The Real Kids’ John Felice talks Modern Lovers and his band’s debut album
A genuine rock ‘n’ roll legend shares some classic memories.
Photo credit: Red Star Records
Boston rock ‘n’ rollers the Real Kids’ saccharine-drenched 1977 debut helped pave the way for American power pop and new wave. The band also aided punk’s efforts to revive three minute pop songs, an honorable mission that’s left a mark on pretty much every band that has ever graced the Atlanta Mess-Around stage. Before the band makes its Atlanta debut this Fri., April 29, singer and guitar player John Felice chatted about growing up with Jonathan Richman and the Real Kids’s lasting legacy.
One commonly told story about you is that you grew up with Jonathan Richman.
Yeah, for sure. We were next door neighbors.
Were you guys discovering the Velvet Underground and MC5 and things like that together as kids?
Things were happening quickly in the late ’60s, from ’68 on. The Velvet Underground had been around for a while. Jonathan turned me on to them because he knew those guys. He had seen them play. Stuff was coming out so fast, like Stooges records, the MC5, and stuff like that. A lot of the stuff that was popular at the time did not really resonate with me. A lot of stuff coming out of Detroit or whatever sort of fed my fire.
Was the early Modern Lovers the first band you were in, or at least the first band that was serious?
I was 15, so it really was the first band I was in. All my friends were in cover bands. Most kids my age played music. They were doing covers of whatever was popular at the time. All kinds of top 40 stuff. I joined the Modern Lovers, and we were doing original music right from the get-go. It was a different kind of introduction to playing in a band than you’d expect.
Was Jonathan Richman’s gifts as a songwriter apparent when you were teenagers?
I thought so. He played solo for a while around town. I started bugging him about putting a band together. I got a guitar and amp for my 12th birthday. By the time I was 15 or actually 14, I was itching to play in a band. Jonathan was the only person I knew who shared the same taste in music as me. Eventually he caved.
Did you start what would become the Real Kids as soon as you moved on from the Modern Lovers, or was there music in between?
I was starting to get ideas to write songs of my own. I left the band in January of ’73 and put a band together almost immediately after that. It eventually came to be the Real Kids. It wasn’t the reason why I left the band, but doing my own thing was a big part of it.
The album came out in ’77, so there’s about a four year gap between starting the band and releasing music. Did you guys have trouble finding someone to put it out, or did it take a while for the album to take shape?
I wasn’t happy with it at the time. The more distance I have between the record, I understand why people like it as much as they do. I still had to grow as a songwriter. I had to try stuff and fail a few times with songs. It was just a matter of getting better and better at what I wanted to do, and expressing myself. I also had to put a band together that worked. That happened in ’76. The ’75 lineup broke up, and Richman suggested these other guys that he knew. Those were the guys who became the band that was on that first album. It wasn’t hard to find someone to put it out. Marty Thau who’d managed the New York Dolls was interested in managing the Real Kids. I knew him really well. As soon as he put the Red Star label together, it just fell together perfectly.
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Between ’73 when you left the Modern Lovers and ’77 when the album was released, a lot happened in music. By then, you and your peers were probably immersed in the first Ramones album. How much did the changing musical climate effect what the album became?
Let me give you an idea. While we were working in New York on the record, the Sex Pistols album came out then. That was a real big deal. The Ramones were good friends of ours, and their manager Danny Fields was also a good friend of mine. We’d do shows with them up in Boston and New York. Early on, no one stepped out and was calling it punk rock. Around ’73 or ’74 was the first time I heard the term punk rock — somebody describing our attitude when we ambushed a show we wanted to play but weren’t invited to play at. At first I kind of took offense to it. We were just a rock ‘n’ roll band, and that’s all we ever wanted to be.
A common element between the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Buzzcocks, and a lot of the great bands from back then is they were bringing back the less than three minute pop song. They weren’t doing the big, hulking album as a document thing. You guys were doing that too, covering Eddie Cochran and writing original songs in that same vein.
That’s right. In the ‘70s, people would do these really self-indulgent songs on albums. People got away from those three minute songs. We wanted hooks and songs with beginnings and endings. We really believed in that. It was our mantra, so to speak, to make that stuff and put it out there again. We did get that much done when we made that record. And people liked that record. It’s been called a great party album — a record you can put on at a party and play both sides. It’s a lot of catchy songs that flow together well. My problems with that record have to do with the production of it, not the songs themselves.