Jonathan Richman

Jonathan Richman  – Vocals & Guitar, David Robinson – Bass
Jerry Harrison – Keyboards & Ernie Brooks – Drums

Repo Man, The Sex Pistols and Something About Mary all share the same unlikely common factor – The Modern Lovers.

Or to be more precise for the purposes of this website Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers who were unlikely punk rock influences. Like Television or their initial heroes The Velvet Underground, they presented a stripped and pared down vision of music. They also had a massive stroke of luck. Their first album, if you see it in this way, wasn’t released for 5 years and when it was it found itself in tune with the New Wave and an appreciative audience. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here.

An ardent fan of the Velvet Underground (in fact he saw and hung out with them many a time) Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers perplexed and confounded alike. Picking up the torch from The Velvet Underground they released their debut album The Modern Lovers in 1976 featuring such classics as Pablo Picasso, Roadrunner and Astral Plane. Produced by John Cale, it showed minimalist songs with angst ridden attitudes. The times they were changing then and the new punk wind blowing through music found new heroes in the Modern Lovers sounds. Except they didn’t for long.

The next album in 1977 Rock’n’roll With The Modern Lovers found a whimsical almost childlike tunes like Hey There Little Insect and  Abominable Snowman In The Supermarket along with doo wop and Chuck Berry riffs.

The punks were confused but the answer was simple. That first classic album was demos recorded in 1972 and never released by Warners until Beserkley picked up the rights and released it in 1976. To put it in perspective imagine Rattus Norvegicus being followed by Golden Brown. You get the picture… Jonathan had moved on!

So had Jerry Harrison, who had co founded the band, and who left distraught at the new direction and went to Harvard to continue his studies before joining Talking Heads in 1977.

Jonathan carried on releasing singles even scoring a top 30 UK hit with the bloody annoyingly catchy Egyptian Reggae and has carried on making music ever since.

Without a shadow of a doubt Jonathan Richman is an immensely talented (and slightly off the wall) singer songwriter, and who has never really had the recognition he deserved. For the purposes of this site though we salute the man who gave us Roadrunner and The Modern Lovers album and who unwittingly whether he liked it or not helped contribute to the rich and varied seam of punk.



TalkPunk

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