Day After Day #39: Roadrunner

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Roadrunner (1972)

There's a certain freedom in hitting the open road in your car, cranking the music and going off in search of adventure. It doesn't happen as much as it should anymore, but when I was a teenager, it happened a lot. Jonathan Richman captured it perfectly when he was 19 and started performing "Roadrunner" live. The song was about how Richman would drive up and down Route 128 and the Massachusetts Turnpike, namechecking various sights along the way. 

It's funny to think about 128 as this great highway because nowadays, there are so many cars on it at any given time that you inevitably find yourself stuck in traffic. If I was going to write a song about 128, it'd probably be about all the terrible drivers cutting me off and generally annoying me. But thankfully, young Jonathan found that drive to be a nearly religious experience and as a result, wrote one of the greatest songs in rock history.

Richman was a huge Velvet Underground fan as a teenager and you can directly trace the lineage of "Roadrunner" back to VU's classic "Sister Ray." The songs share the same shambling rhythm, chugging along as Richman sings about the Stop N' Shop, driving around late at night and going "faster miles an hour." Richman geeks out over driving all around Massachusetts; one version of the song has him taking the Pike out west to Greenfield, driving down in Cohasset, tooling around Needham, and using the road as a way to fight off loneliness. 

"I'm in love with Massachusetts/I'm in love with the radio on/It helps me from being alone late at night/Helps me from being lonely late at night/I don't feel so bad now in the car/Don't feel so alone, got the radio on/Like the roadrunner."

There are several recorded versions of the song. Richman and the Modern Lovers (featuring a young Jerry Harrison, later of Talking Heads, and David Robinson, later of the Cars) recorded "Roadrunner" with producer (and VU legend) John Cale in 1972. The song was released as a single and then in 1976 on the Modern Lovers' delayed debut album. This is the best version to these ears, a rollicking proto-punk classic.

Two more versions were recorded in 1972 with producer/weirdo Kim Fowley and released in 1981 on the album The Original Modern Lovers. Another version was recorded for Beserkley Records in 1974 and has Richman backed by the Greg Kihn Band. The song has been covered many times, including by the Sex Pistols (although Johnny Rotten forgets most of the words), Greg Kihn Band and Joan Jett, who had an FM hit with her cover back in 1987.

"Roadrunner" has definitely had staying power, 50+ years after it was first recorded. The UK newspaper The Guardian sent a reporter to the Boston area to drive around all the locales and sights mentioned by Richman in the song. And in 2013, then state Rep. Marty Walsh introduced a bill to make "Roadrunner" the official rock song of Massachusetts; it hasn't happened yet but there are still efforts underway. And there's a concert venue that opened in Boston a few years back that's called Roadrunner.

Richman has had a long, strange, interesting career. He moved away from the garage rock sound of the Modern Lovers to folk and world music. He took a detour into movies in the '90s and early '00s, appearing in a few Farrelly Brothers films: There's Something About Mary, Kingpin and Fever Pitch. He's still on the road, although I wonder if he gets as excited by the Stop 'N Shop as he used to.