Exclusive: 19 Songs by Jonathan Larson That You Probably Don't Know Yet

Previews are now underway for The Jonathan Larson Project and fans who have checked out the new musical already have intel on the more than 20 undiscovered songs, as audiences are treated to a brief breakdown as they leave the Orpheum Theatre. BroadwayWorld is excited to share an exclusive, in-depth version of the story behind each song, courtesy of the show's conceiver, Jennifer Ashley Tepper.

1. Greene Street 

1983
Standalone Theatre Song 

“Greene Street” is a standalone “theatre song” that Jonathan Larson wrote in 1983. He was 23 years old and had just moved to New York City after growing up in White Plains and going to college at Adelphi University in Garden City. 

Jonathan lived at 782 West End Avenue near 98th Street when he first moved to NYC. One day, he and his roommate at the time, Todd Robinson, spotted on the street a rickety spinet piano with missing keys and no top. They managed to transport it into their small studio apartment. Jonathan wrote “Greene Street” on that piano. 

Before The Jonathan Larson Project, "Greene Street” had never been publicly performed or commercially recorded and existed only as a demo featuring Jonathan Larson and a piano, held in the collection at the Library of Congress.

2. One Of These Days 

1985
cut from Superbia (musical)

For over six years, in the 1980s and early 1990s, Jonathan focused tirelessly on writing his futuristic dystopian original musical Superbia. He hoped it would make a statement about the lack of authentic human connection and compassion in his technology-burdened generation. He also aspired for Superbia to combine pop music and musical theatre in an unprecedented way for the theatre world. 

Superbia never received a full production, but it did receive readings and workshops, including at both Playwrights Horizons and The Public Theater, and win Jonathan “promising writer” accolades and awards. He rewrote Superbia endlessly and sent it to every producer and theater and person in power you can imagine. He received many, many rejections. Jonathan’s hero Stephen Sondheim gave him feedback and advice on Superbia over the years. Its complex plot, filled with irredeemable characters made the show a tough sell in certain ways. 

There are dozens of different drafts of Superbia. They become darker as the years go by, parallel to Jonathan becoming more discouraged. Part of Jonathan’s Superbia journey was later chronicled within his autobiographical musical tick, tick… BOOM! Without Superbia, we wouldn’t have tick, tick… BOOM! And indeed, Superbia also prepared Jonathan to later combine pop music and musical theatre in an unprecedented way for the theatre world… with RENT.

“One Of These Days” was the original I Want Song for Superbia’s protagonist, Josh Out, in early versions of the show. Josh Out is an imaginative inventor who is obsessed with finding objects from the old world and bringing them back to life – a total freak and danger to Superbia society who wants people to be individuals with real feelings again.

3. Break Out The Booze 

1990
from Tell Them Angel Sent Me (cabaret)

Jonathan was involved with the theater group Naked Angels and wrote songs for various benefits and cabarets they put together. Tell Them Angel Sent Me was a piece performed on December 2, 1990 at Tatou, a hot club on the east side that was originally designed as an opera house. One month before Tell Them Angel Sent Me, Mariah Carey received her first professional showcase at Tatou.

Tell Them Angel Sent Me was an environmentally staged play with music, featuring contributions from artists including Peter Gallagher, Ilana Levine,  Jane Krakowski, and June Havoc. Jonathan also functioned as the associate musical director.

The piece took place on the last night of Prohibition. After #1 bootlegger and mobster Angel Cortini was rubbed out by his arch-rival, his moll, Inez, unknowingly sang “Break Out The Booze” to an audience that she thought included him.

4. Casual Sex, Pizza, and Beer

1984
Standalone Theatre Song

A drinking song that Jonathan wrote for fun in 1984 when he was 24 years old. 
 

5. Out Of My Dreams 

1991
Pop Song

In addition to writing musicals and theatre songs, Jonathan also wrote pop songs he hoped would play on the radio someday. He dreamed of penning a song that Whitney Houston would record.

“Out Of My Dreams”, written in 1991, is one of those pop songs, and it’s also semi-autobiographical, based on poetry that Jonathan wrote about his on- again off-again girlfriend, Janet Charleston. (The character of Susan in tick, tick… BOOM! is also based on Janet.) 

“Out Of My Dreams” includes the lyric “Us vs. them”. Throughout The Jonathan Larson Project are little seeds that point to work Jonathan would create later. While creating RENT and thinking no one would ever hear “Out Of My Dreams”, Jonathan re-crafted this lyric into the now-iconic “To being an us for once, instead of a them.”

6. Valentine's Day 

1987
from Prostate of the Union (musical), cut from RENT (musical)

At Adelphi, where Jonathan went to college, the theatre program created original cabarets and musicals. Often student writers would collaborate with faculty. Jonathan wrote shows at Adelphi while he was a student there from 1978 to 1982. He also returned in 1987 to write a musical for the students called Prostate of the Union, with collaborator Michael Lindsay. The subtitle of the show was “The Evils of Ronald Reagan’s America”. Prostate of the Union was performed on Valentine’s Day in 1987, which was part of what initially inspired the topic of the song. 

Jonathan loved “Valentine’s Day”; it was one of his favorites of songs he wrote. He continually tried to include it in different projects and shows but it never stuck. 

The character depicted in “Valentine’s Day” is very similar to a character Jonathan would later create in full: Mimi in RENT. He actually put “Valentine’s Day” in some early versions of RENT, but it was cut. Initially, the song was sung by Mimi to tell her own backstory as part of Maureen’s protest performance. In a later draft, lyrics were revised so that “Valentine’s Day” found Roger at the beginning of act two singing about Mimi. The song was cut from RENT before its 1994 workshop. 

One of the legacies of “Valentine’s Day” remains in RENT though, in the form of the holidays that are depicted in the show. At one point “Valentine’s Day” was a tentpole of the narrative just as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Halloween now are.

7. Falling Apart

1987
from Prostate of the Union (musical)

“Falling Apart” is part of the 1987 musical Prostate of the Union that Jonathan wrote with Michael Lindsay for the students of Adelphi when he returned as an alum. This show is where “Valentine’s Day” originated as well.

Prostate of the Union was a dark take on the evils of Ronald Reagan’s America. Its poster was controversial around Adelphi campus as it featured a cartoon of Ronald Reagan with the state of Florida as his penis. The show featured takes on yuppie-ism, racism, relationships, the economy, the war on drugs, and more. 

8. Hosing The Furniture 

1989
from Sitting On The Edge of the Future (cabaret)

The American Musical Theatre Festival in Philadelphia put together a revue in 1989 called Sitting On The Edge Of The Future. It featured various writers creating pieces about the

1939 World’s Fair, which was in itself full of exhibitions about the future. Jonathan was very honored to be chosen to be part of this; it was one of the most high profile events he participated in, in his lifetime. 

The “city of the future” at the World’s Fair in 1939 featured scientific advances that citizens of the time imagined would be associated with domestic life in the future. Michael John LaChiusa, Ricky Ian Gordon and Scott Frankel also participated in this 1989 evening. 

Jonathan worked tirelessly on “Hosing The Furniture”, especially as he knew that Stephen Sondheim would be in attendance when it premiered. In 1989, the song was debuted by Judy Kaye in live performance, with Diane Fratantoni singing on the demo. “Hosing The Furniture” won Jonathan the Stephen Sondheim Award, which came with much-needed grant money and was also a huge honor for him.

9. Find The Key 

1991
cut from tick, tick… BOOM! (musical)

“Find The Key” is a cut song from tick, tick… BOOM! It was added to the show in 1991, when Jonathan performed tick at the Village Gate. 

“Find The Key” replaced “See Her Smile” in the narrative. Jonathan’s relationship with his girlfriend had hit a rough patch in real life, and he reflected this in his autobiographical musical with this song replacement. 

“Find The Key” appeared near the end of the show. Jonathan and his girlfriend Susan had a difficult conversation about how they were going in different directions. Jonathan tried to unpack that while at the same time trying to figure out what to do to make his Superbia reading work.

10.The Vision Thing

1989
from National Lampoon’s Tricentennial Revue (mini-musical)

In 1989, Jonathan was invited by producer Nelle Nugent to write some songs for a planned Broadway revue about presidential politics, called National Lampoon’s Tricentennial Revue.

The popular subversive magazine National Lampoon spun off in a variety of ways, including to a hit off-Broadway show in 1975 which helped launch the careers of Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Harold Ramis, and more. This was to be the Broadway premiere of the brand, so it was a big deal. National Lampoon’s Tricentennial Revue planned to run at the Walter Kerr Theatre (which was then called the Ritz). The idea was that multiple writers would contribute to this political revue that looked at politics in the year 2076 (the tricentennial). A futuristic lens would allow the writers who contributed scenes and songs to respond to the politics of the 1980s and 1990s using distance as a tool. 

National Lampoon’s Tricentennial Revue was intended to have a couple regional theater tryouts and then play the Ritz, but it never came to pass. 

Many of Jonathan’s friends and family members have postulated that the next show Jonathan penned after RENT would have been explicitly political. These numbers by Jonathan about presidential campaign and the marketing of political candidates are perhaps the closest we have to what that might have been.

11. Iron Mike 

1990
from Angels Get Down to Earth Day (cabaret)

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the most devastating human-caused

environmental disasters of all time. Jonathan wrote this song as a reaction to it. It was written for the Naked Angels Earth Day show, called Angels Get Down to Earth Day, in 1990.

Jonathan and his friends always strove to be part of the Naked Angels theatre company. They were on the outskirts of the “cool” group who were the main players of Naked Angels. Four of the songs in The Jonathan Larson Project were written by Jonathan for Naked Angels cabarets.

When Naked Angels presented their shows around a specific topic, Jonathan was honored when he was chosen to take part. This particular show took place at Naked Angels’ main theater, The Space, at 114 West 17th Street. While Jonathan wrote “Iron Mike” for 1990’s Angels Get Down to Earth Day, it is not listed in the program, and may have wound up not being performed.

12. White Male World 

1991
from Skirting the Issues (1991)

In 1991, director Maggie Lally, who Jonathan knew from Adelphi, put together a show called Skirting The Issues that ran for two weeks in New York and featured songs and scenes from ten different writers. This number was Jonathan’s contribution. The show was described as “The post-Barbie generation takes aim at everything”.

Skirting the Issues was performed at New York Repertory Theatre, which at that time was located at 162 West 83rd Street, which is now a Crunch Gym.

13. The Truth Is A Lie 

1990
from The Naked Truth: Ten Takes on Censorship (cabaret) 

This song was written for another Naked Angels cabaret, called The Naked Truth: Ten Takes on Censorship. It was performed in 1990 at their defunct venue called The Space, located on West 17th Street. The evening featured work by writers including Theresa Rebeck, Warren Leight, Richard Greenberg, Jon Robin Baitz and Kenneth Lonergan, directed by artists including Joe Mantello, and Matthew Broderick. All artists gave their takes on the topic of censorship.

In Jonathan’s files at the Library of Congress, I found a call slip he had filled out at the New York Public Library decades ago requesting to see material created by the American Civil Liberties Union about obscenity and censorship. The NYPL call slips look exactly the same today.

The Naked Truth was performed nine times in October and November of 1990. All tickets were $8.

14. Rhapsody 

1983
Standalone Theatre Song

No one at all had heard “Rhapsody” before The Jonathan Larson Project. Jonathan wrote it when he was 23 years old, in 1983. 

The song appears on the same tape as “Greene Street” and “Piano”. All three were standalone theatre songs that Jonathan wrote that year but never publicly performed. 

15. SOS 

1982
from 1984 (musical)

The first full-length musical that Jonathan wrote on his own was an adaptation of the book 1984 by George Orwell. His goal was to get it produced by/in the year 1984 itself. He worked incredibly hard to obtain the rights to the property, but he never could. After years of failing to get the rights, he decided that if he couldn’t do 1984, he would instead write his own original futuristic dystopian musical, and that became Superbia. (… And his experience on Superbia eventually became part of what inspired tick, tick… BOOM!)

“SOS” is sung by Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, at the very end of the show. Much of the score of 1984 is more traditional than Jonathan’s later work. “SOS” calls out most to the pop-rock influence Jonathan would later integrate into his musicals.

While 1984 was never presented and “SOS” was never publicly performed, Jonathan did include a different song from his 1984 musical in the cabaret act he performed with Marin Mazzie and Scott Burkell called J. Glitz. Jonathan wrote “SOS” in 1982 when he was 22 years old. 

16. Pura Vida 

1991
Pop Song

This is a standalone pop song that Jonathan wrote in 1991. 

Jonathan strove to write pop songs that might be heard on the radio and that also had a viewpoint and a purpose. 

17. Love Heals

1992
written for Love Heals: The Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education 

 Alison Gertz was one of several of Jonathan’s close friends, also including Gordon Rogers and Pam Shaw, who died of AIDS at young ages in the early 1990s and who he paid tribute to by name in the song “Life Support” in RENT. Alison was an AIDS activist who did a lot of important work promoting research and awareness. 

Victoria Leacock Hoffman commissioned Jonathan to write “Love Heals” for the foundation that Victoria, along with Dini von Mueffling and Stefani Greenfield, founded in Ali’s memory to educated young people about HIV/AIDS. The name “Love Heals” was Ali’s choice before she passed. Jonathan wrote the song of the same name in 1992 based on interviews with Victoria, Dini and Stefani and their feelings after the devastating loss of Ali at age 26.

With “Love Heals”, Jonathan endeavored to write a song that would honor Ali’s memory, brand the Love Heals Foundation by name, and also be a piece that Whitney Houston might perform. (He even saved one draft of his “Love Heals” lyric under the name “Whitney Lyric”.)

“Love Heals” was a bonus track and appeared under the credits of the RENT movie.

18. Piano 

1983
Standalone Theatre Song

There are many tapes of Jonathan’s work in the collection at the Library of Congress. One tape is labeled simply ‘Jonathan Larson Music ‘83’. Jonathan was 23 years old when he made it, so it mostly features songs he wrote for college shows at Adelphi University. Scattered among these are also three of his early standalone theatre songs that appear in our show. 

The tape contains 21 songs. Later on, Jonathan would sometimes scrounge money together to create professional demos of his songs, but the recordings on these tapes are just Jonathan recording himself in his apartment. “Greene Street” is first and “Piano” is last. “Rhapsody” is near the end. These are perhaps the three most lost songs in The Jonathan Larson Project, because Jonathan never publicly performed them. The Jonathan Larson Project marks the first time they are being performed live. 

19. Destination: Sky

1995
from Away We Go! (video mini-musical)

With Bob Golden, Jonathan Larson created a children’s mini-musical for straight-to-video release. Jonathan wrote four songs for the project, which was about two young siblings in New York City, learning about many different forms of transportation. He also directed and was involved in many other elements of Away We Go!

Away We Go! was filmed all over The Big Apple, with Newt the newt, a puppet, leading the way as the brother and sister learned about buses, taxis, and more. “Destination: Sky” was the finale of the piece.

The Jonathan Larson Project is running off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre.