“For people in the LA punk community, this was a very influential record. I remember a time when everybody had this album on the turntable. You couldn’t walk into somebody’s house or apartment and not hear it.

“Jonathan had a completely different take on melody, and the players in the band were fantastic, particularly Jerry Harrison, who would go on to join the Talking Heads. In some ways, this is pre-punk rock, but the ‘This-is-just-coming-out-of-my-head’ attitude is very much there.

”Even though the songs on the album deal with pain on many levels, there’s a lot of heart and dry humor to it all. The music is a lot of eighth notes, and there’s some very deceptively simple chord structures being used. Great stuff.”

Listen: The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner