Something About Jonathan

I'm now positive that he wasn't. Those who know him say he's always been that way. "He used to write songs in my living room," says Dawn Holliday. "He would get up in the morning and be Jonathan, and through breakfast he'd be Jonathan. In the afternoon, he'd still be Jonathan. He would write songs, beating on his chest for the rhythm. ... He's lived a really true life."

What Richman offers then is himself. He doesn't so much want to be back in your life, he wants you to watch his. "He's a very sincere, genuine person," agrees Allan Mason, who remained Richman's pal after recording the original Modern Lovers. "What you see is what you get; that's the real deal. ... If you're childlike, young at heart, how can you not love this person?"

Incidentally, after feeling about as useful as a sixth toe at the photo shoot after our interview, I figured out what the hell the "something about Mary that they don't know" was. And, like Richman said, it was there in the song, as literal as can be, hidden right there in the second verse, just after he explains that the bumbling fellas in his tale know about domestic and imported ale: "They don't know a thing about love." Which reminds you that Jonathan Richman has a way of extracting the essence of character and getting to elemental feelings, to the center of the story itself.

Sure he's noncommittal in person. But for more than two decades, he's done what he wanted to do, resolutely pursuing one of the most personal and idiosyncratic careers in rock. He's delivered at least one monument of a record and enough good songs to fill several others. Along the way, he helped both invent punk and make room for the kind of bands that are more interested in honesty and pure, undiluted emotion than rock's endless posturing. And it's not a bad legacy. For Jonathan Richman, the whole thing has been a lot of, well, fun.