{"id":6756,"date":"2025-11-17T15:39:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T15:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/jonathan-richman-there-are-no-rules-as-to-how-i-make-up-songs-152194\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T15:39:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T15:39:54","slug":"jonathan-richman-there-are-no-rules-as-to-how-i-make-up-songs-152194","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/jonathan-richman-there-are-no-rules-as-to-how-i-make-up-songs-152194\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Richman: \u201cThere are no rules as to how I make up songs\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi Jonathan! On the title track of your new album, you sing: \u201cI was only just frozen sky anyway\u201d. <\/em>Can you explain this metaphor for us in a little more detail?<\/strong>
Yes. It is from the poetry of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote: \u201cI am the vast blue ocean of sky, I am a little drop of the sky\u2026 frozen sky\u2026\u201d It seems a friend of his had just died and he offered this verse to suggest that death is only a change from one way of being in the universe to another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hi Jonathan! On the title track of your new album, you sing: \u201cI was only just frozen sky anyway\u201d. <\/em>Can you explain this metaphor for us in a little more detail?<\/strong>
Yes. It is from the poetry of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote: \u201cI am the vast blue ocean of sky, I am a little drop of the sky\u2026 frozen sky\u2026\u201d It seems a friend of his had just died and he offered this verse to suggest that death is only a change from one way of being in the universe to another.<\/p>\n

Were you prompted to write about mortality by anything specific?
<\/strong>I had no idea what themes would be on the record until we were halfway through it. There was no song called \u201cJust A Piece Of Frozen Sky Anyway\u201d \u2019til I just somehow started singing it as we stood there in the studio. I think there was only one take of it. The songs are almost all the first and only takes, which is no big deal, really. But it does tell you why this record sounds like it does, because they were also mostly songs that had never existed until that first take. \u201cBut We Might Try Weird Stuff\u201d, \u201cYou Need Me Too\u201d, \u201cO Guitar\u201d\u2026 all either were totally or partly made up as we did \u2019em. It was only after hearing all of this stuff that I realised, \u201cHoly shit! This album has a theme to it and that theme is death!\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of your songs are about youthfulness and enjoying life. So how have you managed to incorporate songs about death into the same songbook?<\/strong>
Well, contrast is OK, right?<\/p>\n

What was it like working with your old Modern Lovers bandmate Jerry Harrison again?<\/strong>
Working with Jerry again is one of the great joys of this life. It\u2019s very exciting to take him something I\u2019m still in the middle of making up and [see] what he\u2019ll do with it. So I hardly ever tell him anything. I want to see what direction he\u2019ll take the song without me wrecking the adventure. When we recorded \u201cO Guitar\u201d though, I did tell him to play like the guy on \u201cRock Your Baby\u201d by George MacRae \u2013 and on \u201cDavid & Goliath\u201d I told him to give me some reggae.<\/p>\n

Would you ever consider touring or recording with a full rock band again?
<\/strong>No.<\/p>\n

How much of your day do you devote to writing songs?
<\/strong>Well, I don\u2019t really write songs so much as make \u2019em up in my head and then I write some stuff down later, after the fact, so I don\u2019t forget anything I might want to use someday at a show. I put these ideas in notebooks. If you want to see one boring pre-show dressing room, come backstage to mine. It\u2019ll just be me and Tommy [Larkins, percussionist] usually, with me sitting there thinking about songs and turning pages in some notebook, holding my guitar, sitting there pondering words in different languages that I don\u2019t want to forget when I need \u2019em, or some new verse to \u201cGive Paris One More Chance\u201d that occurred to me earlier in the day. <\/p>\n

My friends and family know they can come backstage as long as they don\u2019t mind being ignored. Of course, if my children, nieces or grandson show up, then all bets are off, but if you\u2019re most people, expect to be ignored. But there are no rules as to how I make up songs. I just do stuff. I use the \u201cI\u2019m-still-just-a-little-brat\u201d method. <\/p>\n