#reed does like making food for companions though- like not gonna say he's great at cooking but he's not *bad* yknow?

[virmillion]

What Was Missing

me? writing something unrelated to what i’m supposed to be working on again? it’s more likely than you think // aka i had another idea and wrote it down and hopefully it doesn’t suck // TLDR i try to write with some different tools and it maybe isnt terrible but i guess we’ll find out (@ the limericks, im lookin at you)

a n g s t      (or at least my attempt at it)

Pairings: none, maybe prinxiety if you squint

Warnings: blood mention, lots of yelling, character death (sort of), let me know if you see any more

Word count: 4k ish

It started as most problems do in the mindscape—a sudden absence, a feeling that something was missing. Something, someone, who really knew anymore? With Roman gallivanting off to his room every odd day to fight another dragon witch, his booming voice was rarely missed so much as endured when it was present. Logan, research in hand, was oft to chain himself to a desk and not back away until his eyes were burning, eyelids heavier than his textbooks. Patton, so concerned with keeping everything together among the other three, rarely had a chance to shut himself away for some peace and quiet, no no no, his responsibilities were too great. But one day, one certain day that had no peculiar charm nor supernatural air about it, his duties felt… shorter, somehow. There was less to be taken care of, but Patton could not for the life of him tell you why. At least, not until the gaping hole demanded it be noticed, not until it was screaming so hard and so loud, Patton might well have gone deaf in its efforts. The only problem with it being so loud and so insistent lies within its very nature—this absence is not the sort to announce itself, so much as it is the type to slink away quietly, to duck out when nobody’s looking. Maybe this is why Patton initially seeks out Roman to inquire about his relaxed day. Maybe this is why Logan didn’t set down his research quickly enough. Maybe this is why they were too late.

“Hey there, kiddo,” Patton says one unremarkable morning, knocking gently on Roman’s door. The emptiness down the hall screams bloody murder, all consuming to each of Patton’s senses. Maybe this is why Patton is too disoriented to realize that, for once, Roman isn’t the source of the noise. Maybe this is why Roman cautiously eases the door open, one hand resting on the hilt of his blade, only to be met with the concerned face of the moral side.

“What’s up, Patton?” Roman replies, widening the door like screaming jaws as he lets his hand relax a bit from the sword. Not all the way, though.

“Something just feels off, y’know?” Patton struggles to put into words his feelings, his subconscious distracted by the cries and yells and shouts. “It’s as if the last few days have been really, I don’t know, simple? I haven’t had to do as much, and it just doesn’t feel right.”

“Can’t say I understand,” Roman apologizes. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there is a dragon witch I really must be off to see. If you could be so kind?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Patton nods, backing out of the room as Roman draws his sword. Maybe the door closes too quickly for Roman to notice the strained look in Patton’s eyes, or the way he can’t quite seem to stop tugging his ear, like too much sound is being absorbed at once. Maybe the finality of Roman’s door slamming shut is what steers Patton away from what could have saved the absence.

    At Logan’s room across the hall, Patton doesn’t bother with knocking on the door that’s already ajar, instead walking straight through the impossibly clean room to the hunched figure in the chair. It jerks awake as Patton taps it lightly on the shoulder, revealing Logan huddled under a mass of blankets, his eyes swollen pits of red and grey from inadequate sleep. The same blanket is bunched around the base of his chair as when Patton put it there two nights ago.

    “What is it, Patton?” Logan demands, his eye twitching gently. Maybe it’s from overworking himself. Maybe he hears the cries, too. “I have very important work to be doing here, as you should very well know.”

    “Well, yes,” Patton admits, “but you look as if the only work you’ve been doing is catching up on the sleep you never get. I had something else to bring up with you, but, um,” he glances over at Logan’s pristine bed, looking as impeccable as if it had never been slept in before. Patton has a sneaking suspicion this might be the case, but maybe he’s just a little tired, too.

    “I have absolutely no requirement for such frivolous endeavours as sleep,” Logan scowls, disgust lacing every word. “You most of all should know that we hardly require any of that human nonsense, from sleep to hydration to food. With all of your silly baking festivities, I would expect you to have figured that out already.” Patton bites his lip before he can make some sort of joke out of the situation, knowing quite well that this isn’t the time. Maybe there’s never really a time to make a joke with any of them. Maybe the yells are in his head, and he just needs to let them pass over, like an angry storm cloud.

    In his own room, Patton takes a few deep breaths, desperate to let the warm lights in his room soak through his skin, make the noises go away. Why should he be desperate, anyway? He’s had so much extra time, he got to see everyone in the mindscape today! Roman, and Logan, and—and—and—and—

    The lights suddenly get brighter, too bright, as the yells crescendo, turning into shouts into screams then back into cries into sobs into whimpers into silence. Patton rubs his temples gently. Maybe he’s just overworked. Maybe he’s just exaggerating the problem. Lots of people hear things that aren’t there. You’re not a person, Patton. Patton knows this. He knows that he’s not human, that there’s no reason for baking or sleeping or drinking, but it’s all in good fun. All for enjoyment. The yelling is not enjoyment. He did not ask for the yelling. In fact, he would much prefer to have the yelling silence itself. Maybe he’ll go take care of it himself.

It’s impossibly cold out here

Way up on the highest tier

Why haven’t they come?

It’s all so numb

Why can you not recall the year?

    “Now where is that blasted dragon witch?” Roman mutters to himself, stalking silently through the cattail reeds, sword drawn. Itching for something, anything, to fight, Roman lashes out at a blade of grass in front of him. Before he can mow it down, the noise returns. Quite obnoxious, to be frank, but indelible nonetheless. It skewers through his skull, screaming as his sword swings, stopping it short to smack the grass blade and allowing the green spike to swipe back at him, scratching the side of his face. Louder, louder, the noise mumbles and moans and mourns and Roman must move on, make more progress meeting his maker in the scaled madam making her monstrosities as Roman remains in the reeds. The noise gets louder. Roman chops through the sea of grass. The screams cut across his clothes, criss-crossing so crassly the prince can almost catch the cutlass in his hand.

    Somewhere ahead, a dragon roars, undercut by a woman’s scream. Not a damsel in distress. This damsel is the distress. Damn. Roman throws his arms over his head, squeezes his biceps, anything to make that screaming shut up. Not enough. He backs carefully out of his room, head pounding, sword thrown haphazardly in its scabbard, and the whole package is tossed into the reeds. That’s a problem for later. Roman’s head pounds harder, hurting, hurts oh God help him he heaves with his hands on his knees hearing every helpless howl hammering through his head help him please help.

    In the lounge, the furthest room possible from the yelling screaming cursing crying, Roman collapses upon a couch. Something under his back, sharp and prodding, makes him sit up. A pair of bulky headphones. Now where on earth could these have come from? Regardless of the reason, Roman slips them over his ears, expecting some sort of punk song to carry him away, tuning out the cries for help.

    Why though? Why does he expect a punk song to come on? He doesn’t even know where these headphones came from, any more than he can explain away the screaming that grows ever louder. Why is it so. Loud?

    “Oh thank gosh Roman you’re out here,” Patton sighs in relief, stumbling into the lounge area with one fist curled against his head. Worry lines etch themselves into his face, deeper than if they’d been there for years. Replacing something else that was there for years. Or never there. “Why are you just sitting down? I’d expect you to at least be doing something exciting.”

    “I am, I’m listening to the—the head—the headphones—the headphones.” Roman’s voice trips over itself, warping and warbling, where were the headphones why wasn’t he holding the headphones was he ever holding the headphones why weren’t they there when were they there?

    “Okay buddy, whatever you say,” Patton smiles, not seeming to notice the little… we’ll call it a glitch… in Roman’s system. “Want some cookies?”

    “Don’t you do anything else besides bake?” Roman sneers. Something pushes at his mind, the yelling, thoughts, something, but it screams and cries to stop, not to get going on an argument he wants no part in. The yelling is louder. “Last I checked, we all had real duties to perform to help Thomas, and making cookies at the drop of a hat isn’t exactly a useful skill to a living person with real thoughts and feelings.” Roman gives Patton a once-over, suddenly standing—when did he stand up he was supposed to be sitting down—and continues, ignoring the hurt welling up in his companion’s eyes. “Oops, I guess that would imply that you, feelings, are real. My bad.” Stop it Roman stop hurting him stop it!

    “Right. I’ll just, um, I’m just gonna be over, y’know, somewhere that isn’t, uh, isn’t in here.” Patton rushes out, both hands pressed against his face now. Roman sags a bit, sitting standing sitting standing kneeling sitting standing sitting standing sitting sitting sitting sit still. Bounce bounce bounce back and forth between being everywhere and being nowhere and being everything in between. The screaming increases. Help.

It’s probably been but a day

You were always just in the way

They don’t know it’s you

Your screams coming through

Forgotten, you may as well stay

    “Honestly, how am I expected to get important work done for Thomas when I’m plagued by that infernal sound?” Logan mutters, whipping the blanket off of his back. Who does Patton think he is, intruding on Logan’s privacy like that without asking? The blanket is still in the way, rumpled in a heap over his feet, so Logan does the most logical thing he can think of—kicking it across the room, getting progressively more pissed each time it doesn’t cooperate by breaking the laws of physics. Is that really so much to ask?

    The blanket finally beaten into submission, Logan makes for the commons, a permanent grimace set upon his face as the yelling recedes behind him. Expecting a calm scene in which he can bask in silence, Logan is sorely disappointed by what greets him in the lounge; Patton staring at a wall, motionless, and Roman sitting standing sitting standing not holding still. How displeasing.

    “Have you two seriously lost your grip so easily?” Logan demands, freezing Roman in place and getting Patton to snap his head over. “Regardless of why this sound is occurring, we all need to work together to resolve it.”

    “All?” Roman asks. Patton echoes him, softer and more unsure.

    “Yes. All.”

    “But we aren’t all here.”

    “I can’t say I understand what you mean. You, me, and Patton. All.”

    “But that’s not, I mean, it isn’t like we just—”

    “Roman, I have never known you to fumble for words so largely as this,” Logan scolds. “All. Three of us. That is all. Now, if you’re done with whatever your situation is, we really need to get back to the task at hand—getting rid of that sound.” Roman casts his eyes down, face burning, but he’s finally sitting down, and staying that way. The cries get louder.

    “Patton, care to share your input?” Patton mutters something about the days being easier, the same spiel he fed Logan not long before. “Not that. Something useful would be nice.” Patton quiets, biting his lip. A tinge of something, regret perhaps, floods through Logan for a split second, but just as quickly, it vanishes.

    “Okay. Alright. What’s missing?” Logan tries. His glasses slip down his nose. He does not adjust them.

    “It’s really loud,” Roman offers, “so it must have been important.”

    “Then why can’t I remember it?” Patton hisses, gripping his forehead tightly. His fingers go white. Louder.

    “Maybe it was just annoying, and this is its lingering irritation,” Logan says.

    “It’s down at the end of the hall with our rooms,” Patton begins, flinching at nearly every word. Too loud. Make it stop. “Maybe we could investigate down there?”

    “I second it,” Roman replies. “It’s as good a place to start as any.” As one, not dissimilar to a hive mind, the trio rises—when did Logan sit down?—and move toward the screeching. Ice cold laces through their blood, frozen fingers creeping down their backs as their ears seem to split. If you asked them later, none of the three could tell you whether their feet walked them down the hall, or the room pulled itself closer, using their agony as a grappling point. Louder. Deafening. One way or another, they arrive at the screaming door, vibrating from the noises coursing through it, all amplified by the door itself. The bravest of the bunch, Roman, cowers in fear. He’s not about to touch that monstrosity. The brain of the bunch, Logan, knows in his mind that the door can’t really hurt him. He does not reach for the handle. Patton. Patton stretches a hand, fingers trembling as the sound leaps across the axons and the dendrites to his nails and skitters through his bones, weaving between muscles and fat to fill him up until he’s gasping, choking, overflowing. Patton opens his mouth to let it escape, and the screeching heightens. Louder. Louder. LOUDER.

    Screaming and crying and shouting and moaning all at once, Patton wrestles the door handle down and presses forward, first with the handle, then his other hand, and his shoulder and his foot and Logan and Roman join in, pounding the door that refuses to give way to their attacks on it.

    The handle shatters in Patton’s hand.

    The screaming stops.

    A soft sigh takes its place.

    Then silence.

They’re actually trying to look

All because your voice is a hook

Here you remain

Your ears unstained

Maybe now you should close the book

    Patton glances at the shards of metal in his hand, then back to Logan and Roman. He’s so stunned, he almost can’t feel the edges digging into his skin, feel the tiny red pearls beading at the surface. He holds them tighter, trying desperately to hold onto what the three all realized before it can vanish again.

    Virgil.

    We forgot Virgil.

    “Patton, your hand,” Roman murmurs, looking at the offending body part that refuses to let go of the handle, refuses to let go of what he can’t believe he forgot. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to remember.

    “We need to get that wrapped up,” Logan adds. He takes Patton gently by his free hand, pulling him down the hall toward the commons, where they keep a few first aid kits, just in case.

    We forgot Virgil.

    Suddenly, Patton is in the commons, barely wincing as Logan carefully wraps bandages around his hand, Roman extracting the shards of metal as he goes. Maybe each stab is a fraction of what Virgil felt.

    We forgot Virgil.

    Maybe Virgil forgot them.

    Patton looks on blankly as Logan finishes, gently tightening the wrapping and tying it off. “We need to help him,” he mumbles. Logan waves it off, checking the floor for any lost metal pieces. “We need to help him.”

    “We need to figure out why he’s gone first,” Logan retorts. “We don’t know why he left, and we don’t want to make it worse. At least it’s finally quiet.”

    We forgot Virgil.

    “Yeah, remember how we left it last?” Roman cuts in. Patton shakes his head.

    “It all kind of went foggy right up until that screaming.” Virgil’s screaming.

    “There was an argument,” Logan begins.

    “Thomas was having a social problem,” Patton continues.

    “He was worrying,” Roman fills in.

    “We told him off.”

    “He went silent.”

    “Didn’t even fight back.”

    “Sank out.”

    “No sarcasm.”

    We forgot Virgil.

    “We need to help him.”

    “We still only have the vaguest of reasons for his disappearance,” Logan says. “We cannot afford to make it any worse, if this is the least we’ve seen of what is involved with a missing Virgil.” A missing Virgil. A thing to be fixed. Not a friend to be found.

    “Maybe the room will tell us,” Patton whispers. Grasping at straws. Anything.

    We forgot Virgil.

    “Right, the room that shattered the thing you need to get inside of it. Brilliant, Patton, truly a work of genius,” Roman sneers, bouncing between sitting and standing again.

    “Not the time for attitude,” Logan reprimands. “It’s the only idea we have to go off of, so we may as well, given the lack of success shown by ignoring the noise.”

    “Not noise. Virgil.” Patton sniffles.

    We forgot Virgil.

    Patton is the first to rise and head for the door with no handle, now a deafening silence in contrast to the aching screams of earlier. Logan follows, all efficiency and strategy, despite the fact that no one is really sure what to do next.

    “Even if we find out why he’s missing, that won’t bring him back,” Roman complains. “Besides, do we really need the Edgelord back?” Patton clenches his undamaged fist in an effort not to do something he’ll regret later.

    Through gritted teeth, he spits, “of course we need him back. He’s one of us.”

    With no small amount of discomfort in the air, the trio makes their way to the silent door, each peering down and squishing in to try to see through the hole left by the door handle.

    Only gaping space beyond.

You know, it’s really not so bad like this

They claim to regret, yet remain remiss

You like being alone

This could be a home

This is how you leave, vanished like a wisp

    “Move aside,” Roman orders, stepping back with his sword drawn. Patton and Logan leap out of the way of the door as Roman charges. He raises his sword, giving a battle cry, and barrels forward.

    The door opens.

    Roman’s momentum carries him through, swinging his sword regardless as the door slams shut behind him. Patton and Logan remain outside.

    His sword goes flying into an endless abyss of stars and blackness. The red sash across his white attire tightens, constricting and squeezing like a viper before completely tearing off at the shoulder. Now a limp ribbon, it follows the sword into nothingness.

    “What’s going on?” Roman attempts, but his voice is too hoarse, too small, lost in everything and nothing. The world around him seems to expand by the second, nothingness multiplying by nothingness exponentially. Silent.

    Where is Virgil?

    Sound.

    Behind him.

    Roman turns to where the door is—was. Gone. Above it, a strip of nothingness with no stars in it. A silhouette against the shining lights. Roman blinks, shakes his head, blinks again, and he’s suddenly beside the silhouette, looking out at an endless expanse of space. He turns his head.

    Virgil.

    Before Roman can open his mouth, offer an explanation, ask for a reason, Virgil punches him in the face.

    Hard.

    Roman goes down.

    Hard.

    Virgil disappears, and the world splinters.

    And shatters.

    “Just shut up! Thomas doesn’t need you dragging him down like this!”

    “I hate to say it, kiddo, but Roman’s right. You really don’t need to be so… much.”

    “Indeed, your excessive overtime is dragging all of us down with you. Don’t you suppose you might feel better if you were to, perhaps, lay low? Stay quiet?”

    They’re always demanding your silence

    They never consider emotions violence

    Their words will bite

    Don’t put up a fight

    Just seclude yourself on your islands

    “Too good to talk back? Come on Virgil, where’s that dry wit? Hit me with it! Hit me!”

    “Roman, don’t taunt him. We don’t want him to get worse.”

    “It may not be in our best interest to discuss this in front of him.”

    You think your words aren’t ringing

    Hatred in their bite stinging

    But please have no fear

    I’ll soon not be here

    Not even a bell left dinging

    “I wish he’d just leave, we’d all be better off and he knows it.”

    “Now Roman—”

    “I don’t think you should—”

    “I hate him.”

    Roman blinks again, finally remembering.

    Why did he say that? It was a moment of weakness and stupidity, and he wants nothing more than to take it back. A little hard to do, given that Virgil is nowhere to be seen. Just space. The vast sky. And Roman. Alone. No sword. No sash. No purpose. What did you do?

    “I just want to know one thing,” a voice whispers, coming from every direction at once. Impossibly quiet, to the point that Roman has to strain to hear it. “Why did you say it?” The drawling, apathetic tone, in a voice otherwise identical to his own, it has to be Virgil.

    “I didn’t mean it, it was just the heat of the moment, I swear—” Roman babbles.

    “I didn’t ask for excuses. I asked for a reason.”

    “I don’t have one! Because I’m stupid, okay? That’s why.”

    “Unfortunate.”

    Roman waits with bated breath for the voice to come back, even just to yell at him some more, anything but being alone in this room.

    Silence.

    Alone.

    Please come back.

    Waiting.

    Waiting.

    “I just wanted to see the stars.” Roman glances to the right—the voice actually had a concentrated source this time. “You all forgot me, but no one forgets the stars.” A constellation takes shape in the distance, a vague silhouette of Virgil, unless Roman is just kidding himself. “No one forgets you.”

    Before he can respond, Roman watches the world fall apart again, depositing him on the ground in an endless white space. He can’t tell where the walls end and the ceiling begins. The only thing standing out in this room, besides himself, is the black lacquer door. Stabbed through its center is his sword, his red sash twined around it.

    The voice doesn’t come back.

    Roman yanks the sword from the door with little resistance, fixing the sash over his shoulder. The door swings open. Patton and Logan are gone. He heads for the common area. Logan’s nose is buried in a book, while Patton stands at the counter icing cookies.

    “Patton? Where’s, uh, where are your bandages?” Roman asks, looking at the hand that appears perfectly healed.

    “Weird joke, Roman. Is that the kind of humor that’s hip with the kids these days?” Patton twirls an icing bag in the air. “I can be hip.”

    “Logan, have you seen Virgil?” Roman asks as he moves out of the kitchen, leaving Patton to his cookies.

    “Seen whom?” Logan doesn’t look up from his reading.

    “Virgil! Anxiety? Hot Topic? Edgelord? J-Delightful?” Logan lifts an eyebrow and peers at Roman over his book.

    “I will admit to not often utilizing humor, but even I know that this is not it.”

    Roman leans against the back of the couch, suddenly unsteady as his mind is hit with too many thoughts at once. The most important one, the only one that truly matters, pierces his skull like so many unheard screams and cries.

    They forgot Virgil.

Tag List:

@sakurahayasaki @erlenmeyertrash @lemonpepperpizza @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @milomeepit  /// im gonna tag some other people that didnt ask to be because everyone knows i c r a v e validation @asexual-trashbag @tinysidestrashcaptain @notafeeling @the-prince-and-the-emo @princeyandanxiety @fallingamor @prinxietys sorry if you didnt want to be tagged feel free to ignore this

[thefabulousfulcrum]

Jonathan Richman: In Love with the Modern World

via Vice

ERNIE BROOKS, AS TOLD TO LEGS MCNEIL

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 “Freedom Summer” of the early 1960s. Ernie’s 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.

“I’m Straight”

Jerry 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, “You gotta come see this weird guy. He’s really nuts, but he sounds very cool…” 

At 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 hair—it 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 Johnson’s decals. He had painted it light blue and orange like the Howard Johnson's colors—and almost all the songs he played were in E minor—it 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 Jonathan’s deep poetic roots and the idea of talking about everyday things. So the poetry was there—instantly I could hear the visionary poetry. 

Jonathan was doing that song “I’m Straight,” which, of course, he was. Jonathan didn’t take drugs—though, 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, “Jerry, I’m gonna have to hit you with a frying pan, 'cause I have to hurt somebody in order to know that I am stoned and I’m not myself...”

And I cracked up and said, “Jonathan, that’s OK. You don’t have to do that…”

Jonathan was really upset that his consciousness had been altered. And as far as I know, that’s how he’s always been—very straight—so in that sense, “I’m Straight” 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 Reed’s couch and worked briefly as a busboy at Max’s Kansas City, where he was fired because he was really not very skilled as a busboy. But he loved the Velvet Underground—he loved two bands—the Stooges and the Velvets. He used to preach about the Stooges all the time—and that’s what’s funny about Jonathan, his music didn’t 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 him—and 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 didn’t have an instrument, and he’d 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 Yeats—Jonathan knew some literature, and we connected on that level. You know that Yeats poem, "The Wild Swans at Coole"? "…lover by lover, / They paddle in the cold / Companionable streams…” It’s a very beautiful Celtic twilight kind of vision.

"I’ve Got the AM Radio On...”

So Jonathan was into poetry—but 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 anybody—any art that expresses pain is also suggesting a way out of the pain.

I don’t know exactly what Jerry and I said after Jonathan left that day, but we both thought that he was interesting—not 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?)—and 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 him—our first gig—at 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 Robinson’s basement—he 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 Jonathan’s 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, “Well, we can probably get some jobs at a Harvard mixer,” like we’re 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 dance—there was always a small group of people who were really into it and were listening—and the rest of the people didn’t 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 “The Mixer,” which goes, “Hey, girls, do you notice the smell?” It’s talking directly about girls and the guys at the mixer, confronting them with the absurdity of the situation. It’s a pretty funny song, and we’d play it at these mixers—and 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. He’d call me in the middle of the night, saying, about a girl we both knew, “Ernie, I think I entered her dream. Do you think that’s right?”

And I’d say, “Well, Jonathan, I guess its OK, I dunno...”

He was describing how he had entered into some girl’s dream and was feeling some connection to her soul. Of course, Jonathan was a big fan of Van Morrison’s album Astral Weeks—that’s such a beautiful record. I wasn’t sure if Jonathan was actually able to do that, enter a girl’s dream—but he really believed in it, which is where that song, “The Astral Plane,” came from—the idea that you can communicate in another dimension with someone who's hard to reach in everyday life.

“I’m In Love with The Modern World…"

Jonathan definitely wrote the lyrics to “Roadrunner,” 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 Jonathan—and then we filled it in and gave it structure.

I mean, we’d argue in rehearsal—about 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 endlessly—we all loved to talk—and Dave was the one getting pissed off, saying, “Come on, stop talking, rehearse it, play it!” 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 he’d place his drawings on it. I don't know if you’ve seen any of the drawings, but I have a copy of a poster that he drew; it’s of the Modern Lovers—a cartoon of the four of us with a heart flying over the band. It’s 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 he’d recite the lyrics before he did the song. 

Eventually someone—it must have been Danny Fields—called 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 newspaper—and 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. We’d set up with our PA, and there were probably 50 totally bored, indifferent high school students there. So Clive was there—he couldn’t hear shit and actually had his ear up against this Shure Vocal Master Speaker—and just said, “These lyrics can be taken on many different levels!”

Clive offered us a record contract, but we didn’t 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 I’d 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.

“I Don’t Want to Hurt Anybody”

In 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 wall—a 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 vests—so we knew something was going on, but we didn’t know what. We heard a lot of shooting and then cars driving away.

There’s something very sinister about LA that people don’t usually talk about. 

And that’s where the problems started, almost immediately. I think it was because Jonathan had been changing. I don’t 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 stadiums—you know, feeling that there was something wrong in profiting from all these things—and he started tying it all together in his mind and decided that he didn’t 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 that’s the way we wanted to make our album. So I had endless conversations with Jonathan, like, “Jonathan, you can do whatever you want afterwards. Let's just make this record, and then let’s go out and play some shows! People need to hear these songs—they’re good songs, and they sound good!”

Jonathan was saying, “Ohh, I don't know, I don’t know. I don’t want the music if it's too loud. It’s gonna hurt kids' ears, ya know? And if it's real, the people will hear it, even if it's quiet, if there’s magic in it.”

He never denied the magic of rock 'n' roll—he 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 couldn’t quite get right, I think, was "Someone I Care About," so Cale said to Jonathan, “You gotta sound mean; you gotta sound like you wanna kill somebody!”

And Jonathan said, “Oh, I don’t want to hurt anybody—I wanna make a nice, happy-sounding record,” 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, “What’s going on? What’s with Jonathan? Why can’t we do this record? Why do you have to change the sound?”

He was growing increasingly frustrated with Jonathan and the whole ordeal. As I said, things weren’t going great in Cale’s life. One evening he even called me up and said, “I know my wife’s there!” 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, “John, she’s not here!”

I don't know what was going on, but I don’t 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 make—that Jonathan wouldn’t let him make—and at the same time we all admired him, but it just wasn’t working out.

So we were all kind of upset because we felt we were on the cusp of greatness—we envisioned everything going right—and 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, “If we just get these guys a good manager, they’ll fall into line…”

“I Never Said, ‘Fuck You Jonathan!’”

One of the funniest things was when we played at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino—the gig was set up by Warner Bros., and we played with Tower of Power in front of 10,000 people—and everyone started throwing stuff at us.

I remember getting hit with a can of something, and that’s where Jonathan said, “We know you don’t like us, but we love you anyway.” And Warner Bros. had all this promotion that said, “The Modern Lovers —Warner Brothers' Big New Hit Group!” That was a pretty comical, and it was the usual thing where a couple kids liked us and ran up and said, “Hey, you guys are good!” Or they handed us a note saying, “You guys are great,” 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 “Roadrunner,” we still didn’t have a record out, but that was always a catchy song, and we actually got some applause—and then Jonathan said, “People like that song too much; I don’t think we should do it anymore….”

I think it was just part of Jonathan’s natural inclination that when things seemed to be going well—to 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 they’re rejecting the status quo. They're doing something in the way they’ve figured out how to do it—and they don’t want to hear something different, even if it could make things better. When Jonathan said, “I won't play 'Roadrunner' anymore," it was pretty much the classic case—you can’t really get any more contrarian than that.

So we got in a heated debate, and I said, “Yes, I can understand how one can be suspicious of people liking something, but at the same time, we are a functioning band, you know? We’re not going to be so particular; we’ll do something if people like it, not to please someone but because it’s a great song. We like it too, so we’re not pandering to anyone by playing it.”

By that time, Jonathan was already rejecting the use of electricity, and a head guy from Warner Bros. called and Jonathan said, “We’ll play the songs for the record, but we won’t do any of these songs when we play live.” Jonathan said this to the guy who had given us this fairly substantial record deal to record the songs—and who didn’t want to hear that.

Jonathan started saying his old songs were too negative and dark, and he started writing things like “Hey There Little Insect,” and maybe he was way ahead of us, but we couldn’t follow him—he wanted us to go, “Buzz, buzz, buzz” on stage, but we were too cool!

Later, there was a conversation with the guy from Warner Bros., who said, “Listen, if you guys aren’t going to do these songs on the road, if you’re not going to play them, we’re not going to keep on putting money into the recording...”

We 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, “Well, I’m just not gonna do this anymore…”

So 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' roll—but not a way to make a living or feel very happy.

So we were like, “Jonathan, maybe you’re brilliant, but we’re not gonna go there...”

But I never said, “Fuck you, Jonathan!”

I never said, “I’m not talking to you…”

The last time I played with Jonathan was for Joey Ramone when Joey was sick, at the Continental. It was before Christmas, so it wasn’t one of Joey’s Christmas shows. I think it was Joey’s birthday party. I didn’t know Joey was sick, but he was. Joey talked to Jonathan and said, “Would you set up with the band and do 'Roadrunner'?”

So 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, “Hey, let's do this some more!”