MUSIC : A Quieter Sound : Former Modern Lovers singer Jonathan Richman opts for pared-down tunes that let him connect with the audience.

All that Jonathan Richman really needs these days is a backbeat and a stage. Just that and his guitar, of course, electric or acous tic--it almost doesn’t matter.

That’s the turn the singer-songwriter’s career has taken these past several years, after abandoning the band format of his Modern Lovers. Even if it was the high-volume, earliest version of that rock quartet that first propelled Richman and his songs of wise-guy Angst to his greatest notoriety, he’s now more interested in quieter rhythms.

Forget that his songs from the early 1970s, most notably the minimalist rock anthem “Roadrunner,” emerged as an important influence to the Sex Pistols and others of the subsequent punk and new wave movement. And never mind the cult popularity that soon came his way, when the Modern Lovers were playing major halls in the United States and Europe, and for crowds of up to 40,000 at the British pop festivals.

No, Richman is interested in a more intimate contact with audiences now. So the music he will be playing Saturday night at the Palomino in North Hollywood, with only a drummer behind him, will again be pared down to the barest essentials.

“I was always sort of like that,” says Richman, 41. “I don’t want much between me and the audience. Loud volume, that was something between me and the audience.”

Much of the music performed at the Palomino will likely be culled from his new “I, Jonathan” album, released last year on Rounder Records. The title may have been something of a joke, but the tracks do travel some of the pop musical history--from party rock and the surf sound to the rougher edges of the Velvet Underground--that influenced Richman’s own style.

But, he insists, it is the live experience that matters most to him. “If you want to understand me, see me live,” he says. “Don’t even think about the records until you’ve seen it live.”

He still feels that way about the Velvet Underground, even if the reputation of that defunct band led by Lou Reed now rests on its recorded work. It was “the way they improvised live, the spontaneity of it, the excitement of it. The stuff I do isn’t supposed to be thought of and analyzed. It’s supposed to be danced to, and to have fun with.”

Of Richman’s act, the Boston Globe has written that “his real genius hits you in those moments when you don’t know whether to laugh out loud or just shut up and listen for a minute to what he’s saying.”

The musician left his hometown of Boston only a few years ago, settling with his wife and two children east of Sacramento. It’s where he recorded his last two albums, and where he continues to make the largely upbeat music that confounds some of the old fans.

And some in the pop music press, too, have expressed alarm as Richman has turned away from the original Modern Lovers’ youthful tension in favor of such lighthearted fare as “Parties in the U.S.A.”

“I didn’t want to be a critics’ darling,” Richman says. “I wanted to play high school dances and stuff.

As it was, his first album, “The Modern Lovers,” had to be pieced together from demo tapes since the band broke apart before a proper album was recorded. The record, produced largely by former Velvet Underground member John Cale, wasn’t released until 1976, almost four years after the tracks were recorded.

That, Richman says now, helps explain the record’s rough, even detached vocal style. “We didn’t expect anyone to hear them,” he says, adding that the band at its best was far better live.

Now happily on his own, Richman played 145 dates last year and expects to do about the same in 1993. “For awhile, there were songs I didn’t want to do. And now there’s just about nothing I won’t do. I think I’m less set in my ways. I don’t know how the shows are going to be. They vary even more widely than they used to.”

Where and When What: Jonathan Richman performs at the Palomino, 6907 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Hours: 9 p.m. Saturday. Price: Tickets are $10. Call: (818) 764-4010.