandmother when a man can be heard yelling out, “Just play some music!”
After the audience responded with “no,” Mellencamp said, “What do you think I’ve been doing, you c***sucker?”
Were Mellencamp’s actions necessary?
“Now here’s the thing, man, you don’t know me. You don’t f***ing know me. Hey Joe, find this guy and let me see him after the show,” the singer continued.
Mellencamp then returned to his story, and it seemed the situation had been diffused. But then another concert goer entered the melee, shouting for Mellencamp to play a certain song while he continued his story.
“Guys, I can stop this show right now and just go home,” the frustrated performer said. “Tell you what I’m going to do. Since you’ve been so wonderful, I’m going to cut about ten songs out of the show.” The declaration elicited groans and expressions of dismay from his audience.
“Here we go,” he began, playing only a few bars of a half-hearted rendition of “Jack & Diane” before leaving the stage, saying “You know what? Show’s over.”
“After about five minutes of the audience wondering if they should stay or go following the heckling, Mellencamp’s band reemerged from the darkness of the backstage area to perform a recorded spoken word version of ‘The Real Life,’” according to The Blade.
To his credit, Fox News reported, Mellencamp eventually came back and finished the concert, but still, his reaction seemed rather out of proportion to such mild heckling.
Now, contrary to what has being going around on the social media platform X, Mellencamp was not embarking on a political diatribe before the anonymous concert-goer lost his patience.
Mellencamp is incredibly liberal, but, at least at this show, he wasn’t testing his audience’s patience by droning on about his political beliefs.
Rather, he was telling a few rambling grandpa stories to set up a couple of songs he was going to sing, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Mellencamp often books small theaters instead of arenas nowadays for this reason, allowing him to tell these anecdotes, as well as play 30 minutes of old film clips from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and others to start the show.
That said, the Post-Gazette was sure to note that even his die hard fans grew impatient with the use of film clips, though they seemed much happier once the concert proper began.
Mellencamp told The Washington Post that he believed that no one should come to his concerts expecting a party: “I do expect etiquette inside of the theater, the same way you would at a Broadway show. My shows are not really concerts anymore. They’re performances, and there’s a difference between a performance and a concert. Look, I’m not for everyone anymore. I’m just not. And if you want to come and scream and yell and get drunk, don’t come to my show.”
Fair enough, and a move very much typical for an aging rock star.
But even taking all that into consideration, Mellencamp threatening to end his show the second he got interrupted still seemed rather an over the top reaction.
Several users on TikTok seemed to agree. One user asked, “he’s been performing in front of large crowds [his] entire life and he can’t handle a heckler?” Another said, “He shouldn’t have done that to the rest of the crowd. Not fair.”
Others took his side, or at least put blame on both parties, saying, “I was here. This was so disappointing. Some of the crowd was not it. And then his response was also not it,” and “I don’t blame him, kind of hard to open your heart and play after that.”
Again, he did end up finishing most of the set, but was it still fair to the rest of the audience to end the show rather than wait for security to remove the heckler?
Several pop stars and musicians have endured much harsher heckling.
For a veteran performer like Mellencamp to lose his cool in the face of mild criticism was honestly kind of pathetic.
But, then again, Americans have come to expect such softness from their liberal elites.
And, apparently, America’s aging rockstars, perhaps having grown accustomed to praise and adulation, have been no exception.
