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Home  Archive music profiles Jonathan Richman: Music and Smells
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Jonathan Richman: Music and Smells |
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Written by Kevin Renick
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Friday, 16 December 2005 |
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Richman doesn’t have a cynical bone in his
body, or if he does, he keeps it out of his music.
Jonathan Richman is one of those guys people mean when they say someone
“has a cult following.” His fans adore him, even though Richman is
hardly a household name. But he’s an energetic, prolific artist who
truly sounds like no one else. He loves playing live, and can be
counted on to make an appearance in St. Louis every year without fail.
And Richman seems to get as much out of each show as his fans do.
“I’m more of a live stage person than anything else,” Richman said
during a quick phone chat recently. “You get a certain feeling on a
good night. Making records is fun too, but being on stage is just a
different feel.”
Richman doesn’t have a cynical bone in his
body, or if he does, he keeps it out of his music. His latest Vapor
album, Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow, is the same
sweetly affecting travelogue and shared romantic (in the broadest
sense) diary that the Boston-bred singer has been charming his sizable
following with for years. It can be a bit of a surprise to encounter
Richman’s music for the first time. He’ll sing songs about the ice
cream man, a shopping center, a new neighborhood, or how “that summer
feeling is gonna haunt you for the rest of your life” (from one of his
most endearing tunes.). Richman writes plenty of love songs, but
they’re love songs to life itself as often as they are about women.
On the latest record’s “Springtime in New York,” a typical breezy
Richman shuffle which is strongly reminiscent of the ’60s Young Rascals
hit “Groovin,” he sings, “On Canal Street in April when it’s 60, and
the snow is melting fast/It’s still shady in the morning when you’re
laughing in your t-shirt running past/In Tompkin Square Park, a couple
is meeting/Say what you want, but I feel my heart beating/’Cause I love
springtime in New York/Springtime in New York, I do.” It’s the observed
and felt details of the commonplace—and the everyday times in life—that
are always inspiring to Richman, and always leading to songs.
And that’s the thing about him—he loves to capture those little
moments, whether it’s about “Everyday Clothes,” or “A Lonely Little
Thrift Store,” or dancing in a lesbian bar, or the simple reality (on
his new album) that “couples must fight/couples must argue/From time to
time/Must clear the air…” Richman talks to the listener like they are
always privy to the subject at hand, and he gets right to the simple
heart of the matter in a way that can startle or even embarrass at
times, but only because it’s always undeniably real. This, and his
boyish, no-frills singing style have probably kept him off radio and
away from mainstream success, but Richman has always had a strong
enough following to keep his career bicycle spokes turning. I asked him
if he always felt as exuberant and optimistic as his music seems to be.
“It’s real easy for me to just feel about a lot of things,” he said.
“Maybe I can’t tell if it’s optimistic, since the songs are mine. I
mean, there’s joy and sadness and everything in my music at the same
time…but you know, I’m always happy to be alive.”
I tell
Richman he captures the innocence and magic of childhood better than
any artist I can think of, and wonder how he taps into that so
consistently.
“Do you run?” he asks. I said that I used to, a little bit.
“You know that feeling when you’ve run a long distance, and then you
stop? What do you think about? I’ll be out running, and I just…I smell
things more. I stop and just look around. And it’ll bring me back to a
certain moment. Music and smells, they often go together for me.”
And do songs get inspired by these moments of heightened awareness?
Certainly a song like “Springtime in New York” from the new album would
seem to arise from that sense of atmosphere and immediacy.
“Sometimes if I get a really strong feeling, then I’ll try to capture
it in a song,” said Richman. “And sometimes I make things up right on
the stage…On ‘Springtime in New York,’ I was just really remembering
that feeling, of being in New York at that time. When I sing it and you
hear it, I’m trying to give you that same feeling, you know?”
In terms of subject matter, Jonathan Richman has written songs on a
greater variety of topics than anyone else I can think of. He’s been
doing it since the early ’70s, when a set of demos he recorded with
future Talking Head Jerry Harrison and future Cars drummer David
Robinson (and fourth member Ernie Brooks) became the first Modern
Lovers album. The disc wasn’t released until 1976 (after John Cale
worked on much of it), but it’s regarded as a legendary recording of
the early “new wave” days, with classic tunes like “Roadrunner,” “Pablo
Picasso,” and “Old World.” Despite my fondness for those sessions, I
was reluctant to ask Richman about them, since his style has changed so
much…and it was a long time ago, after all. But he was surprisingly
open. Richman explained that he doesn’t mind talking about the early
Modern Lovers work, but he was still learning his way in the recording
studio at the time, and these sessions were not intended as an album.
“Those were just demos; I never thought they would be released,” said
Richman. “They were recorded four years before they came out. I like
some of it…‘Hospital,’ that was a great version. And I like the version
of ‘Pablo Picasso.’ It had John Cale playing piano on it. But if you
want to hear what it [the band] sounded like really, you gotta hear the
live record on Rounder.” (He’s referring to Precise Modern Lovers
Order.)
The early Modern Lovers work was strongly influenced
by the Velvet Underground, and I was curious if Richman enjoyed working
with the Velvets’ John Cale.
“Ah, I didn’t get along well with
anyone,” he said matter of factly. “I was 20…forget it! I didn’t want
to do another take of anything. I was like, ‘You mean you didn’t get it
the first time?’ I couldn’t handle it.”
Richman says that
Alan Mason was the producer on about half that first recording, a name
obviously not as well known to most people as Cale. A third person,
Stuart Love, worked on “Hospital,” the first song on the album, and
according to Richman, it was a session that dates all the way back to
1971, “one of the first things we recorded for anyone. That was the
demo that got John Cale interested.” Richman had little input over the
record company’s release of The Modern Lovers, but it became an
underground classic anyway. Richman said that he considers his next
effort, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (which contained the
whimsical “Here Comes the Martian Martians” and other oddities
stylistically quite different from the previous work) to be his first
real record. The dark edges of the previous work were replaced by a
certain brighter energy, and perhaps a greater feeling of freedom for
its maker. That disc also featured a version of Chuck Berry’s “Back in
the USA” which is one of my all-time favorite Berry covers. Richman
loves Berry and referred to him as “the man.”
His next
outing, Rock and Roll with the Modern Lovers, was even more
stripped-down, and performed mostly on acoustic instruments. Its mix of
boyish playfulness, sparse arrangements, and even an instrumental or
two is fairly representative of the style he’s more or less adhered to
ever since. Richman became a prolific artist, recording a series of
well-received efforts that included Back in Your Life, I’m So Confused,
Having a Party With Jonathan Richman, and I, Jonathan. His style has
endured and remains instantly recognizable, a testament to Richman’s
singular creative vision. Sometimes the records are a little folksier,
sometimes they’re more rockin’, and increasingly they display the
Spanish influence Richman has cultivated in recent years (he performs a
lot in Spain, and has a strong following there; he’s also sung a number
of tunes in Spanish). But whatever he does is always uniquely,
distinctively Jonathan.
A bit of extra recognition occurred
a few years ago when Richman was amusingly cast as a random singing
“narrator” in the hit film, “There’s Something About Mary.” There have
been no Rolling Stone covers, however. Just album after album of pure,
no-nonsense (okay, some songs here and there get a little goofy)
Jonathan. His latest is one of the most simple and direct.
“I’m proud of this record,” said Richman. “With this one, I got very
close to the sounds I was looking for. I did a lot of the production
myself, along with Niko Bolas” (who’s previously done production work
with Neil Young, Melissa Etheridge, and Mike Scott, among others).
Richman is known for spontaneity, and Her Mystery sounds like much of it was captured in one take. Was that the actual case?
“A lot of this album was recorded live, and some of it was not only
done in one take, some of it was made up right there. Like on the song,
‘Tonight,’ we just rolled the tape. The guy helping me produce, Niko
Bolas said, ‘What are you doing, rolling tape?’ ‘And I said just, ‘Will
you roll it?’ So we just made up stuff for about 10 or 15 minutes, me
and Tommy Larkins and Steve Hodges on percussion. I made up a few
things I didn’t like, then I made up something I liked. And the first
real full take of it all the way through is the one that’s on the
record. We also did that on some of the instrumentals.”
One of
Richman’s more interesting departures was Jonathan Goes Country, on
which he worked with Springfield’s The Skeletons, even touring with
them. He has high praise for Lou Whitney and company (now of The
Morells), who also produced.
“It was so cool working with
those guys,” he said. “I just wanted to hear country arrangements of my
songs, to get that certain twang.” He laughs. “We just played the stuff
like that. Bobby Lloyd Hicks, D. Clinton Thompson, Ron Gremp, Joe
Terry, those guys are fabulous.”
He’s also fond of the man who
is indirectly his boss on Vapor Records. That would be a certain
eccentric named Neil Young, whose manager, Elliot Roberts, started the
Vapor label that Richman signed to.
“Now there’s a guy…what a
soulful man!” Richman exclaimed. “Great guitar player. Have you heard
his new album? You know that song, ‘Mr. Disappointment?’ It’s
beautiful, gorgeous. This guy is one of the best we’ve got.” Richman
has not had the opportunity to meet Young as of yet, but signed to
Vapor when a friend of his informed him the label was interested. It
was a fortuitous circumstance, and there seem to be many of those in
Richman’s life. Although he acknowledges that he feels the same pain
and heartache as everyone else at times, he loves what music does for
him, and for his audiences. Inspiration can come from anywhere,
anything.
“This morning, I was listening to an African tape,
some various artists collection,” said Richman. “And one of the songs
grabbed me, it just put me in a certain feeling. It reminded me of when
I was 18 years old.”
That’s what many of Richman’s songs do
for listeners, also. What he said of Young could just as easily be said
of him: he’s a soulful man. In a world of airs and expensive
image-making, Jonathan Richman has managed to remain simply and
charmingly himself. No overdubs needed…
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