Jonathan Richman

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Jonathan Richman

Our dinner with Jonathan:

Michael Dean and his buds interview Jonathan Richman for $30 Music School book.

Los Angeles, 8/26/2003

Photos:

http://www.kittyfeet.com/30music/richman.htm

and

http://www.kittyfeet.com/30music/richman2.htm

Jonathan Richman is a lovable guy from Boston, now living in San Francisco. He was the singer in The Modern Lovers ^[5.] and still performs solo. He is an extremely influential proto-pre-punk artist. His songs have been covered by Joan Jett and The Sex Pistols, Burning Sensations (in the movie, Repo Man ), as well as by virtually every garage and/or bar band in the history of rock.

^[5.] Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) and David Robinson ( Cars ) were also in the band.

Figure 18.12. Jonathan Richman playing my guitar. Photo by Michael Dean .

Most people either love him immensely or have no idea who he is. Unless you say, "He's that guy in the movie Something About Mary who always ambles into the picture playing love songs on an acoustic guitar. Then people go, "Oh yeah!"

He wrote the songs "Roadrunner," "Ice Cream Man," "I'm Straight," "She Cracked," "I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar," "Something About Mary," "Girlfriend," and "Pablo Picasso" (as in "was never called an asshole").

Jonathan Richman is an amazing and wise man. Sweet as heck and very mellow. He has an innocent child-like demeanor that is the complete opposite of most "rockers." But I think that, in a lot of ways, he is the ultimate rocker.

Jonathan came over, and Lydia Lam cooked us all dinner. Me and her and my neighbor Mike De Luna hung out with him for an hour and talked about everything under the sun. He even played us some guitar.

(Thanks to Li'l Mike for helping with a few of the questions.)

Michael Dean: What advice do you have for youngsters coming up today in music?

Jonathan Richman: Do what you feel. Period. Don't do what you don't feel. That's it.

Incidentally I had nothing to do with that commercial where that song was used. That wasn't my idea. I don't believe in my songs being used in commercials. I've since learned that we have something called "voice protection." They can't use your voice. So you won't hear my voice in any more commercials. You might hear some of my songs once in a while, but you won't hear my voice in any more commercials. I apologize for that last one; I couldn't control that.

MD: How can they do that?

JR: You sell your rights when you're a kid and they can do it.

MD: How do you avoid losing control and getting ripped off?

JR: At the time I had a word-of-mouth agreement. I always assumed that I would be consulted before they used anything.

MD: Seems like they take advantage of people when they're hungry, give them a little bit of money now to sign it all away later.

JR: No, I wasn't starving. I was happily hungry, and they seemed like honest people. I liked their company, they seemed to have high moral principles. We had an agreement in writing.

MD: So, the moral is, get all the details in writing?

JR: No, the moral is use your instincts but don't try to "help" people. ( MD laughs. ) My mistake was, I won't say which company this was .

MD: Can I say which company this was?

JR: No. But let me say this: The individual involved told me that he was planning to not take so many drugs any more and I believed him. That's what I get for trying to be a little savior. It's my own fault. So take everyone at what they are now. Like, if little companies have high moral principles, fine, but they've gotta be acting them all right now. Not later.

Little is my favorite kind of company, but it's not necessarily better. There are companies that play up their small size. And sometimes they're small for a reason. ( Both laugh . ) But all things considered , I don't like to work with big corporations: I like to work with much smaller companies.

MD: The one record I did on Warner Brothers, they did pay the little they said they'd pay. The only time I got ripped off was from a small company going out of business owing me (and a lot of other people) money.

JR: Yeah. It's often like that. When I was with Warners in the 70s, they had a woman there named Mary Martin who was the head of A&R. That was one of the biggest record companies in the world, but either she or her assistant listened to every tape and personally wrote a response to everybody. So sometimes a big company can be good. You've just gotta go by your gut feeling.

Nowadays, big is so much bigger than it used to be.

MD: Do you know what's happening now with radio where a couple of companies are buying up all the stations and it's all homogenized and there's no local DJs picking the songs anymore; it's a national corporate monopoly?

JR: Yes, I do.

MD: Do you have an opinion on that?

JR: Yes. I think it could be very good. Because then the smaller community stations will be appreciated. They are very valuable , and they will be seen as such in the near future.

MD: Did you play gigs with the Velvet Underground?

JR: I opened a show once as a solo guy at one of their shows in Springfield, Massachusetts. They let me borrow one of their guitars and I played a few songs, but I never played with the band.

MD: What was it like seeing the Velvet Underground in action?

JR: Great. I saw them probably 80 times. Hypnotizing on a good night.

MD: Didn't you work with Kim Fowley? (Kim Fowley is the guy who discovered / assembled Joan Jett's old band, The Runaways, and molded their career in an almost puppet master fashion.)

JR: Yeah, but not when he says I worked with him ( laughs ). Not anything like his liner notes. But he's an adorable guy. I like him. Nothing he said was true, but I like him. We did a few demos together that got released without my permission.

MD: Have you had a lot of that happen? You've mentioned two instances in about five minutes.

JR: Yeah. Yeah, I have. A lot of people never paid me in any way that I can think of. But I'm not bitter. They can have all that old crap if they want it. I don't really worry about the past. But, yeah, it's happening right now. People are releasing things that they didn't ask me aboutcompilations, loads of compilations in England for some reason. There've been all these bootlegs, half the records of mine that are out I've had nothing to do with.

MD: How do you feel about downloading on the Internet?

JR: Well, I don't know I don't do it, so I don't know what it would feel like. I let others worry about those things. Sounds boring to me though. ( MD, Lydia, and Mike De Luna all crack up laughing, hard. )

MD: Your drummer lives in Tucson, right? How do you get away with working with someone who lives in a different city?

JR: No problem. I pick him up and off we go then we do the first show in Austin, then New Orleans .

MD: What are you driving?

JR: Oh! (Jonathan gets really excited). I bought an old diesel car; we're going biodiesel. I'm selling the van. Biodiesel has vegetable oil and 20 percent alcohol to give it some kick. Biodiesel is the way to go.

Lydia: They're starting to tax it in Ireland, because they're losing money from oil revenue.

JR: Isn't that nice of them? But Ireland has done some nice things. They put a tax on plastic bags.

MD: Are you Irish?

JR: No. I'm a Heeb. Russian Jewish on both sides.

MD: Do you have a spirituality?

JR: Yeah. I love life.

And I love playing music. And when I play, the idea is to feel what I'm really feeling. And if you're really feeling it, then you're not bothered by your mind rambling around, and you get to the truth.

MD: How different is it getting things done in the music biz and getting things done in film biz?

JR: They're both fun. Doing the movie Something About Mary was really fun. And doing the score music was as much fun as doing the acting. It was really fun being on the set for about three months. But there's a lot of waiting, so bring a book.

Soundtrack work is a very hard thing to crack. But small independent films are easier.

I thought of another thing to recommend to young bands: Be a good live act.

I make my money touring. I'm my own manager. I record for a nice record label that I like, Vapor Records in Santa Monica. I like them a lot. But I make my money on the road. And it happens that I like it a lot. And live is just you and the audience.

Don't depend on records.

MD: I think one of your biggest contributions to rock is taking the third chord out of three-chord rock. Tell us about the song "Roadrunner."

I avoided the third chord in "Pablo Picasso" too. I can't claim it, I think others were there before me ( laughs ). But I simplified it for beginning guitarists. I eliminated that third chord ( all laugh ). We just sticked with A and D and you get pretty good results without too many other fancy chords.

MD: The Velvet Underground did that a lot too, with the song "Heroin" and .

JR: Yeah, they did a lot of things that I copied . ( All laugh. )

MD: What's different in the music business now from 30 years ago?

JR: There's this new coffee house scene now, which I think people might wanna check out. If you're not getting booked in a bar, try little coffee houses . Just walk in and talk to them.

( He leans in to the tape recorder ) This is gonna be the hard part, kids : You play soft, you'll get hired . And the neighbors won't complain. You will think that I'm taking away your teenage angst and your God-given right to blast everyone's ear drums ( all laugh ). ( Leans in closer, almost whispering. ) You will think that I'm taking away your God-given right to express teenage rebellion in its most pure form. But I have this to say: Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent had amplifiers that would fit in your wallet. Elvis Presley shows for 5,000 people were less loud than you are playing in your bathroom. So, you don't need to really do that if you've really got "the thing." You can swagger without all that stuff.

MD: I heard somewhere that you gave up playing electric music because it hurts little kids' ears. Is that true?

JR: In fact, I was living in Los Angeles in 1973, and my band was breaking up. I just looked up hospitals in the phone book. I only brought an acoustic guitar the first time. And there were 110 people of all ages, learning disabled, and they could dance . They were with the beat. I didn't use a microphone or amp. Now I realize how 1890s dances could have happened , because 110 people can dance with just an acoustic guitar; they just have to feel the beat. These people were making a lot of noise, but they were feeling the beat so it worked.

MD: Did you have a drummer?

JR: No, just an acoustic guitar. And a cheap guitar at that.

So I brought my electric guitar next time thinking it would make it better. I just brought a small little Ampeg B15 amp and a Fender Jazzmaster guitar, and I was thinking, "They'll love this."

Well, the kids in front put their hands over their ears, and I realized, "This stuff gets out of hand really easily." It can be done. But it's really hard to keep it down to a volume where it doesn't tax the natural hearing of people. And these people weren't inhibited by society yet, and their ears were what they were and they put their hands over their ears. There was no .

MD: No needing to be polite.

JR: Exactly. There we go. So I learned a lot from playing in places like that. And I learned from playing in hospitals that there's things you can do with an acoustic that you can't do loud. There's a certain calm you can bring to these places. If you listen to a really good Flamenco record, you'll see that a really good player can take an acoustic instrument and make it as exciting as anything you want to hear.

I still like the sound of electric guitars. I think Buddy Holly was fabulous, and Ritchie Valens. I think there's a lot of good electric players. I still pick an electric up once in a while. But I think if you can do it with an acoustic .damn! Then do it.

MD: What's important to you in life now?

JR: It's important to me to not use petroleum products because they cause death. People really are being forced off their land all over the world by big oil companies. And it's because we, Americans especially , use so much oil.

Biodiesel is good. And when you can't find biodiesel, you can still use diesel in those cars, and it's still better than gas. Look at the figures. It's better for the world and the air. And you need to use less of it than with gasoline.

NOTE

Michael Dean Note: Check out www.biodiesel.org.

It's also important to me to communicate with people, talk to my family, and become a better listener.

Mike De Luna: When you're touring and you're on the road, do you do merchandising ? Are you selling CDs and T-Shirts?

JR: No, we just play a live show. We keep it really simple. We just play. The club rents us a drum kit; we bring a bag of chords. We have a little mixer that I bring, so we control the sound from the stage. We plug into the house speaker system. I mike my voice, I put a mike in front of my guitar, I don't have one that plugs in any more. I just mike an acoustic guitar with no amp. We bring a teeny little monitor speaker with us in our chord bag for Tommy (the drummerthe only other musician onstage with Jonathan).

Oh I've got another piece of advice for young bands. They're gonna hate this one at least as much as the other one ( laughter all around ). Get used to hearing yourself without monitors in your rehearsal hall and live. Monitors usually don't work, as you know. You're always saying, "Turn up this, turn up that," and the reason you're always saying it is because the more you turn up this, the more you have to turn up that. And it's a war which ends in feedback and rings. So what do they do? They take a graphic equalizer and take out all the ringing stuff. Great. But you lose all your sound. So you get this horrible squeal that somehow does cut through everything but to what avail? Sounds like shit. And that's what most sound sounds like now. And you sound like everybody else. There's no color to the sound. You can't hear what your voice sounds like, and the audience sure can't; it's just a big war. But, hey, if all you're about is violence, don't listen to this advice at all ( laughter ). But if you want the audience to hear you, consider using less monitors, and practice in your rehearsal thing using no monitors. Yes, you can do it!

Mike De Luna: Any advice with regards to a musician's diet?

JR: What we've been doing is eating more and more out of bags on tour. We go to a health food restaurant and get some oats and beans less and less restaurants can be trusted. GMOs ^[6.] are everywhere. You don't want them. And if you're eating meat, you don't want the hormones . So, if you like veggie stuff you can do it on the road. Take a bowl with you, get some oats, some nice water out of a glass bottle and make yourself some mush a little salt and brown sugar.

^[6.] Genetically modified organismsa.k.a. Frankenfood.

Lydia: Rice?

JR: Rice is good, but you gotta cook that. Rice cakes are good. But there's a lot of stuff you can eat on the road: Cashew nuts. Sunflower seeds . All kinds of boring stuff you'll hate.

( Laughter. ) I'm not trying to say, "Don't eat what you like," but I'm saying if you wanna eat healthy or even vegan on the road, you can do it. Walnuts, almonds, cans of beans, grape leave rolls if you wanna get fancy. Take a bottle of olive oil with you as long as it's not too hot where it'll spoil; put that in your van and buy powdered hummus and add water. Maybe a little hot sauce if you're down in New Orleans or Texas .

Lydia: Chick pea powder.

JR: That's what I'm saying you can do all kinds of fun stuff the Baja egg plant dip. Another cool thing about this is, you get there too late, you're late for sound check. You gotta go on at nine, but you get to sound check at seven. That means you're not out of sound check until eight, if you're lucky. All right, so now you gotta play in an hour, now what do you do? If you've got stuff in your van, you just go out to the back of the club, grab a few bowls and eat something, instead of traipsing around asking people, "You know a good restaurant?" You end up waiting for the waiter and you glare at him and he glares at you. And you get back just before show time and you're sweating? No! Just go out to your van and eat your crap out there.

(Lydia makes a doo-doo joke and Jonathan gets goofy and flustered. It's cute).

Mike De Luna: Do you do some kind of cardio?

JR: Me and Tommy walk all over the place. We get to a town and we just walk.

MD: I saw you walk like a crab one time, on all fours in San Francisco. That's how I met you. ( Laughs. )

JR: That's good too. And it amuses your friends . And makes strangers stop and think. I still like to do that. It's fun. Walking up hills is good too. All those things you can do them and tour at the same time. You gotta get your exercise.

MD: Any closing advice?

JR: I didn't care about money. I'm not sorry I signed that contract I did. I didn't make much money, but I had a good time all the way through. I never wished I hadn't done something.

If someone doesn't pay you for a song, don't get mad. Don't worry. You're going to make up more songs. Don't worry about taking people to court . If someone doesn't live up to their contact, that's their problem, not yours. If you're honorable, don't throw the paper down when you learn they've stolen $40,000, you will get $40,000 more. Relax. It's their problem because they've done something that isn't good karma. What goes around really does come around. Relax and enjoy.

MD: Thank you very much.

JR: Thank you .

JR: Oh yeah. I've got some more advice for young bands. When the choice is between someone who's got more "muscle" in the music business, and someone you like better, choose the guy you like better.

NOTE

Look on my Web site www.30DollarMusicSchool.com for more interviews as well as Recommended Reading, Surfing, Viewing, and Listening, all cut from the book for length to satisfy the bean counters. I did an excellent interview with producer Warren Huart, and we had to cut it for length. However, it is on the CD in MP3 format in the Goodies folder (Warren1, Warren2, Warren3 and Warren4). It is also on the Web site in text format.

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