PABLO PICASSO
“Pablo Picasso” is a song written by Jonathan Richman for the proto punk group The Modern Lovers. The song was recorded in 1972 at Whitney Studios in Los Angeles, and produced by John Cale, but was not released until 1976, on the Modern Lovers’ self-titled debut album. The recording featured Richman (lead guitar, vocals), Ernie Brooks (second guitar), Jerry Harrison (bass), and David Robinson (drums), with Cale playing the repetitive hammered piano part. The central character of the song is the charismatic 20th century artist Pablo Picasso, suggesting that, unlike most men and despite Picasso’s rather diminutive stature, women never rejected his romantic advances. In a 1980 interview, Richman stated that the song was inspired by his own adolescent “self-consciousness” with women. (More from Wikipedia)
Melissa Etheridge paved the way for greater acceptance of gays in the greater American society and, not incidentally, opened the door for other lesbian musicians like Phranc, whom I have heard described as “everyone’s favorite Jewish lesbian folksinger”. Phranc has a strong singing voice and is quite adept at songwriting; she also has a punk rock edge that she has displayed on several of her albums. The above album that I own, Positively Phranc includes a rewrite of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” (originally recorded by Richman’s proto-punk rock band the Modern Lovers) as “Gertrude Stein”.
(October 2013)
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The Modern Lovers is probably best known for their song “Pablo Picasso”. (Another of their tracks is “Roadrunner”; “Roadrunner” was covered by Sex Pistols on their little-known, sort-of second album, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle). I actually first heard the song on the Phranc album, Positively Phranc (1991), where (with Jonathan Richman’s blessing) she had rewritten the song as “Gertrude Stein” in honor of the famed Paris avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein who was the life partner of Alice B. Toklas – her 1954 recipe for marijuana brownies was celebrated in the Peter Sellers film, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968). An excerpt of “Pablo Picasso” (as performed by Burning Sensations) appears in the 1985 cult classic film, Repo Man that has been in heavy rotation on my TiVo for most of the year.
(December 2016)
