John Mellencamp, about to turn 40 and tired of “trying to save the world,” looks within himself on his guitar-dominated new album, Whenever We Wanted.

The record, due in stores Tuesday, is the Indiana singer/songwriter’s first since 1989’s Big Daddy.

“I’m still just trying to look around to see who the hell I am,” Mellencamp said last week by telephone from Dallas, where he was in the midst of a 30-city radio tour to promote the record.

“I’m not really trying to get anybody to do anything. I’ve kind of given up that cause. It just seems to get worse. Look at how long we’ve been (fooling) around with the farm problem, and it’s worse now than it’s ever been.”

The new record does have several politically oriented songs, but it’s more notable for its basic guitars-bass-drums-vocals approach. It’s also Mellencamp’s first recording with guitarist Dave Grissom, who replaced Larry Crane. Crane left the band early this year to pursue a solo career.

“We pretty much knew what we wanted to do before we went in,” Mellencamp said. “We put the violins and stuff back in their cases for the time being and pretty much turned the drums down. We got rid of the atypical drum sound that most records have today and came up with a different drum sound for Kenny (Aronoff), and then we turned the guitars up pretty loud.”

A tour to support the record begins Jan. 4 in Savannah, Ga. It will include Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, but no date has been set.

The tour will be Mellencamp’s first time on the road after a 3 1/2-year hiatus spent painting and making a feature-length movie, Falling From Grace. The movie is scheduled to be released in February.

Here’s what he said about the album’s 10 new songs:

Love and Happiness. The song has two striking elements. One is its angry politics: “So if you sell arms/or you run dope/you got respect/and you got hope/but the rest of us die/on your battlefields/with wounds that fester and bleed/but never heel.”

The other is Pharez Whitted’s shrill trumpet break. “It was like, `Give ’em something they don’t expect.’ We love doing that. I’ve always liked the fact that that was part of what people liked about us _ `Well, I wonder what his record’s going to sound like this time.’ “

Now More Than Ever. Similar in sound to Pink Houses, this is Mellencamp’s plea for more substance in rock music. “Where rock ‘n’ roll was the one thing that held everybody together, that everybody related to one thing or another, now music is so fragmented. So now more than ever, I cannot stand alone. Don’t make me stand here by myself. Not in this mess.”

I Ain’t Ever Satisfied. “For me, the creation is the fun part. The product of the creation was never that important to me. In fact, when I paint, I don’t care if the paintings even turn out. Doesn’t matter what the paintings look like, but I had fun painting it. It took me someplace, and maybe I learned something by the process of painting or writing songs or whatever I’m doing. At least I had the opportunity and the experience of doing it.”

Get a Leg Up. The first single is about assessing a situation and realizing that you were totally wrong. “We make light of that by saying, here’s a guy who spent all this money on a girl and he thinks, `Forget it, I might as well go home.’ And then, much to his surprise, he’s going to be lucky Pierre. That’s how wrong he was. We’ve all been there _ not necessarily in that type of situation _ but you walk into a room, you look at the situation and you say, `Yeah, I know what’s going on here.’ But guess what? You don’t. That happens to me all the time.”

Crazy Ones. “I’ve known a couple of girls in my life, and that’s the way it works out for me. That’s just a song about a girl I met.”

Last Chance. The album’s “rock ballad” is Mellencamp “reporting on a person’s physical and mental condition at a point in a day. Just a very simple song, a little bit maybe like quiet desperation that’s maybe not as desperate as the singer thinks it is.”

They’re So Tough. “They,” he says, “is the `they’ against `us.’ It’s your choice _ government, bosses.” The song contains the line “They want to make me their nigger/I say to hell with them.”

“If people are offended that I say the word `nigger,’ will you write something down for me? To hell with them. There’s nothing wrong with that word, It’s the connotation that people have put on that word. It’s got nothing to do with race; it’s the oppressed. If you’re so (bleeping) narrow-minded that you think I’m talking about black people, to hell with you.”

Melting Pot. “When I wrote the song, I liked it, then I kind of went off of it. Then we recorded it and I really didn’t like it. But then other people got me to like it. It’s weird the way that song worked.”

Whenever We Wanted. “That’s pretty much about decision-making, excesses and even approaching what Big Daddy talked about. There was a line in song Big Daddy that said, `When you live for yourself, it’s hard on everyone.’ This song is maybe akin to that.”

Again Tonight. “If there’s a pop song on the record, I think that’s it. I like the last line _ `But I’m probably just making a fool of myself again tonight.’ And besides, it’s kind of a light song to end the record with.”

Mellencamp’s 40th birthday is Monday.

“I’ve kind of given up on trying to save the world. I don’t know how many thousands of times I’ve jumped up on a little soapbox for a moment and said, `You guys ought to be careful of Corporate America.’

“Now every town in America looks exactly the same. Milwaukee’s lost its identity, just like Bloomington’s lost its identity. You drive into town and it’s the same strip of malls and the same names above the strip of malls. They stole rock ‘n’ roll from us _ and that’s pretty much the way it is, sports fans.”