Roadrunner once

Everybody has performed Pablo Picasso, but it’s Roadrunner that really made the difference. As you can tell, I need to say something about Jonathan Richman today. Trouble is, I haven’t got another lifetime in which to say it. But I have to try. Jonathan Richman had one great thought and it was worth hanging on to…Late at night. Out on the open road. Alone in the modern world. Driving with the radio on. Aged 18. Free. This is how it’s always going to be. It’s a moment in your life you know you’ll remember forever. And, clearly, I do. I can appreciate it as much today, aged 50, as I could when actually experiencing it along the byways of Staffordshire in the summer nights of 1977. A rare coincidence of being and feeling alive. And the soundtrack to this would be something like Spanish Stroll by Mink Deville, Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric, Less Than Zero by Elvis Costello and First Time by The Boys. Plus, of course, that song by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers that described it all. Roadrunner. Going faster miles an hour. Released, or rather re-released on the wonderfully named Beserkley Records at this time, the end of June, 1977. In the middle of the Punk explosion. That Jonathan Richman was considered to be part of the Punk scene is as difficult to understand now as it was then. For starters, he was 26 and far too old. To even begin to understand, you have to know the story of Punk. It didn’t just come from nowhere in 1976/7, though it felt much like that to most of us at the time. Punk had a heritage that was both American and British. Even The Sex Pistols played songs from 60s bands like The Monkees and Dave Berry. The 60s were not the problem – that was the hippies and nestheads, everything they represented and the control they exerted. And we all know Joe Strummer wanted to go even further back to the 50s and become Eddie Cochrane. I’ll leave the British story for another time. The American part of this heritage is what concerns us here. Understanding Jonathan Richman depends on knowing that the American story splits into three strands. The first, as represented by Iggy and the Stooges and MC5, was the garage band scene – essentially, bad-ass hippies on acid progressing the darker side of the beat group explosion. It’s exemplified by the bands on the 1972 LP collection, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-68, compiled by Lenny Kaye, soon to be part of Patti Smith’s band. The cover notes in the gatefold sleeve were among the first to describe ‘punk rock’ bands like The Electric Prunes and The Seeds. The MC5 took this music to the extreme with Kick Out The Jams. Then Iggy and the Stooges took it further with Funhouse and Raw Power. At the very same time, the second strand was the sole province of Andy Warhol’s house band, The Velvet Underground – the ultimate, inside-out, negative image of Californian peace-and-love psychedelia (on the surface). A very strange mixture of Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico, The Velvets combined progressive rock with art-house antics, avant-garde noise and folksy doo-wop harmonising. The influences of Punk are curious indeed. Utterly unsuccessful at the time, The Velvets produced a spate of seminal LPs which were to gain them a retrospective credibility for being so single-mindedly ‘unhippy’. Although some of their songs were more complex than anyone thought (as musicologist and ex-Passage frontman, Dick Witts says in his biography of the band, The Velvet Underground), many were simple constructions that newly formed Punk bands could copy and include as covers to add credibility to their 1977 sets. Buffalo Johnson’s Punk band, Trash, performed a very passable version of White Light, White Heat. Now, aged 18 in 1969, an impressionable Jonathan Richman became infatuated with The Velvet Underground, leaving his home town of Boston for New York, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to break into their scene as a musician. He returned to Massachussets. Not long after, Lou Reed and the Velvets followed him, having themselves failed in New York. They actually found their audience among students in Boston. The sound that Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground then adopted was to be the sound that Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers would take forward when they formed in 1970. In retrospect, this sound has been described as proto-punk garage rock. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Listen to What Goes On and New Age from The Velvet Underground Live With Lou Reed, Vol 1, then to She Cracked and Hospital from the first Modern Lovers album, produced by ex-Velvet John Cale, and you’ll find it hard to disagree with me that there isn’t a great deal of difference between Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman. They’ve been trying to sound like each other on and off for the last 40 years. It was just that Jonathan Richman took time to emerge. As for Roadrunner, it first emerged as a single in the States in September, 1975. Then again in October, 1976, when that first album, The Modern Lovers, was eventually released after four years. Ironically, this was around the time that the third and final strand of US Punk heritage was kicking in. Although Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers had nothing whatsoever to do with Patti Smith, The Ramones, Blondie, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Talking Heads (although one founder member, Jerry Harrison, left to form the latter), it was this awakening, with its early vinyl releases, that led to the lumping in of JR with Punk. There was hardly any new vinyl around, so having an early release meant you got your record played in all the right places, wherever Punk was mentioned. So, Jonathan Richman got to ride the wave and make it first in the UK, just as The Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads did. And, so finally, Beserkley released Roadrunner for the first time in the UK, because we’d been listening to the import for the previous six months. It wasn’t till even later in the summer that they released the first Modern Lovers LP in the UK. They obviously knew something we didn’t. It would soon become clear. For Richman was ready to release his next album on an unsuspecting public - Rock’n’Roll With The Modern Lovers. Here were whimsical songs about leprechauns, insects and abominable snowmen. Was it Steve Hillage and Gong all over again? Then came his biggest UK hit, Egyptian Reggae. After this, JR never again left his own version of Narnia. Though he did leave a bemused Punk and New Wave audience in his wake. I never saw Jonathan Richman live, though I did hear him. He came to Bradford University in 1978. I was refused entry by a bouncer with whom I’d had a recent disagreement. While I stayed outside, Bingo, Sparky and Max Jingoff went in, saw him and even talked to him afterwards, sitting on the edge of the stage. I sat outside and listened. It was late at night. The stars were shining. I was alone in the modern world. Aged 18. And free. And that’s the way it’s always been.


Roadrunner, roadrunnerGoing faster miles an hourGonna drive past the Stop 'n' ShopWith the radio onI'm in love with MassachusettsAnd the neon when it's cold outsideAnd the highway when it's late at nightGot the radio onI'm like the roadrunnerAlrightI'm in love with modern moonlight128 when it's dark outsideI'm in love with MassachusettsI'm in love with the radio onIt helps me from being alone late at nightIt helps me from being lonely late at nightI don't feel so bad now in the carDon't feel so alone, got the radio onLike the roadrunnerThat's rightSaid welcome to the spirit of 1956Patient in the bushes next to '57The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quickSuburban trees, suburban speedAnd it smells like heaven(thunder)And I say roadrunner onceRoadrunner twiceI'm in love with rock & roll and I'll be out all nightRoadrunnerThat's rightWell nowRoadrunner, roadrunnerGoing faster miles an hourGonna drive to the Stop 'n' ShopWith the radio on at nightAnd me in love with modern moonlightMe in love with modern rock & rollModern girls and modern rock & rollDon't feel so alone, got the radio onLike the roadrunnerO.K., now you sing Modern Lovers(Radio On!)I got the AM(Radio On!)Got the car, got the AM(Radio On!)Got the AM sound, got the(Radio On!)Got the rockin' modern neon sound(Radio On!)I got the car from Massachusetts, got the(Radio On!)I got the power of Massachusetts when it's late at night(Radio On!)I got the modern sounds of modern MassachusettsI've got the world, got the turnpike, got theI've got the, got the power of the AMGot the, late at night, (?), rock & roll late at nightThe factories and the auto signs got the power of modern soundsAlrightRight, bye bye!

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk