Why Heart’s Tour with John Mellencamp was ‘Uncomfortable’

Heart had John Mellencamp as their opening act on their 1982 tour. While a double bill like that is something that would appeal to fans, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

The tour was brought up during Ann Wilson's recent appearance on The Kenny Aronoff Sessions. During that time, Aronoff was Mellencamp's drummer. The Heart/Mellencamp tour lasted nine months, which Wilson called "particularly painful" and "uncomfortable." Why? Because Mellencamp's star was on the rise, while Heart's popularity was waning.

During that tour, a little diddy called "Jack & Diane" hit number one in the U.S., which helped eclipse Heart as the headliner. Despite saying how much he enjoyed the tour, Aronoff apologized to Wilson for bringing it up. However, Wilson is a pro and said, "If you stay around long enough, you see they're just eras, and you just kind of roll through them."

In other Heart news: The band is performing their first show together since 2019.

This show is taking place on New Year's Eve at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin is on the bill as a special guest. Tickets for the show are on sale now via Ticketmaster.com.

Per Setlist.fm, the last Heart show took place on October 13, 2019. Earlier this month, Nancy Wilson made a surprise appearance at Ann Wilson's solo show in Santa Rosa, Calif. It was the first time the Heart sisters performed together since the final Heart show.

The surprise appearance from Nancy during Ann's show was something that excited their fans. In recent years, Ann and Nancy's relationship appeared a bit fractured in public. Their issues stem from an incident in 2016. Ann's husband, Dean Wetter, was arrested after he assaulted Nancy's then 16-year-old twin sons backstage at a Heart show. However, Ann said in an interview with Rock Candy in April 2022 there was no rift. She explained, "Things happen in families, and that was a really good example of something that happened within a family, and we worked it out."

Part of "working it out" appeared to include Nancy touring under the name Nancy Wilson's Heart. As previously reported, Nancy Wilson's Heart came to be after Nancy and Ann Wilson had a touring disagreement.

"Heart had a big offer on the table last year for a bigger tour, but Ann wasn't interested in going out with my lineup of guys that we were out with before," said Nancy. "She has a new lineup of guys that she wanted me to join up with, and I sort of [thought] I don't really know them and don't have loyalty yet for anybody like that."

New tours are seemingly announced every week. Oftentimes, those tours feature outstanding multi-act lineups and other great supporting acts.

With that in mind, we can't help but think about all of the strange opening acts and headliner combos in rock history, and there have been some doozies.

A great example of this was the Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto concert in 2003. The show was organized as an economic boom for Toronto, which was hit pretty badly by the SARS outbreak. (It's also why the show is affectionately known as SARSStock. Over 450,000 people attended the show, which featured the headlining lineup of The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Rush, The Guess Who...and Justin Timberlake.

Bookers and promoters didn't think about how a predominantly rock crowd would react to Timberlake. It's a memory that still sticks with Timberlake, who reflected on it during a February 2020 appearance on BBC's The Graham Norton Show.

"You would think Canadians are historically peaceful people, ... It was a bit of a blur," recalled Timberlake, who at the time had just started his solo career. "I just remember saying to the band before we went on stage, 'I don't think this is going to go well.' Little did I know how bad it was going to go."

So, how bad was it? People threw bottles of urine at him!

Jokingly, Timberlake said, "I still have a lot of trauma from this incident. After the first song, the host of the festival comes out and [tries to wave me off stage,] and I'm like, 'No, man! I'm staying out here! We're doing this!'"

Fans then continued to throw the bottles of urine at him, but things eventually calmed down. Timberlake said, "After [the second song of the set] either one of two things happened: Either they ran out of nerve, because they knew I was going to stay there, or they ran out of urine."

Fortunately, no bottles of urine were involved in the following five examples of strange opening act and headliner combos. However, they all are very interesting and almost baffling that they even happened. Enjoy!