Jojo circa '77, photo by Denise Donahue

JH: Who were the original Modern Lovers and how did you guys come together? Wasn't Mr. Curt (of Pastiche fame) a member of the band originally?

JR: No. We rehearsed in the same place as Curt, so we saw him all the time and everything, but he wasn't in the band. It started out with just John Felice and me. I wrote to John from Israel saying I wanted to start a band when I got back home. Then we needed a drummer, and I was in a record store in Kenmore- whatever record store was there at the time, it may still be there -anyway I was filling out one of those 3 by 5 index cards for the bulleting board. I had written "Rock Band Looking For…" and I was spelling out D-R-U-M-M-E-R when a guy with a shag haircut comes into the store. He walked up to me and said "hey, have you ever thought of starting a band?". And that was David Robinson.

JH: So Dave was the first Modern Lovers drummer?

JR: Mmm-hmmm. He was Richie Johnson's cousin.

JH: Richie from the Boize and Baby's Arm? I played with them for a bit.

JR: Yeah. And he had a Slingerland drum set and a basement to rehearse in so that was great. He also had a bass player that he worked with who also came along- Rolf Andersen. Rolf was temporary, we knew he wasn't going to be our permanent bass player so we still needed one.

Original Modern Lovers circa 1972

JH: Let's talk about your first gigs wit the band, after you'd been playing the Cambridge Commons as a teen-ager with three chords, an amp and a burning desire. Now you have a group, and a real gig!

JR: Andy Paley got us a show opening for his band at an outdoor show at Simmon's College, on a Friday.

JH: Opening for the Paley Brothers?

JR: Mmmm...before that, he was in Catfish Black I believe.

JH: How did that go?

JR: Well, you know it was so different from when you rehearsed. You're out there with your guitar and trying to get a sound, but it doesn't sound anything like what you expect! So you try the fuzz box and you're playing with all kinds of (imitating a horribly distorted guitar)....kkkkkkhhh.. or if you;re playing clean it just...it sounded full in the rehearsal studio, and now live...

JH: ...it's really thin...

JR: ...and outdoors... and with no reverb... it just sounds like...

JH: Painful!

JR: Right!...it just sounds like...(imitating the sound of an anemic, tinny guitar) kink kink kink...

JH: (laughing) Yes!

JR: ...and you turn up the treble even more and it goes...(imitates an even tinnier guitar) geekgeekgeek...and you go "Oh no!"...(laughs)

JH: It's like "..this is sad...where'd my sustain go"! You didn't know stuff like the floor of that rehearsal studio was actually a bass resonator for your shitty amp...

JR: ...all kinda things. So you feel kinda naked and everything. So you just sing. But actually it isn't that you just sing. You just SING. Cuz it's life and death. It isn't like... you just sing. It's your first gig! YOU JUST SING!! Like... it's like you're in a bullring! It's a desperate situation. Especially when all the equipment's fucking up and everything! And no one can hear you...YOU JUST SING!! You don't care if you're on key or off.

JH: And Ernie and Jerry were there making a film of you guys, right- who was the next to join the band?

JR: Ernie (Brooks) and Jerry (Harrison) joined together. They saw us and thought we were interesting. They were making a movie about the Modern Lovers, it was a film project for Harvard but I don't think they ever made the film. But I blabbed a lot of theory to them, told them how bitchin' I was and everything. I think my monologue went something like this: "I'm great and everyone else is stupid". (laughing) That was the general thrust of things.

JH: It was effective anyway- they joined the band!

JR: Sure, they wanted to be on the side that was winning!

JH: They were no fools.

JH: What about the legendary hitchhiking incident?

JR: Which one?

JH: I heard it this way- you were listening to the radio and heard the Velvet Underground playing, and immediately hitchkiked to New York where you showed up unannounced at Lou Reed's door. Lou sent you over to stay with Danny Fields.

JR: No. That's not true. But it's a great story, though.

JH: Did you in fact hang out with the Velvet Underground?

JR: They played Boston. They played at the Boston Tea Party and through an amazing chain of events I got to hang out with them backstage even though I was underage.

JH: Ah, that got transmogrified by the myth-making machine. And the New York part?

JR: I visited Lou Reed in New York a few times before I went away. I visited them a few times when I was still living at home- took the train down. I hung out with the Velvet Underground a bit, slept on their manager's couch but it was Steve Selznick not Danny Fields. Later on John and I…see, I lived in New York for a year when I was 18. I moved to there to be with the Velvet Underground. While I was there I'd bought a little Fender Vibrolux amp and I'd left it there. So when I came home John Felice and I took the bus to NYC to pick up my amp. That could maybe be where that story came from. We slept in Central Park, which is no mean feat- we got there and it was almost dawn when we went to sleep. The fact that we slept in Central Park and woke up alive tells you that it was 1969 and not a day later. (suddenly realizing he has his dates wrong) Actually, it was 1970. So we were dead.

JH: The first record is almost like a Velvet Underground record screened through a Jonathan filter. I mean to me it sounds like a Velvets album- only better. I know you wouldn't use a superlative like "better", but I actually heard the Modern Lovers long before I heard the Velvets so it's different for me. Had they influenced you a lot as far as the sound you were going for on the black record? Or did you sound like that beforehand?

JR: If there was no Velvet Underground there would have been no such record. Does that tell you what you need to know?

JH: Since that period you have settled into a sound that I recognize as almost pure Jonathan. I met you around '76 or so, close to the time of Modern Lovers Live, and your stylistic direction hasn't changed much since- the material you play now is very much along the same lines as all the records released after that first one. Did the Velvets-influenced material sideline you in a way? I'm not being clear- had you taken a foray into that Velvets territory for a while and then got back to "Jonathanisms"?

JR: No. It wasn't like I took a foray. They were what I was trying to do! It was no sideline, I just wanted to do one thing. It's just that once I wanted to do something else… I wanted to do something else.

JH: I've always known you as a man-with-guitar who sometimes has other people play with him. That period around the second album I'd go to shows and people were expecting the man-with-loud rock band Jonathan, they were always yelling for "Road Runner" and you refused to play any of that stuff.

JR: A lot of it was the way they asked me. If it was a five year-old asking me to do "Road Runner" I would have done it easy. But the same people who asked for "Road Runner" asked for "Pablo Picasso", they all had these sort of arty voices. It was time to act all, you know like robots and everything and everybody was trying to act all sophisticated.

JH: In 1982, during the same period when you weren't responding well to robots you came to a show that my own band the bones played at the Honey Lounge. We did "Astral Plane" and you came up and played guitar on it, it wasn't like a big fuckin' deal…

JR: No. And I was just plain sick of it, really. I don't do any songs that I'm sick of now…sometimes even songs that I request. If I'm sick of 'em I don't do 'em even for myself. So if I don't have a chance what chance do you have?

JH: Your songwriting style has so much to do with what's going on in your daily life. I guess it took me a while to realize that going around playing the songs you wrote at age 18 was, for you, like running around acting and saying the same things you did as a teenager.

JR: Sometimes it works. Sometimes I feel like playing "Hospital". Sometimes I feel like playing "Pablo Picasso". I've been playing a lot lately. I do it a as long as I feel like it. But I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know when I'm going to sing these things.

JH: I asked this awhile ago, after talking to Mathew McKenzie...was "Hospital" written about a specific person or a pastiche of people?
JR: A person.
JH: Was it...well, OK let's just leave it at that.