Ernie Brooks is a very likable fellow who was raised in New York and Connecticut by intellectual, liberal parents, which explains why he became a civil rights activist down South during the violent âFreedom Summerâ of the early 1960s. Ernieâs a Harvard graduate who studied English literature, poetry, and rock 'n' roll, along with his college roommate Jerry Harrison, who later became the keyboard player for the Talking Heads. A chance encounter with Jonathan Richman led to a wild ride as one of the founding members of the legendary Modern Lovers, perhaps the greatest alt-rock, pre-punk, indie band that no one has ever seen.âIâm StraightâJerry Harrison, who was my roommate at Harvard, saw Jonathan Richman playing on the Cambridge Commons, which is smaller than the Boston Commons, right by Harvard Square, and said to me, âYou gotta come see this weird guy. Heâs really nuts, but he sounds very coolâŠâAt that time, Jonathan used to wear these suits with a very conservative white shirt and tie, sport coat, and dress pants, and he had really short hairâit was really funny. There was something about it that was really confrontational in an interesting way.Jonathan had a band with David Robinson, who was the drummer, and another guy named Rolf, who was playing bass, and they played these free shows on the Cambridge Commons. Jonathan had this blue Jazzmaster guitar with like two strings and had decorated it with the Howard Johnsonâs decals. He had painted it light blue and orange like the Howard Johnson's colorsâand almost all the songs he played were in E minorâit was very minimalist. "I see the restaurant. It is my friend" was a line from one of the songs.Jerry and I were both amazed by Jonathan. I had been studying poetry with different people at Harvard, like Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Creeley, so I was struck by the connection between Jonathanâs deep poetic roots and the idea of talking about everyday things. So the poetry was thereâinstantly I could hear the visionary poetry.Jonathan was doing that song âIâm Straight,â which, of course, he was. Jonathan didnât take drugsâthough, later on, Jerry persuaded him to take a puff of marijuana, and Jonathan suddenly got this weird look on his face and got up and was about to pick up a frying pan and said, âJerry, Iâm gonna have to hit you with a frying pan, 'cause I have to hurt somebody in order to know that I am stoned and Iâm not myselfâŠâAnd I cracked up and said, âJonathan, thatâs OK. You donât have to do thatâŠâJonathan was really upset that his consciousness had been altered. And as far as I know, thatâs how heâs always beenâvery straightâso in that sense, âIâm Straightâ was real and completely true.At some point, before we saw him on the Cambridge Commons, Jonathan had gone to New York and slept on Lou Reedâs couch and worked briefly as a busboy at Maxâs Kansas City, where he was fired because he was really not very skilled as a busboy. But he loved the Velvet Undergroundâhe loved two bandsâthe Stooges and the Velvets. He used to preach about the Stooges all the timeâand thatâs whatâs funny about Jonathan, his music didnât sound like either band, but there was some deep connection there.Anyway, Jerry Harrison and I saw Jonathan a couple times on the Cambridge Commons, but we didn't meet himâand then he showed up at our apartment at 152 Putnam Ave wearing his white plastic motorcycle jacket. Danny Fields, the great facilitator of all things rock 'n' roll, brought Jonathan over, and that was the first time Jerry and I really met him. Jonathan started dancing around and showing us his songs. Jonathan would grab whatever instrument was around; sometimes he didnât have an instrument, and heâd just start clapping his hands and singing whatever new song was in his head, to whoever was there to listen. He still does that.I don't know how it came about, but we started talking about YeatsâJonathan knew some literature, and we connected on that level. You know that Yeats poem, "The Wild Swans at Coole"? "âŠlover by lover, / They paddle in the cold / Companionable streamsâŠâ Itâs a very beautiful Celtic twilight kind of vision."Iâve Got the AM Radio OnâŠâSo Jonathan was into poetryâbut he was also into the first Stooges album, which had just come out. So I talked with Jonathan about what a great rhythm section the Stooges had, and he was really into that, and he was really funny. He also loved the Velvet Underground, but he was very conflicted about them, because of the darkness they presented. I always had this theory that our sound was almost the opposite of the Velvets, that basically we were playing into the light as opposed to the darkness. But you could argue that about anybodyâany art that expresses pain is also suggesting a way out of the pain.I donât know exactly what Jerry and I said after Jonathan left that day, but we both thought that he was interestingânot like anybody else. Basically everything else was just a lot of blues jam bands and folk rock remnants of the Bosstown Sound (remember Ultimate Spinach and Beacon Street Union?)âand what appealed to me about Jonathan was that he was as new as anything and there was something that was really positive about him.So it was decided we were going to play this gig with himâour first gigâat some teen center out in Natick, Massachusetts. Natick was one of those beltway suburban towns around Boston, near Route 128, which was just starting to have some high-tech companies and factories. So we went and rehearsed in David Robinsonâs basementâhe lived with his parents in Woburn, Massachusetts, and his mom made us food, like tuna fish sandwiches or something to eat after we'd play. And Jon Felice, who had been Jonathanâs childhood friend, joined us on guitar. He seemed to be constantly leaving the band and coming back, following his frequent fights with Jonathan. So anyway, we played the teen center in Natick, and that was our first gig.All of our early gigs were pretty dippy, so, of course, Jerry and I said, âWell, we can probably get some jobs at a Harvard mixer,â like weâre gonna come up in the world and our band can make one hundred bucks!And we did get a Harvard mixer! But the funny thing about the mixer was that when we were playing something with a good beat, the people would danceâthere was always a small group of people who were really into it and were listeningâand the rest of the people didnât give a shit, which I guess is always the way. I mean, most of the guys were there to pick up girls, and we had a song called âThe Mixer,â which goes, âHey, girls, do you notice the smell?â Itâs talking directly about girls and the guys at the mixer, confronting them with the absurdity of the situation. Itâs a pretty funny song, and weâd play it at these mixersâand nobody got it! Of course, the PA was lousy and they might not have heard the words.When we first met him, I think Jonathan was incredibly isolated and caught in his adolescence. He really wanted to meet girls, but not knowing how to do it, he focused on the astral plane, in which he could meet someone in this world and communicate with her in a dream state. I mean, he did meet girls, but then he would not know what to do with them or what to say to them. Heâd call me in the middle of the night, saying, about a girl we both knew, âErnie, I think I entered her dream. Do you think thatâs right?âAnd Iâd say, âWell, Jonathan, I guess its OK, I dunnoâŠâHe was describing how he had entered into some girlâs dream and was feeling some connection to her soul. Of course, Jonathan was a big fan of Van Morrisonâs album Astral Weeksâthatâs such a beautiful record. I wasnât sure if Jonathan was actually able to do that, enter a girlâs dreamâbut he really believed in it, which is where that song, âThe Astral Plane,â came fromâthe idea that you can communicate in another dimension with someone who's hard to reach in everyday life.âIâm In Love with The Modern WorldâŠ"Jonathan definitely wrote the lyrics to âRoadrunner,â and we did the arrangement. Jonathan came up with the idea for most of the songs, but the music started out pretty simple. Mostly on one chord, and you could say the nut of it came from Jonathanâand then we filled it in and gave it structure.I mean, weâd argue in rehearsalâabout which song to do, about how to arrange it, or whether we should have the break here or there. We argued from the very beginning. We talked and discussed things endlesslyâwe all loved to talkâand Dave was the one getting pissed off, saying, âCome on, stop talking, rehearse it, play it!â From early on we had an agreement where we would split all the publishing; all songs would be by the Modern Lovers, kind of like the Ramones. It was a way for us to recoup some of our expenses. It felt really justified at the time because I got the van and Jerry brought a lot of the equipment from Milwaukee."When You Get Out of the Hospital, Let Me Back into Your Life"At some of the early shows Jonathan would set up an easel, and heâd place his drawings on it. I don't know if youâve seen any of the drawings, but I have a copy of a poster that he drew; itâs of the Modern Loversâa cartoon of the four of us with a heart flying over the band. Itâs got the highway in the background and stuff. And he had this picture of a girl in the suburban town in Massachusetts where she lived and a picture of the hospital she ended up in, and while pointing to the drawings heâd recite the lyrics before he did the song.Eventually someoneâit must have been Danny Fieldsâcalled Lillian Roxon from the Daily News about the Modern Lovers. So Lillian came up and heard us play in this little dump and wrote about it for the newspaperâand that article started a sudden rush of record companies coming to see us. The funniest thing was Clive Davis (head of Columbia Records) coming to see us in this school gym in North Cambridge. Weâd set up with our PA, and there were probably 50 totally bored, indifferent high school students there. So Clive was thereâhe couldnât hear shit and actually had his ear up against this Shure Vocal Master Speakerâand just said, âThese lyrics can be taken on many different levels!âClive offered us a record contract, but we didnât go with him. That was when we started our insanity, thinking we were hot shit and we were going to go check out everybody in the business to find the best manager and the one record company that was worthy of the Modern Lovers.I think we were just idiots, believing that we could be so demanding, before we had really done very much as a band.It was a funny bunch of personalities. And Iâd say Jerry Harrison and I were the most business-oriented, most reasonable, but David was pretty pragmatic too. However, the three of us were not good at being decisive. Jonathan was more so, but we generally would not agree with him when he was.âI Donât Want to Hurt AnybodyâIn the spring of '72 we flew to LA to work on a demo for both Warner Bros. and A & M, two of the labels hot to sign us. John Cale, a house producer for Warner at the time, was a big reason we went. We really wanted him to produce the first Modern Lovers record; we were fans of his through the Velvet Underground and through the fact that he'd produced the first Stooges record. The first time I met him was when I went to his apartment years before, somewhere on the lower East Side, and he had photos of someone having a nose job on the wallâa fairly disturbing set of pictures. In the couple of weeks on the West Coast, we recorded all the songs that went into the Modern Lovers album, most of them recorded by Cale in a session where he basically captured us playing our live set. It went well, though all of us thought at the time that it was just a demo, preparation for what would be the "real" record.In summer of '73 we went back, finally signed to Warner Bros., to record the real deal with John. After staying a while in Van Nuys at Emmylou Harris's place, we got this stucco house on Kings Road in Hollywood, one of those windy roads that runs off of Hollywood Boulevard, sort of hidden in the shrubbery. It was one of the scariest places because these houses were so isolated. One night we could hear the sound of helicopters circling, their searchlights trained on the house just down the road, and then we see the black cars driving up with guys with their sniper rifles and black vestsâso we knew something was going on, but we didnât know what. We heard a lot of shooting and then cars driving away.Thereâs something very sinister about LA that people donât usually talk about.And thatâs where the problems started, almost immediately. I think it was because Jonathan had been changing. I donât think it was so much that he was getting tired of the old songs as he was developing this idea that the whole rock-'n'-roll-star-making machinery was corrupt. And part of that was the whole system of burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, using a lot of power for amps and sound systems, playing stadiumsâyou know, feeling that there was something wrong in profiting from all these thingsâand he started tying it all together in his mind and decided that he didnât want the Modern Lovers to be a conventional rock 'n' roll band.But it made it impossible for us!David, the drummer, and I shared a love of tight, poppy rock 'n' roll songs, and thatâs the way we wanted to make our album. So I had endless conversations with Jonathan, like, âJonathan, you can do whatever you want afterwards. Let's just make this record, and then letâs go out and play some shows! People need to hear these songsâtheyâre good songs, and they sound good!âJonathan was saying, âOhh, I don't know, I donât know. I donât want the music if it's too loud. Itâs gonna hurt kids' ears, ya know? And if it's real, the people will hear it, even if it's quiet, if thereâs magic in it.âHe never denied the magic of rock 'n' rollâhe just said if it was really quiet, you could hear the words better, and that was part of this whole shift.John Cale had a real sense of how he wanted things to sound and was very insistent. So there was a problem in the making there. While working with Cale, things got even more difficult, probably because Jonathan was starting to not want to play loud, powerful, electric music anymore, and that made Cale crazy.One of the songs we tried to re-record and couldnât quite get right, I think, was "Someone I Care About," so Cale said to Jonathan, âYou gotta sound mean; you gotta sound like you wanna kill somebody!âAnd Jonathan said, âOh, I donât want to hurt anybodyâI wanna make a nice, happy-sounding record,â because this was obviously his new sensibility. Jonathan was headed in a new direction, and Cale wanted the angst and the violence in the sound, which really characterized us in our early days.John Cale was also not in the best shape: He was drinking a lot, though I don't know if he was taking drugs. I used to go out and play tennis with him at the Burbank tennis courts when he was in a good mood, and Cale was always asking, âWhatâs going on? Whatâs with Jonathan? Why canât we do this record? Why do you have to change the sound?âHe was growing increasingly frustrated with Jonathan and the whole ordeal. As I said, things werenât going great in Caleâs life. One evening he even called me up and said, âI know my wifeâs there!â Of course, part of the story there was that she, Cindy, had been a close friend and bandmate in the GTO's of Miss Christine, who had died of an overdose the year before at the house we were renting on the South Shore of Boston, and that's another part of the story, of things that cast a pall over the Modern Lovers. Miss Christine's death had apparently totally destabilized Cindy.I said, âJohn, sheâs not here!âI don't know what was going on, but I donât think it was good. I have to say, it must have been a terrible thing for Cale, because he was the producer of this potentially great record he wanted to makeâthat Jonathan wouldnât let him makeâand at the same time we all admired him, but it just wasnât working out.So we were all kind of upset because we felt we were on the cusp of greatnessâwe envisioned everything going rightâand at the same time Warner Bros., desperate to keep the project on track, was trying to put us together with a manager. They kept saying, âIf we just get these guys a good manager, theyâll fall into lineâŠââI Never Said, âFuck You Jonathan!ââOne of the funniest things was when we played at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardinoâthe gig was set up by Warner Bros., and we played with Tower of Power in front of 10,000 peopleâand everyone started throwing stuff at us.I remember getting hit with a can of something, and thatâs where Jonathan said, âWe know you donât like us, but we love you anyway.â And Warner Bros. had all this promotion that said, âThe Modern Lovers âWarner Brothers' Big New Hit Group!â That was a pretty comical, and it was the usual thing where a couple kids liked us and ran up and said, âHey, you guys are good!â Or they handed us a note saying, âYou guys are great,â because they were terrified to have their friends know that they liked this band that was getting booed off the stage.At one of the last gigs we did, when we played âRoadrunner,â we still didnât have a record out, but that was always a catchy song, and we actually got some applauseâand then Jonathan said, âPeople like that song too much; I donât think we should do it anymoreâŠ.âI think it was just part of Jonathanâs natural inclination that when things seemed to be going wellâto go against it. He was very contrary. He was very difficult. I mean, anybody who is on to something new has some element of being a contrarian, because theyâre rejecting the status quo. They're doing something in the way theyâve figured out how to do itâand they donât want to hear something different, even if it could make things better. When Jonathan said, âI won't play 'Roadrunner' anymore," it was pretty much the classic caseâyou canât really get any more contrarian than that.So we got in a heated debate, and I said, âYes, I can understand how one can be suspicious of people liking something, but at the same time, we are a functioning band, you know? Weâre not going to be so particular; weâll do something if people like it, not to please someone but because itâs a great song. We like it too, so weâre not pandering to anyone by playing it.âBy that time, Jonathan was already rejecting the use of electricity, and a head guy from Warner Bros. called and Jonathan said, âWeâll play the songs for the record, but we wonât do any of these songs when we play live.â Jonathan said this to the guy who had given us this fairly substantial record deal to record the songsâand who didnât want to hear that.Jonathan started saying his old songs were too negative and dark, and he started writing things like âHey There Little Insect,â and maybe he was way ahead of us, but we couldnât follow himâhe wanted us to go, âBuzz, buzz, buzzâ on stage, but we were too cool!Later, there was a conversation with the guy from Warner Bros., who said, âListen, if you guys arenât going to do these songs on the road, if youâre not going to play them, weâre not going to keep on putting money into the recordingâŠâWe got about four crazy, not very satisfactory tracks done, and then came the moment when Warner Bros. continued to put pressure on us, which led to Jonathan saying, âWell, Iâm just not gonna do this anymoreâŠâSo Warner Bros. dropped us.So that was a turning point where. It had gotten to where, if we had something that people wanted to hear, Jonathan would refuse. It was a conceptual way of approaching rock 'n' rollâbut not a way to make a living or feel very happy.So we were like, âJonathan, maybe youâre brilliant, but weâre not gonna go thereâŠâBut I never said, âFuck you, Jonathan!âI never said, âIâm not talking to youâŠâThe last time I played with Jonathan was for Joey Ramone when Joey was sick, at the Continental. It was before Christmas, so it wasnât one of Joeyâs Christmas shows. I think it was Joeyâs birthday party. I didnât know Joey was sick, but he was. Joey talked to Jonathan and said, âWould you set up with the band and do 'Roadrunner'?âSo I played bass with Jonathan and, I think, Tommy on drums. it was fun, and the crowd loved it. Of course that made me think, âHey, let's do this some more!â
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