12-03-2019, 12:10 AM
freeradical wrote:
I find it kind of amazing how a then 31 year old guy could understand that life is so full of disappointments and dreams that never pan out.
The song wasn't autobiographical...
"According to Mellencamp, "Jack & Diane" was based on the 1962 Tennessee Williams film Sweet Bird of Youth."
"Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra Del Lago (travelling incognito as Princess Kosmonopolis), whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. The main reason for his homecoming is to get back what he had in his youth: primarily, his old girlfriend, whose father had run him out of town years before."