When I first set out to interview Jonathan Richman, I was met with fair warning. The prolific solo artist and former singer of the iconic rock and roll band The Modern Lovers is notoriously prickly when it comes to being interviewed. You can send him questions, but he doesn’t always answer them, and if he does, you must make sure that you do not change a single word that he has said. Oh, and did I mention that this is all done by fax machine?
Richman began his musical career with the release of 1976’s The Modern Lovers, a record rich in Velvet Underground references, songs about Pablo Picasso (who “never got called an asshole”) that included “Roadrunner,” the song that would become a proto-punk blueprint for the pending decade. Richman later left the band to pursue a solo career, aesthetically defined by his boy-next-door-meets-Italian-lover looks and near vaudevillian-like live performances. His music was featured in the ‘90s rom-com classic There’s Something About Mary, he produced Vic Chesnutt’s final album, and has released more than a dozen solo albums. He’s a true entertainer, a true eccentric and manages to exist as a relevant touring musician in the modern world without the use of a cell phone or computer.
I’m happy to report that he answered most of my questions. In great detail. Here’s a look inside the mind of one of history’s greatest modern lovers, Jonathan Richman.
Q: What is a day in the life of Jonathan Richman like?
A: What is a day in my life like? Well, today I sorted stones for a wall I’m building for someone in the extended family. I apprenticed under a stone mason for five years in the mid-1990’s whenever I wasn’t touring with music. And now I build walls, walkways (just finished one of those for another family member) and I build heavily insulated, high-thermal-mass bread ovens. This is my specialty. And earlier in the day I brought my father-in-law and my brother-in-law to visit the matriarch in the assisted-living home. I bring my guitar and entertain the dwellers there. And I sing for 2nd 3rd and 4th graders, or any age really, in the school system. I have been a volunteer this way for many years. And I was a player in a local theatre group production here a few weeks ago because a cast member had to leave suddenly. So I filled in for him. And I do translations sometimes (Italian to English) and I play guitar and tambora around the house.
One collection of poems and essays by Pasolini has five of my translations in it as well as work by seven other translators. It was published by City Lights about six or seven years ago.
[Ed. Note: In D anger: A Pasolini Anthology by Pier Paolo Pasolini]
Why do you choose to refrain from cellphones and computers?
Because I don’t even really want a telephone answering machine and I have one of those so isn’t that enough? What would I want with a little screen and a typewriter that you have to figure out. Complicated stuff was never for me. And as for cell phones – I usually don’t even answer the regular phone. And, is it not worthy of note that these new phones have made for the setting up of relay towers on almost every high hill in North America? Do the racoons like that? Do you?
I’ve seen you perform live more times than I can count. You’re one of the most blissful live acts out there. Who are your on-stage heroes?
Many! Here’s a few: Maurice Chevalier, The Marx Brothers, Victor Borge, John Lee Hooker, Van Morrison, Charles Aznavour, Edith Piaf, Mahesh Kale, Otis Redding, Cheb Khaled, Domenico Modugno, Guy Williams in the Walt Disney “Zorro” TV show.
Do you prefer to perform indoors or outdoors?
Outdoors, especially in the late afternoon or around dusk.
A lot of your songs have been influenced by Latin music. Flamenco, calypso, bossa nova... The suadade always shines through, particularly in your theatrical live performances. What first drew you to Latin music?
That was happening by the time I was three years old: I heard Bizet’s “Carmen” as I remember, and it’s been that way since then.
I read that your decision to soften your sound after The Modern Lovers was inspired by the time you had a residency at a hotel in Bermuda. Is this true?
Yes! Except it wasn’t just that and it started taking effect when The Modern Lovers was still a band. We heard a Calypso band on Bermuda called The Bermuda Strollers. I thought they swung much more than we did. But it was many things. Playing with the New York Dolls six months earlier than the Bermuda stay was also a turning point for me. I liked the “colours” I heard in their music in the some ways better than what I heard in our own. But it was many things. It was hearing reggae music several months before that. It was hearing Lead Belly. It was playing for children. It was playing in all sorts of different situations. It was women. It was so many things. And it wasn’t so much a decision as it’s been a gradual course that’s still happening now: the music is still getting softer.
A lot of your songs are about missing things that are no longer here. Like “That Summer Feeling,” which you warn will “haunt you one day in your life.” Do you enjoy the present era we live in? Or do you long for another time?
No. I want stay right here. You may notice that I hardly do any songs more than a few years old. I’m always making new ones up and I don’t try to remember old ones. The present is where I live, mostly. I don’t have scrapbooks. I have no photographs even of family. I don’t collect anything. I give things away. The present is for me, so don’t expect old stuff from me at a show!
Do you see colour in music?
Oh yes! In fact, I took up the guitar after hearing The Velvet Underground and I heard colour so much that I “saw” their sound almost as much as I heard it. As a teenager I’d been an oil painter and when I discovered music The Velvet Underground way I put down the brush and picked up the guitar, really. As a 16-year-old, it occurred to me that making atmospheres like The Velvet Underground did, I could, instead of painting a painting alone and then showing it to people. With sound I could “paint” the picture onstage with my voice and guitar right in front of the audience. And since The Velvet Underground improvised that’s what I learned to do.
* Jonathan Richman plays the Biltmore Cabaret on June 12.
