ANAHEIM, Calif. — John Mellencamp walked onstage at the Hollywood Bowl with one hand overhead to acknowledge a welcoming roar, the other holding a cigarette for one last drag before dropping it on the floor and getting down to business on Monday, Aug. 10.

He was dressed for work, too, in the signature white T-shirt, black pants and boots he’s worn for years. A 74-year-old rock star on tour, the 24-year-old telephone installer he was before making it? Neither need anything fancier.

And for the next two-and-a-half hours, Mellencamp did his job terrifically to the delight of fans that filled most of the Hollywood Bowl on the Dancing Words Tour – The Greatest Hits.

That’s not hyperbole, either. Of the 24 songs in the show, 16 made the Top 40, with 10 of them cracking the Top 10.

“Lawless Times” kicked off the night, a 2014 song updated for today. “Can’t trust the police, particularly if they’re ICE,” Mellencamp sang as the lyrics appeared on a video screen designed to look like silent-movie title cards. “Look out for the creepers, tappin’ on your cellphone. My, my, my, these are lawless times.”

“You know, I’m not the easiest guy to get along with,” he said at its finish. “So I figure if you’re here, you might not be the easiest to get along with, too. We’re all the misfits, the mavericks, and most of all, we’re nonconformists.”

With that, the hit parade began. “Small Town” rolled into “Lonely Ol’ Night” into “Paper in Fire,” a trio of tracks from 1985’s “Scarecrow” and 1987’s “The Lonesome Jubilee,” which eventually combined for a third of the set.

The video screen behind Mellencamp and the band continued the vintage movie theater imagery, with live footage of the band inserted into larger images of ornate movie palaces.

His eight-piece band is a rock and roll powerhouse, with many of the players with him since the early days. Guitarist Mike Wancic has been in the band since 1976, Mellencamp said, referring to him as a brother and teasing him like a brother, too. “If you noticed, he has a stool because he had open-heart surgery on his back,” he said of Wancic late in the show.

Fiddler Lisa Germano and Crystal Taliefero, who sang backing vocals and played saxophone and percussion, were with Mellencamp for most of the ’80s and have returned to the fold in recent years.

Other highlights of the first of two sets included an acapella take on “Human Wheels,” a crowd-pleasing “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” and “Check It Out,” which featured a lovely accordion melody from keyboardist Troye Kinnett.

Most of the band left the stage before the final pair of songs of the opening set, with Mellencamp on acoustic guitar backed by bass and accordion for a stripped-down arrangement of “Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First).”

Then he was all alone for an acoustic version of “Jack & Diane,” his first and only No. 1 single. Well, not exactly alone. To Mellencamp’s clear delight, most of the Bowl joined in on this little ditty about teenage lovers in the heartland. So much so that at one point he stopped singing, pointed at a fan in the front rows, and with a grin on his face said, “You know what? You may not sing good, but [bleep-er] you sing loud!”

“So let it rock, let it roll,” Mellencamp sang, the crowd joining in for the a capella bridge. “Let the Bible Belt come and save my soul / Holdin’ on to 16 as long as you can / Changes come around real soon, make us women and men.”

After intermission, the second set opened with Mellencamp’s promise of picking up the pace with more up-tempo tunes. He opened it by going back to the oldest song in the set, “I Need A Lover,” which gave him his first Top 40 in 1979 when he was still reluctantly using the stage name Johnny Cougar.

“Minutes to Memories” and “Your Life Is Now” featured more of the honest, straight-ahead rock and roll that Mellencamp remains, perhaps one of the last major practitioners still standing. [Before the show, I overheard fans sharing stories about Mellencamp, Tom Petty and Bob Seger concerts they had attended, and there were more than a few Petty T-shirts in the crowd.]

“Wild Night,” Mellencamp’s Van Morrison cover featuring Meshell Ndegeocello that went to No. 4 in 1993, had most of the crowd dancing once more, Mellencamp duetting with Taliefero and bassist John Gunnell wowing the crowd with a long slap-and-pop solo.

A sweet yet ribald anecdote about slow dancing with his girlfriend at a teen basement party drew laughter from the seats before leading into the yearning love song “Ain’t Even Done With the Night,” after which Mellencamp jumped into a run of hits so good you might think he was showing off, if you didn’t know that’s not something he’d do.

“Rain On the Scarecrow,” which he introduced with a story about co-founding Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and Neil Young in 1985, remains a powerful, passionate call to fight for American family farms and farmers.

After “Pop Singer,” Mellencamp finally played something from “Uh-Huh,” the 1983 album that saw him escape the pop-oriented path his record label and management originally planned. “Authority Song” rocked hard over a twanging guitar riff, “Crumblin’ Down” kept the rock-and-roll momentum charging ahead, and then “Pink Houses” capped that album’s trio of songs.

“Oh, but ain’t that America for you and me?” he sang, in “Pink Houses,” one of many songs he’s written from the perspective of the common man and the populism of a Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. “Ain’t that America, somethin’ to see, baby? / Ain’t that America, home of the free, yeah? / Little pink houses for you and me.”

After a pause to introduce the band, the night closed with “Cherry Bomb,” one more song of young love in a small town, and “Hurts So Good,” yet another hit in a night that contained multitudes.

Mellencamp might not be the easiest guy to get along with, as he’d noted earlier in the show. But his songs? Fifty years after he started, they’re your best friends.

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