He takes childlike delight in most everything. His voice is so open, and full of optimism. I had a battery-powered radio player, and I huddled under my piles of old clothes and wept. Eventually, I had to move out after a terrible day when John Lennon died and all the hippies just crowed. Their musical tastes amounted to nothing. I’d masturbate into piles of old clothes and burn them on the fire later. Cooked up flour and water over a fire made of stolen supermarket pallets, which also provided the only light and heat in the room, and they called it living. Sometimes, they’d be so stoned (man) they’d pretend to forget I was there. I used to despise the hippies, pretending to be so out there: the ones I lived with in my New Cross Gate squat, end of 1980. I didn’t care whether I woke the next day or not. If someone wanted to take me on in a drinking competition, let them. All you had to do was drink more, boast more, brag more. It never seemed a big deal to me, to be rock’n’roll. The quintessential Jonathan Richman song – as one fan put it on Facebook, “If that list doesn’t contain ‘She’s Cracked’ it worth a fuck”. I’ll seek out the things that must have been magic to your little-girl mind It starts like this:īut the best moment is the top of the fourth verse, where Jonathan hesitates on the words “now” and “world”: He sings like he’s singing each line for the first time - the phrasing is striking, you feel like you are standing with him as a particular thought occurs. At age 17, I knew I hadn’t heard another singer like this. …A singer either pulls you in or doesn’t. The quintessential Jonathan Richman song – as one fan put it on Facebook, “The most perfect synthesis of naivety and menace ever written”. He’d see all this beauty in things where other people just wouldn’t see it.” We’d come up over a hill and he’d see the radio towers, the beacons flashing, and he would get almost teary-eyed. Former bandmate John Felice recalled that as teenagers he and Richman “used to get in the car and just drive up and down Route 128 and the Turnpike. Richman wrote the song by 1970, when he began performing it in public, aged 19. The introductory countoff, “one – two – three – four – five – six!”, and lyrics about “going faster miles an hour” with the “radio on” have endeared the song to many critics and listeners since it was first released. However, in contrast to Lou Reed’s morally detached saga of debauchery and decay, Richman’s lyrics are passionate and candid, dealing with the freedom of driving alone and the beauty of the modern suburban environment, specifically the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. “Roadrunner” mainly uses two chords (D and A, and only two brief uses of E) rather than “Sister Ray”’s three (which are G, F, and C), but they share the same persistent throbbing rhythm, and lyrics which in performance were largely improvised around a central theme. But the current me wished I’d said Hospital”.Īs a teenager Richman saw The Velvet Underground perform many times, and the format of “Roadrunner” is derived directly from the Velvets’ song “Sister Ray”. I conferred with 10 year old me and it’s Roadrunner (twice). The quintessential Jonathan Richman song (produced by Kim Fowley) – as one fan put it on Facebook, “Arghhhhhhhhhhhh too close. I’d like it to be known that the final vote after the second round of voting was actually closer than the vote after the first round of voting so… um… I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. Beyond that, however, I didn’t abuse editorial privilege – the way I once did at Melody Maker (say) – and hence neither ‘Double Chocolate Malted’ nor ‘Angels Watching Over Me’ nor ‘I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms’ nor the duet with Mo Tucker made it into even the Also Loved (Voted For) list, quite astonishing seeing as how over 57 songs featured in this impromptu, snap, yet thoroughly scientific, poll conducted at random under strict test conditions on Facebook. Also, ‘Morning Of Our Lives’ (live) didn’t feature high enough first time round, so someone needed to fix that. I would explain the process, but frankly it baffled me and at one point I did start to wonder whether there was going to be fisticuffs. This one was so close we had to go into a second round of voting. Which one could it be? ‘Roadrunner (once)’? Roadrunner (twice)’? ‘Roadrunner (live)’? Or will all the different versions split the vote? All I know is that I’m in love with rock’n’roll and I’ll be up all night. Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page Send by Email
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