Once a Velvet Underground fan-boy, sleeping on their manager’s couch and failing to make a living, later the unlikely godfather of punk music, covered by David Bowie, The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, The Violent Femmes, The Pixies, and appearing as the guitar-playing Greek chorus in There’s Something About Mary.  Somehow Jonathan Richman remained forever the child on that couch– Playful, earnest, unaffected.  Bless his heart.