By the autumn of 1971, through their live performances in Boston and New York, they had begun to attract the attention of several record company A&R men, including Stuart Love at Warner Brothers, and Allan Mason and Matthew Kaufman at A&M.

The band made their first recordings for Warner Brothers at the Intermedia Studios in Boston in late 1971; these included the version of "Hospital" which was later to feature on the album.

[5] Eventually, in early 1973, they signed with Warner Brothers and agreed that John Cale should produce their debut album.

Returning to California in the summer to work with Cale, it became apparent both that there were personality clashes between some of the band members, and that Richman now wanted to take a different approach to his songs - much more mellow and easy-paced rather than the earlier aggressive hard rock.

Warner Brothers then engaged Kim Fowley to work with the band, but by this time Richman refused to perform some of his most popular earlier songs live.

[6] The sessions with Fowley were aborted, although two tracks, "I'm Straight" and the original recording of "Government Center", and possibly others, were later issued on CD versions of The Modern Lovers.

[4] However, in the meantime, Kaufman also put together the album The Modern Lovers from remixed versions of the tracks recorded four or more years earlier for Warner Brothers and A&M, and released it in August 1976.

In the UK, the versions of "Roadrunner" produced by Cale and Kaufman were released as two sides of a single, which became a chart hit in 1977.