Song Club #1 'I'm Straight' continued ...

... I much prefer the live version to the studio versions, with the extra righteousness and bile in the delivery and the extra words (i knew you for a while, and i tried to bring out the nicer and the smarter things you have inside... but you walked by the computer centre with this kid who's not up to your level at all... you should have me walking by your side.) which rhyme "inside" with "side". I don't know why that impresses me but it does.

Though I like the rage of it, I love just as much the nervous tentativeness of the opening. Haven't we all felt that way when trying to say something important by telephone or letter? I felt it this very day, hence my remembering this song and wanting to talk about it.

I've mentioned this before, but my friend Emil said to me that if I ever say an advert for a singer in a Jonathan Richman tribute band, I should call the number and when they answered, sing straight out "I.... called this number.... five times already, today.... but.... I, I got scared and I put it, I put the phone back in place...."

Malary: I used to know -- but which does he use first and why -- "Hippie Ernie" and then changes to "Hippie Johnnie?" And I remember the Ernie isn't Ernie Brooks, but who are the names biographical for again?

Timmybear: Well, the liner notes to the Modern Lovers cd reissue certainly suggest the Johnny was Mr. Felice, and that Ernie got annoyed when it was hippy Ernie. I was going to do that song at a coffeehouse once, but I was sure people would start laughing at me singing 'I'm straight', so I didn't. :) Part of the reason I could relate to the song is that, unrealistic as this may seem, I wouldn't date anyone who drank alcohol or did drugs. I grew up around that stuff, and I don't want to commit my heart to anyone who does them in ANY QUANTITY. I know that probably sounds harsh... I'm not even against drugs, and I don't care if FRIENDS drink... I just don't want boyfriends who do - if you can stand my face and my personality with no chemical barriers, you're probably good for me (if not necessarily for yourself ;) ).

I suppose that's why it took me over ten years to find one... ;) Timmybear (who has done 'Corner Store' once, and will someday pull out 'Dignified and Old')

Jacques Ball: Back in the old list times, I had edited an interview with John Felice, I paste below some part concerning his involvement in the Modern Lovers and who is behind Hippie Ernie/Johnny :


John Felice (in 1998) : .... The Modern Lovers was my first band, playing Jonathan's crazy "When you get out of the hospital" nonsense and "Astral plane" and shit ... So I quit, because I had to go to school and these guys were like taking gigs on the West Coast. So I said I need to take some time off, I'm going to put together a little band. I said it wasn't permanent, y'know, we'll be back together and you guys make a record y'know, I'm there. And everybody liked the idea of two guitars in the Modern Lovers. It didn't sound as good when Jonathan was by himself. Ernie, Jerry and David really liked the idea of having another guitar because it gave the band so much more power...

I : - Yeah, I wondered how you felt about his songs and his direction. There's a Modern Lovers live thing with you on , I guess you've heard it , and there's one song which he introduces as a song you hate - "Wake up sleepyhead" on Longbranch Saloon- and then he gives you the mic and you give your little speil about it. What did you think about him putting himself up, like in "Someone I care about", as this guy with really pure intentions.

F :- See that's when things were starting to rip us all apart. Me and Jonathan, as close as we were, you know, I was like a punk, I was a wise-ass kid. I liked to do drugs, a lot of drugs, I liked to drink, and Jonathan was like this wide-eyed, no-drugs, ate nothing but health food, fucking carrot juice kind of guy...

I : - So he was true to his word ?

JF :- Oh fuck yeah. He was the fucking honest-to-goodness article. He was everything that he pretended to be. He was never false in his presentation of what he did. And.. it wasn't me, y'know ?

I : - Is it true that you were Hippy Johnny (in "I'm straight') ?

JF :- Yeah. It was originally Hippy Ernie. That was before Ernie was in the band. After I left it became Hippy Johnny, and the song became more timely, because , y'know, of my drugs... It was just the way I was. It made more sense because Ernie wasn't into doing drugs.

--- - whatever Felice says , Ernie Brooks was not Hippy Ernie according to Jonathan.. but Hippy Johnny might really have been John Felice who answered to Jonathan in the classic Real Kids song "Who needs you "--- I : - So you were pretty much into all that at that early age ?

JF :- Yeah. I was like 17.. I was a hellion, I just didn't fit in. I had a
100 watt Marshall, I had a Les Paul. Jonathan was trying to turn down all the time, and now he's succeeded in turning down into a complete accoustic. Him and me, our paths were growing further apart all the time.. We continued our friendship for years and years, during and after the Beserkley thing, he was back living again in Boston after that for several years. and we're still friends I guess, even though we don't stay in touch with each other.. I guess we're friends. So..


hope this clarifies a bit the matter... For those interested in John Felice nowadays, there is an hilarious single by the Lyres ("My buddy Felice") released last year. Felice yells at one of the Real Kids on an answering machine for ages. The guy kept the message and it is used as the backbone of the Lyres song.

Kevin Lahey: I love this song, how come I never hear it live? Is it just that "straight" means something so much different now?

Ian (responding to Kevin): I can't remember when i heard this anecdote, whether it originates from a friend of a friend or from a radio article or something, but appaerently someone once requested "I'm Straight" and Jonathan said something like; "NO! Absolutely NOT! My God, I was such a JERK back then!"

It wasn't that the meaning had changed (it can still mean not on drugs if the context is made clear) just that the song's narrator is so self-righteous and judgemental. Or can seem so to the person who wrote it. It was obviously a very sincere song, probably written about a real incident, and maybe Jonathan feels squeamish remembering the incident now, let alone the song.

Joel Gartland: This is somewhat similar to his response to requests for Roadrunner the first time I saw him... way back in 1980/81... A number of people yelled for it, and eventually he said something along the lines that he couldn't do it now, because he wrote that song when he was 18, and he was older now, and couldn't do the song with the same feeling, and it wouldn't be right for him to do it without feeling it. He didn't mention anything about being a jerk, but then again, Roadrunner isn't putting anyone else down like I'm Straight does..

Boy, I'd pay for a boot of that show...

Imagine my surprise the next time I saw him when he did a good version of it. When you've got the feeling, go with it, I guess..... one of the things we like about the man...

Kevin Lahey: Yup, I guess it is kinda earnest and silly and immature. But I really, really enjoy it!

To my surprise, I found that I don't have a recording of "I'm Straight". I have seven different Jonathan albums, not counting the weeds, but not one of them has it on there -- I must've heard it before on one of my SO's old tapes. Strangely enough, someone didn't think it qualified to appear on _The Best of Jonathan Richman_. Hmmm.

What's the best of the many, many reissues to get to ensure I have this gem available? It seems like the ML stuff has been issued and issued and reissued countless times. Which I guess is a pretty good thing.

Brian Crawford: It's on the first ML album. I've never been able to tell which version of that is which mix.

There is also a terrific version by a band called The Silos on an album called "Susan Across the Ocean."

Goran Kraft: I think that the best way to include I´m Straight in your collection is to buy the very fine reissue from 2003 on Castle Records of the original "The Modern Lovers" album. It includes all the songs from the original album+3 bonus tracks.

Bob Spencer: I'd also look into getting hold of 'Precise Modern Lovers Order', a great sounding live recording from 72/73 that includes a 6.30 minute recording of 'I'm Straight', with a intro into the song too - A great CD, well worth searching out!

Ian: I have "I'm Straight" on "The Modern Lovers", though it wasn't on the original release. I think it's been on every reissue. It was produced by Kim Fowley. I also have it on "23 great recordings by", (which is not an especially well-chosen compilation in other respects.) It seems the live versions on "Live at the Longbranch" and "Precise Modern Lovers Order" are different from each other.

Paul Campbell: Wasn't on the uk version. First released on 23 great songs by etc (uk) i think. precise modern lovers order is the definitive place - as well as essential for anyone who's not got it. is it on long branch? i guess so....

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Hey Jojofiles, our Haloscan comments are in limbo due to the acquisition of Haloscan by JS-Kit despite good-faith efforts to change over (including paying money to JS-Kit several months ago and sending emails). We are working on it. In the meantime perhaps it would be good to crosspost temporarily to Backstage where the comments are still working since they are the normal Blogger comments. If you are on the Jojoblog team and want to be added to the Jojoblog Backstage team, please let us know and we'll send an invite. Thanks!

(Crossposted by rb)

Winning contest entry from Yiannis

A 17 years old in suburbs of Piraeus, Greece.

Favourite music: all the new wave, punk rock, a little bit dark style, very close to the 'proper' mood you have when you are a teenager, feeling angry about what's happening in the world - his world, feeling desperate sometimes, trying to find his identity.

Magazine "IHOS" (means SOUND). A magazine with many interesting open-minded music journalists. One of them writes about Jonathan's album: "Jonathan Sings". The title of the article is "Jonathan Stings!" The message of the article is that this album change lives and that is the most "hardcore" music of our times.

The boy, searching for new experiences, buys the album and that's it!

"It's too late .you are stuck with me". This music puts the end to all the dark, bloomy mood and shows the 'wide open road'. The relationship with Jonathan begins, the Rockin and Romance is the second lovely 'kiss' and the boy is beginning to search in these - no internet times- who's that guy, has he other albums etc.. Also he writes in his 'fan club', of course not the usual fan club. Jonathan send him some lines in a letter himself, the boy is the first fan from Greece, the boy buys a T- shirt painted from Jonathan (full of colour, with UFOs, camels, dinosaurs, etc).

The boy's friends find this music silly and childish, a betray in the 'dark kingdom', but the boy says it loud: He is happy and he is proud!. Now the dream is one: to see him Live! In the material Jonathan is sending, there are dates and venues in which Jonathan plays all over world, but Greece (very poor in concerts in these times) is never in them. So the dream is to travel somewhere near Greece. And when (in springtime) a concerts' schedule arrives from Jonathan and inside the boy finds Italy he take the decision: He will go to Milan for the concert of his life!!!

Unfortunately, there are several obstacles: No one of his friends is following him, his parents will not let him do this 'crazy' journey, he hasn't got so much money.

But the boy will fight for it: He makes his plan. He will take a 'cheap' plane early in the morning, he will arrive in Milan at noon, he will be in concert at night and just when the concert will finish he'll take the train back home and he will arrive (next day) at noon. The parents will not know anything about it (he will tell them that after his work -he works in a office- he will go to a friend, and he will sleep there- all this too risky but there isn't other solution) All the friends and his two sisters will know it and they all try to cover his absence. All the arrangements (tickets, a small travel bag with food, etc) are ready. Everybody thinks this is a total crazy idea for a 17-18 years old boy but for the boy this journey is everything.

The day arrives: The boy takes the plane of JAT (Yugoslavian Airlines) very early in the morning, the sun is rising up, he changes plane in Zagreb, and at about 12 o'clock he is in Milan - everything according to the program. The weather is not so good, many clouds, low temperature, the boy left 'hot' Athens with a T-shirt, he feels a little cold but his heart is very warm. He has to find the certain venue of Jonathan's concert. He buys a Italian newspaper (Republica), he don't knows Italian but he thinks that he will see Jonathan's name inside, maybe a photo, anyway he will find it for sure.

He takes the bus to Milan center, he opens the newspaper, he finds the name and the venue, he is happy, he is in heaven. Near the name of the venue, as an address, he reads "San Milanese". What is this? He has to ask, "do you speak English?'', the most (Italian) people in bus don't know or they say so, he finds a girl, he is lucky, she explains to him "San Milanese is a some miles outside Milan"

"ooh...and how someone gets there?"

"by bus from the centre",

"can you show me where I'll catch them?"

"Of course"

The bus arrives in the centre, the girl tells the boy that this the proper stop, she will also get off. Now they are in Milan's centre. Suddenly a thought passes the boy's mind: How he will return in Milan after concert, to take the train?

He asks the girl if there will be buses late at night to Milan, she says she don't think so, San Milanese is a small 'village' with not so often transport. Oh..Oh this is a problem, The thoughts are passing like 'thunders' in boy's mind, maybe he will take a taxi, or find a place to sleep there and travel in the morning, but what about train tickets, OK he will change them, and the parents, his boss, what excuse he will find, and moreover he hasn't so much money, oooh.NO..NO.he doesn't believe that he is too close to the dream and he can't catch it. The girl, holding his newspaper, is watching him, his face is changing expressions. He takes the decision, he will GO, and he will find a solution there, and if he don't he'll go after the concert to Jonathan, tell him the whole story, and ask him to give him a place to stay for the night. Jonathan will not refuse for sure! The light comes to boy's face again!

'OK thank you very much, I will go there, where is the bus station?" tells to the girl.

"You'll go straight and turn the second road right. Good luck. By the way who is the singer?" says the girl looking again the newspaper.

"He is Jonathan Richman, an American, he is great.."

The girl notices something in the newspaper

".here there is something other'', she points in a certain point

'What is ???",

"The concert is not for today.",

"..????"

"yes, yes, it's not for today.."

" and .for what.what.day."

"The concert will take place on Saturday, three days after today."

" Oh, I.I.. understand.." (the dream is fading away)

"What will you do?"

"I don't know..Thank you anyway"

"you're welcome (she gives him back the newspaper). Good luck". The girl leaves.

The boy, in the crowded Milan center, the weather like his heart, cloudy and raining, lonely, tears in his eyes, tears, tears from the bottom of his heart. He feels he is in a big silence, although around him people are passing fast, cars, traffic lights, buses, people are speaking, Italian is the language of this Silence, he walks without purpose, streets with no names, he takes the metro, he gets off, his body has been 'broken up' in pieces.

He tries to find a solution, but this is a situation without solutions, he opens the newspaper, he sees again and again the terrible 'point', he thinks 'maybe to see another concert, just as a.cure, he don't know the groups, only "Talk Talk' but he has seen them before some years and Ok they are not what he wants these moments.

And now he wants to leave this town. He goes to train station, he takes the first train to Yugoslavia and he will change train in Zagreb. He only wants to leave this place!

Some years after, Jonathan came to Athens (unfortunately without the Modern Lovers) but the magic is there. And during the concert the boy feels that Jonathan is looking in the audience for the boy of this story, he feels that Jonathan recognizes him, looks him straight in his eyes, the boy is hiding, and after the concert, he wants to go to speak to him, but he has not the courage. Only he 'followed' him next day in Patras, where Jonathan played in a small club, and before the concert he saw Jonathan wandering alone in town, and he didn't speak to him again.

The boy is now a man, it's me and this is the story of a dream, the loveliest in my life. Thank you Jonathan for everything.

Spring 2008 European tour recap

With Tommy by Diamond Geyser (Shepherd's Bush Empire, London)

This was a mini-tour but reports are that Jonathan Richman and Tommy Larkins were in fine form!


"In Che Mondo Viviamo, Cell Phone Song, Egyptian Reggae" video from baldo (Nouveau Casino- Paris)

Patrick wrote a lovely review of the 7 May 2008 show (au Nouveau Casino) in Paris. If you haven't read it yet, look here.


Jonathan Richman au Nouveau Casino by baldo

More videos from Italy and France:

My Baby Love Love Loves Me- Poste à Galène (Marseille)

Ice Cream Man- Casa 139 (Milan)

Cosi Veloce- Casa 139 (Milan)

il cellulare- Casa 139 (Milan)

Dancing in the Lesbian Bar- Le Nouveau Casino (Paris)


Jonathan Richman at the Shepherd's Bush Empire by Henry Bloomfield

Babararacucudada at Serendipity on seeing Jonathan Richman in London (Shepherd's Bush Empire): "What can I say about the evening? Wonderful. Just wonderful. I left the gig with a huge smile on my face, swathed in good vibes and wanting to just give the whole world a cuddle despite a rather uncompromising conclusion to the show."


photo: Mick West

The show has Babararacucudada reminiscing about seeing Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers in 1984 at Elephant Fayre: "I remember the gig quite well. I was sharing a flat with a mate called Meaks at the time. He was with me and his girlfriend, Mary, was there too. Jonathan was on the afternoon. He turned up with a couple of backing musicians: there was a stand up bass player and a lady backing singer. That was it. No drums or other backing. If any percussion was needed then he either stamped on the stage or tapped the body of his guitar to provide it. What followed was unknown, to me ~ then, songs all delivered in the simplest Rock n Roll style that you could imagine. Wonderful. If ever a time or a venue was right for his song That Summer Feeling then that was it. I was utterly transformed and carried away to a better place. Meaks hated it. Mary, who had never heard of him before that day, became an instant fan. There in a nutshell you have him and the effect that he has on people." [read more]


Breaking Down the Barrier by Diamond Geyser

Jamie Janakov of Playlouder was at Shepherd's Bush Empire too and was similarly moved to Proustian reverie: "I have vague memories of throwing my rattle out the pram repeatedly when being played a live tape of his performances when I was younger. What is this inane shite? I thought, as I vomited Rusks onto my Care Bears bib. I hope I never descend into such a fragile state of mind that I enjoy this comedic garbage, I mused, glaring at my father doing the ironing while I tried in vain to suck my feet."


"Not So Much to Be Loved, As to Love" video from diamondgeyser (Shepherd's Bush Empire)

Jamie concedes that now is better than before: "But it’s funny how things change. What I hadn’t expected from this larger-than-life Massachusettsian mariachi and his no-doubt long-suffering percussionist was a show I wanted to go on, and on, and on. "(read more)


Dancing in a Lesbian Bar by Diamond Geyser

David Sinclair from Times Online was there as well: "Now he has become a technological refusenik, rejecting all contact with the internet. The unreleased Cell Phone Song, which he performed (twice) at the Empire, made his antipathy to this ubiquitous gadget equally clear."


Cell Phone Outrage by Diamond Geyser

David continues: "Other new songs, such as The Lovers are Here and They're Full of Sweat, took a wry look at the pain and passions of the younger generation. Sometimes you want someone to play the part of the old codger,' Richman explained. 'I can do that.' In fact he looked remarkably sprightly and sang his songs - some of them in French and Italian - with a purity of expression and lightness of touch that belied the passing years." (read more)


Jonathan Richman at the Shepherd's Bush Empire by Henry Bloomfield

louche at Basil Exposition saw Jonathan and Tommy in Dublin (Whelan's) the next night, 10 May: "Very unusually for me, I had absolutely no experience of his music or act before stepping into the venue: I was there at the command of a friend in London who’d seen him the night before and said I had to 'beg, borrow or steal a ticket' (direct quote). I am now a fan." (read more)


"Egyptian Reggae" video from vintage1965 (Whelans)

Ian at Thrill Pier was at Whelan's too: "With just a classical guitar in hand and a shit hot drummer backing him he had me, and most of the rest of the crowd in the palm of his hand from the off. Playing material mostly drawn from his latest album I couldn't give a damn that the only song I knew the whole night was "Pablo Picasso". He's just so incredibly charming and unendlessly charismatic, and there's a constant twinkle in his eye. People were giggling like kids in the back of a classroom at seemingly random points throughout the set and it was only midway through it did I realise that it was because he'd caught their eye and was giving them a funny look. And boy can he dance." (read more)


Jonathan, What's Happening? by Diamond Geyser

Below is a picture from Belfast- Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (11 May)


Jonathan Richman by Gareth Mooney

Back at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London with The Word Magazine, Mark Ellen calls David Hepworth to tell him about his and Robyn Hitchcock's backstage encounter with Jonathan Richman (about 20 minutes into podcast)

New Great Outdoors Podcast

Relevant bit of Word Magazine podcast (temporarily peeled):


More videos from Shepherd's Bush Empire (London):

Pablo Picasso

Dancing in the Lesbian Bar

Cell Phone Song I

Cell Phone Song II


Shepherd's Bush Empire by Babararacucudada

〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜

Spring 2008 schedule reposted for archives:

FRANCE & ITALY

Fri 02 May Toulouse (Theatre Garonne) with Suzanne Piesker
Sat 03 May Marseille (Le Poste à Galène) with Suzanne Piesker
Mon 5 May Rome (Stazione Birra) with Suzanne Piesker
Tue 6 May Milan (La Casa 139) with Suzanne Piesker
Wed 07 May PARIS (Le Nouveau Casino) with Suzanne Piesker

ENGLAND

Fri 09 May London England (Shepherd's Bush Empire

IRELAND

Sat 10 May Dublin (Whelans)
Sun 11 May Belfast (Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival)
Mon 12 May Galway (Roisin Dubh)

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Of Mere Being: Vic Chesnutt

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

-- Wallace Stevens "Of Mere Being"

We saw Jonathan Richman and Tommy Larkins at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, on a Saturday night (1 March). It was the beginning of their tour with Vic Chesnutt, and was billed as an "early show" which made for some anxiety since we couldn't get there "early" and besides which I was sick as a puppy and couldn't stand up. But not to worry, as it turned out they were late and started at the regular time anyway. I actually had a moment to spend at the X-Ray Cafe next door getting a therapeutic hug and encouragement from muse Paul Thomas, after which I was ready to brave the night. We walked in the door right behind Vic Chesnutt, who breezily rolled on through.

The reviews already posted on Jojoblog of the later shows more or less sum up the current tour. An evening with Jonathan and Tommy is always a fun evening that inevitably ends too soon. The crowd was hooked into the show as one from the opening chord and an exceptionally good time was had by all, except for by (perhaps) the people talking on their cell phones.


photo: Mike White deadlydesigns.com

The brilliant modern poet-songwriter Vic Chesnutt opened by flying up onto the high stage (helped by burly stagehands). He drifted into his songs in between chatting amiably and wandering into strange turns where his mind turned things over examining them from different angles. A touch of laryngitis didn't stop him from being his twinkly self.


photo: Mike White deadlydesigns.com

I love Vic Chesnutt and I don't understand why the show reviews so far don't mention more about him. Perhaps he's a bit too sardonic or spontaneous to anticipate what he'll do next so he's hard to fit to a groove. Perhaps he's too cerebral, or earthy, or salty, and therefore a tad uncomfortable for folks just wanting to have a night out, unchallenged. Allen Ginsberg called him an idiot, but not for the unfettered artistry of his vision. He's a perfect ground and foil to Jonathan's lofty heights and energy. They're like the angel and devil that sit on a body's shoulders, both sipping the same stream-strength of consciousness, partaking of the same fragile humanity, outside the main and happy out there.


photo: Mike White deadlydesigns.com

Vic Chesnutt's Morally Challenged live at 40 Watt (played on the omnichord):

Morally Challenged

"Should I do one I just wrote the other day? I don't know if it's good or not...

"I'm really an idiot for doing this...

"I'm an idiot. I should not do this. It might really be embarrassing. In fact I know it is. Why would I do this...

"Ok, I'll do it. It's really not good. Why am I doing this?"

After the show I asked Vic what he was going to call the new song. He smiled and looked away into the distance. "I don't know........

"I think....... I'll call it........uh......uhm........hmmmmnnn.

"'Robert Wyatt'," he said gently into the night. I looked at him, trying to repeat the words, not understanding.

"Robert Wyatt," he repeated patiently, turning to me with a smile.

"Oh! Is that a poet?"

"He's a songwriter."

Listen to more live Vic Chesnutt from the 40 Watt in Athens (and the next night in Atlanta at The Earl) at Southern Shelter



Vic Chesnutt's newest official release is the powerful North Star Deserter, recorded with Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, and more.


Vic Chesnutt's "Debriefing" from North Star Deserter, live in Munich 7 November 2007, featuring Vic Chesnutt's mighty howl

Vic Chesnutt website

Also of interest: Vic Chesnutt joined friends Cowboy Junkies to record Trinity Revisited (article in Harp Magazine)

More about Vic Chesnutt

More photos of Jonathan Richman and Vic Chesnutt taken by Mike White at the 40 Watt on deadlydesigns.com

from musicdirect: tracklist for Because Her Beauty is Raw and Wild

musicdirect is showing Because Her Beauty is Raw and Wild on vinyl as follows:

Jonathan Richman Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild (LP + 7" Single With Bonus Track)

Jonathan Richman is one of modern music's most original artists, and quite possibly the friendliest, most sincere live performer on the face of the earth. This is his fifth release on Vapor, and his first new album in three years. Features eleven new tracks, plus a new version of "Old World" and a Leonard Cohen cover, "Here It Is". Vinyl version of Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild features Bonus Track on a 7-inch Single.

Jonathan Richman Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild Track Listing

1. Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild
2. No One Was Like Vermeer
3. Time Has Been Going By So Fast
4. Es Como El Pan
5. Our Drab Ways
6. The Lovers Are Here And They’re Full Of Sweat
7. Le Printemps Des Amoreux Est Venue
8. When We Refuse To Suffer
9. This Romance Will Be Different For Me
10. Old World
11. Our Party Will Be On The Beach Tonight
12. When We Refuse To Suffer
13. Here It Is
14. As My Mother Lay Lying

thanks, Jerry!

I Am Not Hippy Johnny

How Jonathan Richman used his outsider status to revolutionize rock and roll
BY TONY MICHELS

(From Guilt & Pleasure 6: The Sound Issue)

I then realized what my father had said earlier, in the ’50s: “You’re not Jewish, you’re not in the Mafia, you’re not black, and you’re not a hillbilly. Why the fuck do you think you can be in the music business?”
— Interview with Kim Fowley, Ugly Things magazine, 2001

During the early 1970s, Jonathan Richman and his band the Modern Lovers launched a small revolt against the rock world. In a period when rock music had become heavy, mellow, ponderous, and technical — sometimes all at once — the Modern Lovers stood for raw simplicity. They wanted nothing to do with meandering blues jams or ten-minute drum solos or trippy sound effects or forty-foot Marshall amps. Stark, energetic rock and roll was what they played. In his oddly nasal voice, Richman sang about girls, neon signs, highways, and other things he loved. He also sang about things he hated: long hair, bell-bottoms, emotional detachment, and drugs. Within Richman’s idiosyncratic mind, an unlikely assortment of bands — from the Velvet Underground to the Beach Boys to the Stooges to Question Mark and the Mysterians — seemed to coexist happily until he and the Modern Lovers reconfigured them into something better.

Writers and musicians alike have rightly credited Richman as a forerunner of the punk revolution. His minimalism, defiance toward everything “hip,” and knack for writing oddball lyrics (his observation that “Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole” will remain immortal) helped to establish the fundamentals of punk. The Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and many others have acknowledged their debt.

But Richman can also be viewed as one in a line of Jews who exercised a defining influence on rock and roll between the 1950s and 1970s. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed (Richman’s main musical hero) immediately come to mind. True, most musicians of Jewish background — and quite likely Richman himself — would object to being classified as Jewish musicians. They didn’t set out to create Jewish music in whatever form. On the contrary: they usually embraced the music of other groups, especially black music. Why should they be pigeonholed by an accidental fact of birth? Yet one can’t help but notice, as Kim Fowley’s father did in the 1950s, the high number of Jews who populated the music business. And then one can’t help but wonder how their Jewish backgrounds might have been relevant to their music.

-----

For the purpose of making sense of Jonathan Richman, the ideas of Polish-Jewish Marxist Isaac Deutscher are helpful. In his famous 1958 essay “The Non-Jewish Jew,” Deutscher attempted to explain why Jews ranked highly among modern Europe’s most innovative thinkers: people such as Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. He did not attribute this to superior genes or religious values; instead, Deutscher came up with a sociological explanation. Many of Europe’s great iconoclasts, he said, were Jews who had “looked for ideals and fulfillment” beyond Jewry but could not gain full entry into the larger, gentile society. As outsiders twice over, these “non-Jewish Jews” adhered to no entrenched beliefs. They could perceive what members of the majority could not, leading them to develop all sorts of subversive theories in the arts and sciences. Those theories were born out of a certain Jewish condition without expressing any directly Jewish beliefs.

Deutscher did not write “The Non-Jewish Jew” with young, postwar, suburban Jews in mind; he likely would have seen them as too affluent, assimilated, and contented compared to the people he discussed. What Deutscher wouldn’t have been able to perceive, however, was the dissonance many Jews felt in suburban America. Jewish kids typically weren’t captains of the football team or homecoming queens. They weren’t likely to be voted Cutest or Most Desired Desert Island Companion, although they stood a good chance of winning Funniest or Class Treasurer. They worried about their noses and hard-to-manage hair and the humiliation of having to shave a nascent moustache in the seventh grade. They faced occasional taunts and the odd punch. And they suffered through Hebrew school several days a week while their gentile peers ran free. Those suburban Jews were not ostracized, but they didn’t quite fit into the mainstream, either.

They had two basic choices, the Jews of suburbia. They could try to adapt (which entailed its own psychological and practical challenges) or go their own way. Jonathan Richman chose the second route.

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Born in 1951, Richman grew up in the Boston suburb of Natick, in one of its new, predominantly Jewish developments. Nobody would have mistaken him for a juvenile delinquent — he didn’t get into fights or steal cars — but Richman clearly went against the grain. He behaved in strange ways, turning at right angles when he walked or drawing treble dials on his pants, which got him into trouble with his teachers. He was the first and perhaps the only guy at Natick High to wear leather trousers. In songs and interviews, Richman would often complain about feeling lonely and misunderstood as a teenager. “Terrible things” happened in high school, he has said. Still, Richman wasn’t a loner. He had a circle of friends — mostly Hebrew-school malcontents like himself — who shared common interests in art, music, and books. He wasn’t a good student, but he was smart and liked to discuss “cutting-edge stuff” from alternative magazines such as The East Village Other and The Avatar. If Richman derived anything meaningful from his Jewish upbringing, music writer and childhood friend Jay Dobis tells me, it was “a great respect” for learning and culture encouraged by his parents.

Like most teenagers, Richman loved rock and roll, but he thought about it more seriously and unconventionally than most kids his age. By the time he turned sixteen, he had published a review of the Velvet Underground’s first album in the Boston music magazine Vibrations. He followed with a precocious article on “New York Art and the Velvet Underground,” in which he charted rock’s future over the next three years. On a vertical axis stretching from “Death” at the bottom to “God” at the top, Richman projected the demise of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and pretentious “art-rock” groups such as the Doors, Traffic, and Cream — a fairly accurate prediction, as things turned out. The Beatles and the Who held high and steady on Richman’s graph, while the Velvets soared past them toward God [see this chart here- rb]. They evidently offered some spiritual meaning Richman couldn’t find in Hebrew school or synagogue. (In a later interview, Richman said he considered the Velvets’ music a form of gospel.) According to Richman, their “honesty,” “functionality,” “black lyrics,” “black rhythms,” “sense of humor,” and “eroticism” comprised the ingredients of true art, not like the “shit” emanating from Haight-Ashbury at that time. Richman soon became a protégé of the Velvets, often sneaking to New York on weekends to hang out with the band and Warhol’s crowd. Rumor had it that Richman saw them play upward of a hundred times.

Richman also took up guitar after hearing the Velvets’ first album and quickly began performing solo. He often played outdoors in the Cambridge Common — “hippie central,” according to one Boston music veteran — where he would yell things such as, “I’m not a hippie! I’m not stoned!” at anyone within earshot. He also played in coffeehouses and opened for unlikely bands, such as the Grateful Dead and the J. Geils Band, which was either self-punishment or provocation. After graduating from high school in 1969, Richman moved to New York, where he continued to hang out with the Velvets and perform with his electric guitar. He grew disenchanted with the downtown scene, however, and left a year later.

Before resettling in Boston, Richman visited a cousin in Israel, where the country’s natural beauty struck him. It was during that trip that Richman decided to form a band. “The actual decision had been made,” according to Richman’s unofficial biographer, Tim Mitchell, “while staring at a full moon one night in Jerusalem.” Thus inspired, Richman formed the Modern Lovers in September 1970 with his next-door neighbor John Felice. Several other guys he knew from Cambridge, including Jerry Harrison (later of the Talking Heads) and David Robinson (later of the Cars), joined them.

Richman brought to the Modern Lovers the perspective of somebody always standing on the fringe. He loved his parents, who supported his interest in music from the start. Yet he rejected their desire for middle class respectability. He hated Hebrew school and showed no apparent identification with Judaism after his bar mitzvah. (Richman also seemed to have had troubled relationships with Jewish girls: the song “Hospital” was “all about” the “Jewish princess phenomenon,” Richman revealed at a 1973 show in Berkeley.) Yet he found Natick’s social world to be equally confining. Within the rock scene, Richman also seemed to be of two minds. He embraced experimental groups such as the Velvets and the Stooges, which put him at odds with about 99 percent of rock fans at the time. Yet he couldn’t stand the drug-saturated decadence that surrounded both groups. The young Jonathan Richman fit in nowhere.

From his position on the margins, Richman developed a unique rock and roll persona that could be described as part provocateur, part nice Jewish boy. He insisted on wearing short hair (“so you can see my face”) and plain clothes: starched white collared shirts, straight-legged slacks, and sneakers or pointed shoes. Sometimes he donned a tie and a sport coat. Other times he wore white T-shirts scrawled with handwritten slogans such as “I Love My Life.” Ziggy Stardust he was not. Richman felt nothing but contempt for the trappings of rock stardom: costumes, platform heels, glitter, makeup, all of it. “I hate money on stage,” Richman told Interview magazine in 1973. “I detest it.” In the words of one journalist, Richman looked like a “Jewish boy scout with an adenoidal drawl.”

Audiences did not know what to make of Richman. Was this guy a put-on? A colossal geek? Strung out? His friend Jay Dobis recalls being asked, “Which drugs does Jonathan do and in what vast quantities?” Richman seemed just too weird to be straight. During slow songs, Richman would work himself up to the point of tears, then drop to his knees James Brown–style and bang the microphone stand on the floor. Before up-tempo numbers, he would invite audience members to dance, a mischievous gesture at a time when rock music had all but ceased to be dance music. Eric Clapton, on the pages of Rolling Stone, had gone so far as to ask fans to remain in their seats so they could appreciate his virtuosity. As if in response, Richman assured audiences he wouldn’t be offended if they danced. He also practiced new songs during sets and even switched instruments with band members for fun. “I think this is great,” someone commented to writer Greil Marcus at a 1972 show. “Or is it terrible?”

While Richman and the Modern Lovers puzzled some people, they angered others. At a YMCA gig, people spat and threw cans from the balcony. In southern California, a large crowd greeted them with rocks and bottles when they opened for soul/funk outfit Tower of Power. After the set, ex-Byrd Gram Parsons had to rescue the band from toughs waiting backstage.

But Richman thrived on confrontation, if not on threats of physical violence. “[T]he whole reason we’re doing what we’re doing,” he told Interview, “is to be contrary.” When students at a high school dance demanded familiar covers, the Modern Lovers tortured them with an improvisation of Led Zeppelin II. Shows at Harvard went slightly better. “They wanted to hear the Rolling Stones,” Jerry Harrison recalls. “We definitely didn’t give ’em what they wanted.” Likewise, Richman didn’t care if people disliked his clean-cut appearance; he wanted them to react. “Actually it helps my stage act to wear something I know someone else hates,” he continued in Interview. “It makes me feel stronger. It makes me feel persecuted. I feel I have this power inside me and I know, overcoming all obstacles, the Modern Lovers will triumph.” Out of his experience as a suburban Jewish misfit — not a nerd, but cool in a way no cool crowd could recognize — Richman fashioned a defiant rock and roll stance.

Rock and roll and youth rebellion had always gone hand-in-hand, but Richman broke the mold by turning rock’s rebelliousness against itself. He did not direct his anger at the standard authority figures — parents, teachers, cops, politicians — forever telling kids what they could or could not do. “I still love my parents,” he proclaimed in the song “Old World,” and he meant it sincerely. After all, Mr. Richman had paid for Jonathan’s first guitar and lent him the family station wagon to use for gigs. For her part, Mrs. Richman fed the Modern Lovers with frequent care packages. If she could sometimes be a little overbearing (like the time she forced Jonathan to try on a new sweater in front of his bandmates), well, that was a nuisance he could tolerate. Jonathan loved his mother like any nice Jewish boy would, except that this nice Jewish boy also played a “shattering guitar,” to quote Marcus, inspired by Velvet Underground songs about junkies and S & M.

Richman focused his outrage on hippies. An outspoken critic of the Vietnam War even in high school, Richman was no conservative. But in Richman’s eyes, hippies were frauds who hid behind long hair and drugs so they wouldn’t have to express an authentic emotion. They affected spiritual depth but were actually afraid to “take this place and take it straight,” as he charged in his song “I’m Straight.” For Richman the counterculture represented a new kind of deadening conformity. That “bell-bottom–wearing assholes” always seemed to attract the girls Richman wanted only fueled his outrage.

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The Modern Lovers never developed a mass following, but audiences eventually grew larger and writers began to take notice. Influential critic Lillian Roxon was an important early ally. Roxon made a trip to Boston in late 1971 at the insistence of Danny Fields, who had earlier signed the Stooges to Elektra and would later manage the Ramones. Roxon, herself a Jew who didn’t do drugs, perhaps felt a certain kinship with Richman. She wrote a brief but rave review of the Modern Lovers at the end of her New York Daily News column, and word of mouth spread quickly. Record labels started courting the band and, in an unusual move, both Warner Brothers and A&M agreed to fly them to Los Angeles to record two batches of demos. After they returned to Boston, the Modern Lovers recorded more tracks with the ubiquitous entrepreneur Kim Fowley.

The various demos recorded between 1972 and 1973 together constituted a masterpiece: a succinct demonstration of how the avant could and should be made into pop. Richman drew extensively from the Velvets and the Stooges, as he readily acknowledged. You can hear their influences in the harsh “New York subway sound” (Richman’s words) of the guitar and keyboard, the hammering chords, Richman’s off-key intonations, and his lyrical improvisations. It’s not for nothing that the band chose the Velvets’ John Cale to produce their Warner’s tracks.

Yet Richman assembled his influences in ingenious ways. “Roadrunner,” the Modern Lovers’ signature song, is basically a stripped-down, reconstructed version of the Velvets’ “Sister Ray.” Amid the seventeen-minute morass of noise and semi-audible utterances about shooting junk, Richman somehow perceived the beauty of “Sister Ray’s” three basic chords. He then reduced the three chords to two and added joyous lyrics about driving on the highway at night, listening to the radio — not the cool, free-form FM stations (home of Richman’s hated “art rock”), but good old Top 40 AM, where he first heard rock and roll as a boy. “Roadrunner” clocks in at around four minutes, depending on the version, but nobody with a soul would want it to ever end.

The Modern Lovers, however, came to an end all too soon. By mid-1973, Richman had grown bored with the band’s existing material and announced he would no longer play any of it live. He wanted to play softer music. His stubbornness led to infighting and pressure from Warner Brothers, who had signed the Modern Lovers to a reputedly large contract. Things finally fell apart at the beginning of 1974. The band’s recordings for Warner Brothers and A&M languished until a small label released nine of them in 1976. [read Lester Bangs's review of the 1976 lineup of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers here- rb] During the 1980s and 1990s, most of the remaining demos, along with live recordings, would appear on various small labels.

Three decades later, those old tracks still sound exciting and defiant. Richman’s purity of feeling — his love and anger — stands as a permanent protest against the jaded and detached attitudes that continue to plague rock music. And beneath his songs lies a Jewish story about an eccentric from the Boston suburbs who rebelled against his generation in an attempt to save rock music from itself.


Postscript: Jay Dobis reports that Richman has resumed learning Hebrew and is currently writing a short song entirely in the language. His childhood Hebrew teachers would be surprised.

###

Thank you to Tony Michels, Shaina Feinberg at Guilt & Pleasure, and to Devon!

Also of interest: From Oi to Oy: is Hardcore Punk Suddenly Kosher by Steven Beeber

The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk



<<return to Jojoblog

Interview #15 : Greg "Curly" Keranen

Thanks to Bob, I managed to contact Greg “Curly” Keranen who must be the ultimate Modern Lover, the musician whose collaboration with Jonathan has lasted the longest time, though Tom Larkins must be close. He is still involved in Jonathan projects today and they are close friends.

(picture courtesy of G. Keranen)

Curly as a bass player became famous for the opening lines of “Egyptian Reggae”, He started to work with Jonathan already when he was in the Rubinoos. He is part of the historical Modern Lovers line-up which recorded “Rock’n Roll with the Modern Lovers." He was also with Jonathan at the time of the Rockin Robins.

All the details are explained by Greg below and the infamous “lost full orchestra album” story is eventually clarified. Greg has also been interested for ages in Brazilian music, bossa nova and jazz; he even played with Stan Getz who is the perfect link between both musical channels. To us he is Greg “Curly” Keranen, to the bossa nova fans he is João Dilberto, his alter ego, moreover he is a trained computer expert. He has his own website which I encourage you to visit at http://www.dilberto.com.

I started by mentioning to Greg how the "Beserkley Chartbusters vol.1" LP had been important in my life -so to say- as well as the following albums of Jonathan and his Modern Lovers on that Californian label.

Today these albums still produce happiness in me, just simple stupid joy. These records were a way to escape the greyness and they made me smile as will do a Jonathan concert today.

Greg, you were part of that magic, specially on that "Rock'n Roll with the Modern Lovers" LP.

The most important records for me were:
1964 - The Beatles - I Wanna Hold Your Hand; Meet the Beatles LP
1973 - Chick Corea - Return to Forever LP, Light As A Feather LP
2006 - Sylvain Luc

Though I can't speak for him, I know some of the most important, for Jonathan, were:

Buddy Holly
Velvet Underground
Iggy & The Stooges

Recently, we've been talking about how different types of musical temperament affect you - Equal Temperament versus Just Intonation, etc. Jonathan bought me the Albert Ayler 'Holy Ghost' boxed set a few weeks ago, and I volleyed back with a Keith Jarrett 'The Impulse Years'.

-Speaking of which I shall ask my first question about the song "Dodge Veg-O-Matic". In the CD reedition of that song, there is a spoken intro part. Was that you making fun of Jonathan about this old car ?

No. That was Leroy Radcliffe. That record was very much like our rehearsals - we were always joking around and playing roles. One of the great things about Jonathan is how he is able to mix comedy and sincerity - a lot of people can't figure out how to handle it - they want to know: is Jonathan really serious or not? They want things to be black or white. Jonathan is all about color.



Curly, Jonathan and Leroy

- You were a founder member of the Rubinoos, a major power pop band in its time.The Rubinoos used to be a backing band for Jonathan after the 1st Modern Lovers disbanded, what was the setlist Jonathan would be performing then and what was the audience reaction ?

I don't think the Rubinoos ever played a live gig with Jonathan except for possibly sitting in with us at the "Longbranch Saloon" in Berkeley, and a bit of a publicity stunt rendition of "The New Teller" and "Government Center" that I think we played on the street in the San Francisco Financial District around the time the record came out. Therefore, there was never a 'set list', except for the tunes on the Chartbusters LP.

- With that band you had a few songs on the "Beserkley chartbusters vol I " record, as did Greg Kihn, Earthquake and Jonathan. Did you enjoy recording with Jonathan on two of his songs ("Government Center" and "New Teller") ?

Absolutely! It was Rock and Roll - the real thing!

That was the kind of music that we originally created the Rubinoos to play, but by the time we met Jonathan, The Rubinoos had become something completely different - a 'pop' band. Originally, we were an Oldies band, doing songs by Bill Haley, Chubby Checker, The Troggs, etc. I never really cared much for 'pop' music - my passion was jazz - but I played in the band because they were some of my best friends and it was a chance to play on bigger stages. But my heart wasn't in it; I left the Rubinoos soon after meeting Jonathan.

Unlike all of us in the Rubinoos, who thought we had to become 'entertainers' to be successful in the music business, Jonathan was a real entertainer - and a real person! I had never met anyone like him before. All I really wanted to do was to play music and have fun. Jonathan took care of the entertainment and the fun, and the music took care of itself.

- On that same record is my favourite version of "Roadrunner". Were you on it or was it strictly Earthquake backing Jonathan? What are your memories of those sessions?

Earthquake backed Jojo on Roadrunner. I wasn't involved in the sessions except possibly to add
some handclaps or backing vocals.

The sessions went down quickly - maybe two takes. Jonathan was doing push-ups and eating a lot of health food at the time, running a lot. He was healthy and very high energy and feeling really great to be finally free of the music "industry" in L.A. He really fell in love with Berkeley - singing and playing on the street all the time, on campus, sleeping on floors, etc.

- Was it the first time you were confronted to Jonathan ? Had you seen him in the previous years when he was on the west coast with the 1st line up of the Modern Lovers? If so, how were the gigs?

I hooked up with Jonathan because, after he disbanded The Modern Lovers, The Rubinoos manager, Matthew Kaufman -founder of Beserkley records and self proclaimed "reigning looney"-, had signed Jonathan to do Beserkley Chartbusters and Jonathan didn't have a band.

Jonathan had played a gig, with his original Modern Lovers band, at a local club in Berkeley,
called "The Longbranch Saloon", where all the Beserkley acts used to play. Everybody loved him but I didn't see that gig and had never heard of Jonathan. I was sort of thrust into the situation of meeting Jonathan because it was Matthew's idea. Jonathan really loved our innocence, after having just "Escaped from LA" with a big record company and a band with a lot of egos trying to force him down a "career path" in the rock industry.

- You recorded the beautiful "Rock'n roll with the Modern Lovers" album. The band at that time seemed ideal for the sound Jonathan wanted to get. Could you tell us about the conditions of recordings? There was also those reports saying that Jonathan was applying some para-military like style of life to his band, with fitness program and proper diet; could you comment on that? Were you all happy with this?

You're right - it might possibly have been the most 'perfect' alignment between Jonathan and a band that has existed.

I think that this record marks the point where Jonathan finally found a new identity that was
all his own - he had clearly gone beyond the 'Velvet Underground' period.

At the time, a lot of people weren't quite ready for that evolution since the first Modern Lovers
demo sessions had only just, finally, just been released, after being acquired by Beserkley Records. We played an important concert at Town Hall in New York right after that record came out and it was attended by a lot of fans and artists who expected to hear the original Modern Lovers songs. Sure we played the hell out of "Road Runner," but by the time we got to the 10th encore of "Ice Cream Man" there was a bit of booing from the audience. Reactions were really mixed, but that show succeeded in getting a lot of attention.

That mythical LP, Curly right on acoustic bass


But let me back up a minute.

The acoustic bass was a really important part of that evolution in Jonathan's music. I had started acoustic bass, along with electric, on Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers LP but by the time of Rock 'n' Roll With the Modern Lovers, we had stopped using the electric bass entirely.

It was like returning to the roots of Rock and Roll - we were playing Joe Turner songs (who I actually played with at the same time, incidentally) - when bands like the Talking Heads
were going in the opposite direction - towards technology - while Jonathan was moving away from that; moving more toward jazz.

After Chartbusters, Jonathan still didn't have a band but it was time to make the first, really official, Jonathan Richman LP.

I had been riding my bicycle around Europe in the autumn of 1975. I was in Barcelona on the day of General Franco's funeral - communists and fascists in the streets, lots of guns, and really great paella - and I phoned home to learn that Jonathan had been trying to locate me to join his band. I went to Andalucia for a week or so and then flew home.

I called up, talked to Jonathan on the phone, then to his manager, who offered me the gig.

I was only 17 then, but I had one condition - if Jonathan wanted me to play acoustic bass, then I needed a really nice one. Stanley Clarke and Eddie Gomez were my idols then but all I had was a plywood Kay bass. That would have been fine for Jonathan, but not for me.

Anyway, Beserkley agreed to buy me a better bass, which they later did, in style. I packed up and moved to Boston. That was the time that I joined the Modern Lovers.

When I got to Boston, Jonathan had already teamed up with Leroy Radcliffe and had re-hired David Robinson, who had been the drummer with the original Modern Lovers band.

It was surprising to me that Jonathan had invited David back since he was quite determined to forge a new path from the sound, and politics, of that band. David really loved Jonathan's music and had agreed to completely follow Jonathan's direction, this time around.

I really loved David's playing - especially when we played Road Runner! David loved that music but Jonathan held us all on a very tight leash - he was afraid of slipping back into the 'old' sound, especially in terms of dynamics - he wanted to play quieter, not louder.

This was really frustrating for David - I also really wished that Jonathan would just let go and
rock harder - but that was not to be. Every time David started getting into it, Jonathan would tell him to quiet down.

One day, at a rehearsal, Jonathan tried putting a towel over David's snare and still, it wasn't quiet enough for him! Jonathan's standard back then was that he wanted to make music that would be accessible to even a baby's sensitive ears. He still wanted to play Rock and Roll with a lot of intensity and playfulness, but felt that it should never damage anybody's ears. What a concept! His former idols, The Velvet Underground, were into heroin; Iggy Pop was into self-mutilation. Jonathan was into health food, loved singing for people in nursing home, and babies.

That was enough for David - he quit on the spot. He just couldn't understand it and, wasn't really technically prepared - what Jonathan really needed was a drummer with jazz chops.

David's departure was a tipping point that released a lot of tension for everybody. It was best for David since, soon thereafter, he started the band, The Cars, with Rick Ocasek and got to do just what he wanted.

We didn't have a drummer for awhile, after David left. This brings me to the next huge evolution in our music - our next drummer, D. Sharp, whose first name was David but everybody called him "D. Sharp".


D. Sharp was one of the busiest and best jazz drummers in Boston at the time. We only happened to meet him because we had decided to rent his basement as a rehearsal space. D. Sharp's wife, Nancy, used to serve us all macrobiotic lunches and D. Sharp would hang out and jam with us, then run off to play a jazz gig somewhere.

D. Sharp heard something in Jonathan's music that nobody had ever heard before - jazz. But not just jazz like the 'Roots of Rock' type of thing - Joe Turner, Illinois Jacquet, etc. D. Sharp loved Jonathan because he thought he was really "out there" - truly 'avant-garde' - more like Sun Ra than the rest of Rock and Roll.

A good example was the snare drum issue. Whereas David Robinson quit because he was muffled to death, D. Sharp delighted in finding a musical solution: enter the 1947 De Soto hub cap, cum 'snare drum'!

In place of the traditional snare, D. Sharp placed a 1947 De Soto hub cap, which he played with mallets, along with an assorted array of pot lids hanging from a rack, a huge African drum, covered with zebra skin, Brazilian cuica, etc. On a song like "Afternoon" he used to actually play the AIR, with brushes, as Jonathan sang, "...the wind...I am, I am..."

I get chills up my spine just thinking about that stuff. It was really deep. The deepest was when we just practiced outside somewhere. Jonathan wrote a lot of songs about the city, bleak, industrial zones - but it was the natural mystery behind such things that he was really trying to evoke. We were so close that we would rehearse for hours and nobody would say a word to disturb the trance. It was a continuous flow of music and spirit that possessed us all. Lots and lots of eye-contact. All the time. That's something that most people are very poor at - they are so self-centered. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to shut off all the nervous energy, the trivial conversation and to approach music like it is a natural force, or prayer, to be channeled, nurtured and respected.

You might say Jonathan was closer to a mystic than a drill sergeant :-)

There were times when we used to do push-ups together, jumping jacks and vocal exercises. Mostly that was in the period between David Robinson and D. Sharp - when Jonathan seemed to need to know he was still in control of his band. Leroy and I enjoyed it so it wasn't a big deal. After all, Jonathan was our employer. The thing was that he saw music and diet and exercise as being inter-related - he sometimes directed us in exercising but he never told us what to eat, though alcohol wasn't allowed at gigs.

When D. Sharp joined the band, Jonathan relaxed a lot! First of all, D. Sharp was older and a bit more experienced than the rest of us, and he wouldn't be dictated to. Also, Jonathan felt less threatened by 'rebelliousness' from the band since the music had evolved to a higher level.

- What is your favourite song of all the songs you played backing Jonathan ?

Probably the ones I didn't have to sing on.

"Afternoon" was our favorite 'spiritual'
"South American Folk Song" was maybe the most fun
"Road Runner" had hypnotic power and sex appeal

- Tim Mitchell mentions in his book ("There's Something About Jonathan") that there was an album recorded with a full orchestra at the Gold star studios with Phil Spector's engineers which Jonathan rejected even though Matthew Kaufman described the result as just magic. Apparently you were one of the happy few who heard those tapes, what did it sound like ?

So the true story has never been exposed yet?
Yes, I heard the tapes, but they did not make me happy.

Actually, I was the one responsible for Jonathan deciding to ditch those tapes, to the great dismay of Matthew Kaufman who had already spent a fortune producing those sessions with the likes of Steve Douglas, Carol Kaye, etc.

What happened was that I had just dropped out of College at the University of Chicago, in my senior year, to rejoin Jonathan's band. We met up in Berkeley and he was really excited to play me the tapes. One song I remember was "Let's Take the Long Way Home", which had originally been recorded by Bing Crosby.

They had recorded a full string section, just like the Bing Crosby record! Imagine hearing Jonathan's voice in place of Bing Crosby's - it was horrible. In that kind of setting, all I could hear was how out of tune and nasal Jonathan's voice sounded, and how awkward it all was. The kind of hyper-emotional passion Jonathan was trying to evoke might have worked with solo guitar, but not with an orchestra, and the memory in the mind of the listener of how Bing Crosby would have sounded, in contrast - smooth and confident, not wavering.

One of the reasons that Jonathan and I have stayed such good friends for so long is that we have always been perfectly honest with one another. On this occasion, I told him what I heard and he listened to it all with new ears and decided that he agreed with me. That was the end of it - a failed experiment.

-You were part of the glorious Rockin Robins period, how do you consider that time in Jonathan's career?



Greg -on the left- with the Rockin' Robins

It was a lot of fun! I think there is something very fresh about the female energy that they both added. That was a great change of direction from the all-male bands Jonathan had had for years. However, there was some frustration during that period in Jonathan's personal and business life since he was yet to be united with his first wife, Gail, and, during this time, problems with management came to a head and culminated in Jonathan's decision to fire Matthew Kaufman and leave Beserkley Records and to hire a new manager, Norman Epstein, and sign with a new record company, Sire Records.

- Do you still see Beth and Ellie?

Not for many years now, unfortunately. Beth is a successful independent film producer who does documentaries and got married and lives in the Pacific Northwest, last I heard.

Ellie, Jonathan and Michael on stage

- How was life during those tours you were doing over the US and in Europe? Were the audiences differently reacting, in the US and abroad?

Europe was definitely more intense. I only did one European tour with Jonathan and it burned me out! Too many tiny clubs with low ceilings and cigarette smoke so thick that the tar would be dripping with sweat down my glasses on my way to the stage! Too many clubs where some punk had committed suicide the night before.

I really hate the punk rock scene - definitely not healthy for the ears. In spite of Jonathan distancing himself from all of that energy, some of his biggest fans were people like the Ramones and we would always get booked into punk rock clubs where we had to wear earplugs all the time we weren't on stage. Ridiculous.

I left the band after our last gig in London and moved to Ireland and studied classical guitar for 9 months, then went to Spain to study flamenco guitar and renewed my love for jazz and Brazilian music after that.

- What is it according to you that makes Jonathan concerts different ? I mean I have
never seen so many people smiling in front of a performer.

I'm sure it is different for everybody.

Aside from intangible words like "charisma" and "personality", for me it is the level of honesty and humanity that Jonathan brings out in his story-telling. Maybe I said it before, 'color' - Jonathan is multi-dimensional. He is like a fine film - one where just when you thought you identified the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys', it turns out that the characters actually are real people, with good and bad and everything in between.

Jonathan makes me smile because he reaches out and is not afraid to touch and to be touched and to be really honest and vulnerable and funny too.

-You are from the West Coast, did you understand what Boston meant to Jonathan when you went there with the band ?

Sort of. I drove around to all the places that Jonathan sang about, like Route 128 and the Fenway, Combat Zone, etc. I lived there for a couple of years and enjoyed it. But for Jonathan it was different - maybe not always enjoyable but it was where he grew up and it affected him. For him, it was driving around in cars beneath the buzzing power lines and wandering, lonely, around the Gardner Museum. For me, it was the the fog from the SF Bay, smell of Eucalyptus trees in the East Bay Hills, acid trips and hippies :-)

- You have been one of the musicians who played the most with Jonathan through the years, what do you think of his current songs ?

Jonathan is always coming up with something new and fresh and I always am blown away with one or two songs that he is writing. Recently, we've been recording a new song that deals with the subject of death. Both Jonathan and I have lost a parent in recent years so I felt moved by hearing a really honest look into those emotions.

Also, Jonathan has taken a deep interest into flamenco in the last several years and I am amazed at how naturally he has been able to incorporate some flamenco ideas into his music and make it his own! Flamenco is technically quite difficult and can sound pretty bad when played with a 'macho' feeling.

A lot of Jonathan's previous music comes from a very simple tradition of rock and roll harmony - which can be boring since it only uses diatonic harmony, with little use of modulation or passing tones. That would probably be my biggest criticism of his music, for a bassist it can get boring.

Now I am hearing him venture out more - when I met him, he used to absolutely hate major seventh chords, for example, and didn't like dominant sevenths or ninths that much either. Now he is playing lydian and phrygian modal chords a lot, plus making more mistakes - which is what he likes the best! :-)

This has to do with listening and studying flamenco and jazz a lot more. Jonathan is always
learning and never afraid to try new stuff. As Miles Davis once said to Herbie Hancock: "There
ain't no such thing as a wrong note - until the note that comes AFTER the wrong note!"

- I know that you are more than keen on Brazilian music and culture. I recently saw again the old Glauber Rocha movie "Antonio das mortes" and when came the title track song I could not help but think that Jonathan was quite similar in his own way to Antonio das mortes, favouring innocence and loyalty versus profit and business. I just have to quote this beautiful unreleased song "My name is Jonathan and I can't stand seeing people with their feelings hurt?". Could you comment on that?

That was a great song. Jonathan has written a lot of songs like that that never get released but which convey a simple and powerfully honest emotion.

Jonathan and I attended a João Gilberto concert together a couple of years ago and he was really blown away. João had such a strong, beautiful voice and his guitar playing was so masterful and rock-steady. We have talked about that many times.

- What made you evolve from the Jonathan type of music to bossa nova which you play nowadays ?

Well, partly it was just a natural consequence of growing up listening to jazz. As a baby, my parents listened to a lot of jazz and occasionally hosted dinners for the likes of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman when we lived in Chicago. Then we were all listening to Bossa Nova in the 60's and the first Return to Forever LP with Flora Purim and Airto was perhaps the deepest musical experience for me.

I was not attracted to Jonathan's music so much as I became his friend and collaborator. Aside from Jonathan, I haven't really played much music besides jazz in the last 30 years or so. And, as D. Sharp put it - Jonathan has a lot in common with jazz.

As a bassist, however, I got to the point where I was tired of always being a sideman and having to depend on finding at least one other person to play with on gigs. I decided to return to my first instrument, the guitar so that I could play solo, at least occasionally. I still play bass but I won't compromise anymore. I am not interested in playing on anybody's gig unless I really like the music. It is hard finding other musicians who are willing to find a win-win - mostly the guy who organizes the band and finds the gigs considers it his or her right to call the tunes. There is so much great music out there - life is far too short to sacrifice an hour of time for $50 or even $100 on a gig.

Actually lately I'm more focused on solo jazz guitar and blues than on Bossa Nova. But bossa nova is wonderful music and I it is something that I can play solo and everybody seems to like.

But I've kind of given up on trying to sing like João Gilberto.

- Any anecdote related to Jonathan ?

Gee. I've been typing for over 4 hours at this point. I wish I could think of something simple but nothing comes to mind at the moment. Sorry. Remind me in a few weeks and I'll contribute an anectode for your blog.

Thanks Greg it has been a pleasure to discuss with you.

-- Jacques_

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