Rock & Roll Museum

Ramones

In the mid-Seventies the Ramones shaped the sound of punk rock in New York with simple, fast songs, deadpan lyrics, no solos, and an impenetrable wall of guitar chords. Twenty years later, with virtually all of their peers either retired or having moved on to forms other than punk, Joey and Johnny Ramone, the band’s core, continued adamantly to parlay the same determinedly basic sound.

The group formed in 1974, after the foursome graduated or left high school in Forest Hills, New York. The original lineup featured Joey on drums, Dee Dee sharing guitar with Johnny, and Tommy as manager, but they soon settled on their recording setup. The Ramones gravitated toward the burgeoning scene at CBGB, where their 20-minute sets of rapid-fire, under-two-and -a-half-minute songs earned them a recording contract before any of their contemporaries except Patti Smith.

In 1976 Ramones was a definitive punk statement, with songs like "Beat on the Brat," "Blitzkrieg Bop," and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" -- 14 of them, clocking in at under 30 minutes. The group traveled to England in 1976, giving the nascent British punk scene the same boost they had provided to New Yorkers. Before the year was out, Ramones Leave Home had been released. Then as now, the band toured almost incessantly.
With their next two singles, the group began to soften their sound slightly. "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" and "Rockaway Beach" made explicit their debt to Sixties AM hit styles such as bubblegum and surf music, and both made the lower reaches of the Top 100. They were included on Rocket to Russia, which also contained the ballad "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow." At this point Tommy quit the group, preferring his behind-the-scenes activity as coproducer, "disguised" as T. Erdelyi (his real name).

  

His replacement was Marc Bell, henceforth dubbed Marky Ramone. He was formerly one of Richard Hell’s Voidoids and before that a member of Dust, who recorded a pair of albums during the Sixties. His first LP with the Ramones, Road to Ruin, was their first to contain only 12 songs and their first to last longer than half an hour. Despite their glossiest production yet, featuring acoustic guitars and real solos, its two singles, "Don’t Come Close" and a version of the Searchers’ "Needles and Pins," failed to capture a mass audience. Neither did their starring role in Roger Corman’s 1979 movie Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.
 

As the Eighties began, the Ramones tried working with noted pop producers Phil Spector (End of the Century) and 10cc’s Graham Gouldman (Pleasant Dreams), but commercial success remained elusive. After Subterranean Jungle, Marky Ramone departed, to be replaced by ex-Velveteens Richie Beau. As Richie Ramone, the drummer played on four albums, before Marky returned in 1987. Too Tough to Die, with Eurythmic Dave Stewart producing the pop single "Howling at the Moon," recaptured some of their Seventies energy, and "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" off Animal Boy offered cutting political satire, but the remainder of the Ramones’ Eighties work too often found them parodying their earlier strengths.

In 1989 the Ramones gained their widest exposure with the title track to the soundtrack for Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, but also underwent their most significant internal shift. Dee Dee departed, first to record as Dee Dee King a rap album, Standing in the Spotlight, and then to form the rock group Chinese Dragons. A heroin addict and substance abuser for 14 years, Dee Dee had been the Ramones’ truest punk (going solo, he also joined AA); his departure signaled the end of an era, if not a style. AWOL from the Marines at the time he enlisted in the band, C. J. Ramone infused youthful energy -- he was 14 years younger than Joey and Johnny -- but the band’s sound remained the same.

 

Mondo Bizarro, with a guest appearance by Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid and songs that attacked both drugs and the PMRC’s Tipper Gore, ushered the band into the Nineties, their influence by then apparent on such rowdy outfits as Guns n’ Roses and the Beastie Boys. In 1994 they persevered with Acid Eaters, a tribute to Sixties idols like the Animals and Rolling Stones. With Joey sober since the start of the decade and Marky in recovery from alcoholism, they continued their relentless touring. With the release of Adios Amigos, the band hinted that it was considering calling it quits.


Interesting Links:

The One Great Home Page of The Ramones

The Official Web Site of The Ramones

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