There's Something About Jonathan : Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (Paperback)

I've been a huge fan of Jonathan for 22 years or so, and I thought that I knew the story, but I learned a lot from this book. Interesting things that I haven't seen anywhere else, like information on Jonathan's childhood. And real fascinating jiggzaw pussle-bits that explains things I have wondered about, like the information that Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook actually had access to and listened intensively to a tape of The Modern Lovers John Cale-sessions long before that was available on record and while they were still a proto-Sex Pistols. Lots of things like that actually, and in the form of the first thorough "Life and letters of Jonathan Richman" that gives both the chronology and deals more in detail with the music and the songs.

To me, who has been listening closely to this man's music for the best part of my adult life, it was very interesting to read someone else's thoughts about the songs and the man.Parts of this book rises way above a "rock-biography" and becomes an essay on artistic honesty and on loneliness, among other things.Sometimes when you read about what Jonathan has done and said ( like when he had the Modern Lovers do excercises before shows ), you think:"this man is weird, maybe even mad". And then you read about ,for example, his shows on children's hospitals, and you think:"The world could do with more madness like that".

The book is very well researched and written ,and has many fine photos. (Some of the early photos of the longhaired, quite hip-looking Modern Lovers, with that tiny little shorthaired boy wonder in front and in charge really made me smile).Jonathan himself has not been interviewed, as could be expected,but lots of his friends and fellow Modern Lovers from various eras have. The fact that Jonathan is only quoted from magazine articles and such sources is of course a pity in a way, but on the other hand I have a feeling that he would have taken over the book if he had decided to go against his principles and talk in detail about himself. He is very much in the centre of this book but he is also distant and almost elusive,which mirrors the way I've seen him through his music.He is a man who sings his heart out and who no doubt deals with very private feelings, but by not analyzing the songs in public he allows them to be general and allows us to feel them and think about them on a level where they are not only Mr Richman's songs but our songs also.

I may make a fool out of myself by saying this, but there are parallells between the music of Jonathan Richman and that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and I'm positive that they would have gotten along splendidly.

Anyone interested enough of Jonathan Richman to read this should of course immediatly get Tim Mitchell's book.