First published in Rock and Roll: The Hundred Best Singles
Copyright 1993
#77, Roadrunner

Another anomaly (Jonathan wouldn’t have it any other way). The single I’ve selected here was released in the U.K. in 1977; however the A-side was originally recorded, and released, as a single in the U.S., in 1975. The U.K. B-side—same song, same title, same lead singer—was recorded in 1971 (part of the legendary Modern Lovers demo tapes, produced by John Cale, unreleased until 1976). The disc gets placed here with the 1977 entries because both versions are magnificent, and rather than choose between them, I offer this two-sided, one-song single, which made it to #11 on the British charts. (Both versions also received considerable airplay in the U.S. thanks to college radio stations.)

But enough small talk. Start the music. Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” is one of the most quoted rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time—that’s musical quotes, mostly— and is itself, as Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper demonstrated in their 1985 tour de force “Jesus at McDonald’s,” a brilliant (musical) restatement of the Velvet Underground’s masterpiece, “Sister Ray.” This riff may or may not be the heart of rock ‘n’ roll (we can fight about that later), but it’s certainly the heart of something. Won’t quit. Keeps turning up. Can’t get it out of our minds. That’s ‘cause it’s in our blood. Could in fact be the sound of the human circulatory system hustling to keep up with the particular stimuli of our epoch, the “modern world” Jonathan refers to again and again in the course of this (doubly) epic performance.

Rock ‘n’ roll has been self-referential since “Rock Around the Clock” or earlier, but still it’s arguable that “Roadrunner” is the all-time greatest (most primal) expression of the inexpressible SIGNIFICANCE of driving around in a car late at night listening to the radio, that means music, A.M., the place where (once upon a time) the hits were played. Rock and roll. “I say roadrunner once, roadrunner twice/We’re in love with this feeling now, and we’ll be out all night.” Resume riff. 50,000 watts of power. Oh yeah.

Essence of garage band. Precursor of punk. Natural descendant of “Wake Up, Little Suzie” and “Magic Bus”: acoustic hard rock. Side B is a little “heavier” and features a great Question-Mark-and-the-Mysterians organ performance by Jerry Harrison (Farfisa?). Side A offers, in its climatic movement, some of the most amazing scat singing ever heard on a rock ‘n’ roll record: “I feel alone in the cold and neon (radio on)/I feel a rockin’ modern live, I feel a (radio on) rockin’ modern neon modern sound modern Boston town (radio on)/A modern sound modern neon modern miles around (radio on)/I say uh roadrunner once red roadrunner twice, hit road now (radio on) hold on very nice, roadrunner going, I’m go home now, yes (radio on) make me go home/Oh yes roadrunner go home, here we go/We’re gonna drive him home you guys . . .” Both versions start “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, roadrunner, roadrunner.” Both versions end with great simple orgasmic rhythmic conclusiveness, and the shouted words, “Bye bye!”

Start the music. You could be scared off, consecutively, by the noisiness of “anarchy,” the off-tune guitars in “Marquee Moon,” the slick quietness of “Handy Man,” and now the monstrously flat vocals in “Roadrunner.” And you might be missing precisely what it is that makes each song itself—and all of them, arguably, great rock ‘n’ roll. Rock ‘n’ roll is idiosyncratic. Greatness is idiosyncratic. “Roadrunner” is a song about being your own person, and being supported in this by the universe (“radio on” is the Logos, Godhood alive and kicking), and loving the world exuberantly as a result. The drums on this record are ticky-tack gorgeous as on Chuck Berry’s “Memphis.” And the feeling of a group playing and singing together is as palpable as on, say, the earliest Beatles records. The future of rock ‘n’ roll is here too, of course. The whole damn thing caught in one timeless snapshot. “I’m in love with the modern world/Massachusetts when it’s late at night/And the neon when it’s cold outside…

“You see, I have the radio on.”

First release: Beserkley BZZ 1 (U.K.), June 1977

Listen: “Roadrunner” third track down [at hypemachine.com]