John Mellencamp & The Big Bad Internet

“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,” he said during a public seminar at the Grammy Museum, according to Reuters. He noted that although the Internet is useful for communication, “It’s destroyed the music business. It’s going to destroy the movie business.”

The singer is promoting his latest album, No Better Than This, which was released on Tuesday and produced by T Bone Burnett. The album was recorded on vintage equipment at Sun Records in Memphis; in the San Antonio, Texas, hotel room where Robert Johnson recorded 16 tunes in 1936; and at the First African Baptist church in Savannah, Ga.

Although No Better Than This is available to purchase through iTunes, that doesn’t mean Mellencamp is a fan of the format.

Mellencamp talked about the difference between listening to a Beatles song on a newly re-mastered CD and then on an iPod.

“You could barely even recognize it as the same song. You could tell it was those guys singing, but the warmth and quality of what the artist intended for us to hear was so vastly different,” Mellencamp said, according to Reuters.

The singer said he thinks most rock ‘n’ roll will go the way of big-band music and eventually be forgotten.

“After a few generations, it’s gone,” he said. “Rock ‘n’ roll – as important as we think it is, and as big as it was, and as much money as people made on it, and as proud as I am to say that I was part of it – at the end of the day, they’re gonna say: ‘Yeah, there was this band called The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones, and this guy named Bob Dylan…

“And the rest of us? We’re just gonna be footnotes. And I think that that’s OK. I’m happy to have spent my life doing what I wanted to do, playing music, make something out of life, but forgetting about the idea of legacy.”

Mellencamp added that it’s possible new technology could delay the ultimate downfall of rock music – but before that point “some smart people, the China-Russians or something” may have already taken over America by hacking into the power grid and financial system.

Click here for the Reuters article.