Ramones

Ramones were an American rock ^{Rock music} band that formed in Forest Hills, Queens, New York in 1974 and is often cited as the first punk rock group. Despite achieving only limited commercial success, the band was a major influence on the punk rock movement both in the United States and the United Kingdom.

All of the band members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname "Ramone", though none of them were actually related. They performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. Recognition of the band's importance built over the years, and they are now cited in many assessments of all-time great rock music, such as the Rolling Stone lists of the 50 Greatest Artists of All Time and VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. In 2002, the Ramones were ranked the second-greatest band of all time by Spin ^{Spin (magazine)} magazine, trailing only The Beatles. On March 18, 2002, the Ramones—including the three founders and drummers Marky ^{Marky Ramone} and Tommy Ramone—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 
Early days: 1974–1975

The original members of the band met in and around the middle-class neighborhood of Forest Hills in the New York City borough of Queens ^{Queens, New York} . John Cummings ^{Johnny Ramone} and Thomas Erdelyi ^{Tommy Ramone} had both been in a high-school garage band in 1966–67 known as the Tangerine Puppets. They became friends with Douglas Colvin ^{Dee Dee Ramone} , who had recently moved to the area from Germany. Jeffrey Hyman ^{Joey Ramone} was in the short-lived early 1970s glam rock band Sniper.

The Ramones began taking shape in early 1974, when Cummings and Colvin invited Hyman to join them in a band. The initial lineup featured Colvin on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Cummings on lead guitar, and Hyman on drums. Colvin, who soon switched from rhythm guitar to bass, was the first to adopt the name "Ramone", dubbing himself Dee Dee Ramone. He was inspired by Paul McCartney's use of the pseudonym Paul Ramon during his Silver Beatles ^{The Quarrymen} days. Dee Dee convinced the other members to take on the name and came up with the idea of calling the band the Ramones. Hyman and Cummings became Joey Ramone and Johnny Ramone, respectively.

, featuring the Ramones
The Ramones played before an audience for the first time on March 30, 1974, at Performance Studios.

The band swiftly became regulars at the club, playing there seventy-four times by the end of the year. After garnering considerable attention for their performances—which averaged about seventeen minutes from beginning to end—the group was signed to a recording contract in the later part of 1975 by Seymour Stein of Sire Records. Stein's wife, Linda Stein ^{Linda S. Stein} , had seen the band play at CBGB's; she would later co-manage them along with Danny Fields. By this time, the Ramones were recognized as leaders of the new scene that was increasingly being referred to as 'punk ^{punk rock} '. The group's unusual frontman had a lot to do with their impact. As Dee Dee explained, "All the other singers [in New York] were copying David Johansen [of The New York Dolls], who was copying Mick Jagger.... But Joey was unique, totally unique."


Spearheading punk: 1976–1977

The Ramones recorded their debut album, Ramones ^{Ramones (Ramones album)} , in February 1976. Of the fourteen songs on the album, the longest, "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement", barely surpassed two-and-a-half minutes. While the songwriting credits were shared by the entire band, Dee Dee was the primary writer. The record, coproduced by Tommy and Craig Leon on an extremely low budget of about $6,400, was released in April. The now iconic front cover photograph of the band was taken by Roberta Bayley, who shot regularly for Punk magazine.

Ramones made little commercial impact, reaching only number 111 on the Billboard ^{Billboard charts} album chart. The two associated singles, "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend", failed to chart at all. At the band's first major gig outside of New York, a June date in Youngstown, Ohio, approximately ten people showed up. It wasn't until they made a brief tour of England that they began to see the fruits of their labor; a performance at The Roundhouse ^{Roundhouse (venue)} in London on July 4, 1976 (second-billed to the Flamin' Groovies), organized by Linda Stein, was a resounding success. Their Roundhouse appearance and a club date the following night—where the band met members of the *** Pistols and The Clash—helped galvanize the burgeoning UK punk rock scene. The Flamin' Groovies/Ramones double bill was successfully reprised at The Roxy ^{The Roxy Theatre} in Los Angeles the following month, fueling the punk scene there as well. The Ramones were becoming an increasingly popular live act—a Toronto performance in September energized yet another growing punk scene.

Their next two albums, Leave Home and Rocket to Russia, were released in 1977. Both were coproduced by Tommy and Tony Bongiovi, the second cousin of Jon Bon Jovi. Leave Home met with even less chart success than Ramones, though it did include "Pinhead", which became one of the band's signature songs with its chanted refrain of "Gabba gabba hey!" Rocket to Russia was the band's highest charting album to date, reaching number 49 on the Billboard 200. In Rolling Stone, critic Dave Marsh called it "the best American rock & roll of the year". The album also featured the first Ramones single to break into the Billboard charts (albeit only as high as number 81): "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker". The follow-up single, "Rockaway Beach", climbed to number 66—the highest any Ramones single would ever reach in America. On December 31, 1977, the Ramones recorded It's Alive ^{It's Alive (album)} , a live concert double album, at the Rainbow Theatre ^{Rainbow (London)} , London, which was released in April 1979 (the title is a reference to the 1974 horror film It's Alive ^{It's Alive (film)} ).


Recordings turn more pop: 1978–198
3
Tommy, tired of touring, left the band in early 1978. He continued as the Ramones' record producer under his birth name of Erdelyi. His position as drummer was filled by Marc Bell ^{Marky Ramone} , who had been a member of the early 1970s hard rock band Dust ^{Dust (band)} , Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys ^{Jayne County} , and the pioneering punk group Richard Hell & The Voidoids ^{The Voidoids} . Bell became Marky Ramone. Later that year, the band released their fourth album, and first with Marky, Road to Ruin ^{Road to Ruin (Ramones album)} . The album, coproduced by Tommy with Ed Stasium, included some new sounds like acoustic guitar, several ballads, and the band's first two recorded songs longer than three minutes. It failed to crack the Billboard Top 100 ^{Billboard Top 100} . However, "I Wanna Be Sedated", which appeared both on the album and as a single, would become one of the band's best-known songs. The artwork on the album's cover was done by Punk magazine co-founder John Holmstrom.

After the band's movie debut in Roger Corman's Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), renowned producer Phil Spector became interested in the Ramones and produced their 1980 album End of the Century. During the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Spector pulled a gun on Dee Dee, forcing him to repeatedly play a riff. Though it was to be the highest-charting album in the band's history—number 44 in the United States, number 14 in Great Britain—Johnny made clear that he favored the band's more aggressive punk material: "End of the Century was just watered-down Ramones. It's not the real Ramones." This stance was also conveyed by the title and track selection of the compilation album Johnny later oversaw, Loud, Fast Ramones: Their Toughest Hits. Despite these reservations, Johnny did concede that some of Spector's work with the band had merit, saying "It really worked when he got to a slower song like 'Danny Says'—the production really worked tremendously. 'Rock 'N' Roll Radio' is really good. For the harder stuff, it didn't work as well." The syrupy, string-laden Ronettes cover "Baby, I Love You" released as a single, became the band's biggest ever hit in Great Britain, reaching number 8 on the charts.


Pleasant Dreams, the band's sixth album, was released in 1981. The record continued the trend established by End of The Century, diluting the rawer punk sound showcased on the band's initial three albums. Slick production was again featured, this time provided by Graham Gouldman of UK pop act 10cc. Johnny would contend in retrospect that this direction was a record company decision, a continued futile attempt to get airplay on American radio.Tensions between Joey and Johnny colored much of the Ramones' career. The pair were politically antagonistic, Joey being a liberal ^{Liberalism in the United States} and Johnny a conservative ^{Conservatism in the United States} . Their personalities also clashed: Johnny was a military brat ^{military brat (U.S. subculture)} who lived by a code of self-discipline, while Joey struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Johnny, who was fascinated by the Nazis ^Nazism and Adolf Hitler, would sometimes torment Joey with anti-Semitic remarks. In the early 1980s, Johnny "stole" Joey's girlfriend Linda, whom he later married. As a consequence, despite performing together for years afterward, Joey and Johnny stopped speaking to each other. Tommy left the band partly in reaction to being "physically threatened by Johnny, treated with contempt by Dee Dee, and all but ignored by Joey". In 1997, Marky and Joey got into a fight about their respective drinking habits on the Howard Stern radio show.
Musical style

The Ramones' loud, fast, straightforward musical style was influenced by pop music that the band members grew up listening to in the 1950s and 1960s, including classic rock groups such as The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Rolling Stones; bubblegum ^{Bubblegum pop} acts like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express; and girl groups such as The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las. They also drew on the harder rock sound of The Stooges and the New York Dolls, both now known as seminal protopunk bands. The Ramones' style was in part a reaction against the heavily produced, often bombastic music that dominated the pop charts in the 1970s. "We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard," Joey once explained. "In 1974 everything was tenth-generation Led Zeppelin, tenth-generation Elton John, or overproduced, or just junk. Everything was long jams, long guitar solos.... We missed music like it used to be." Ira Robbins and Scott Isler of Trouser Press describe the result:


As leaders in the punk rock scene, the Ramones' music has usually been identified with that label, and others as power pop. In the 1980s, the band sometimes veered into hardcore punk territory, as can be heard on Too Tough to Die.


Visual imagery

The Ramones' art and visual imagery complemented the themes of their music and performance. The band members adopted a uniform look of long hair, leather jackets, t-shirts, torn jeans, and sneakers. This fashion emphasized minimalism, which was a powerful influence on the New York punk scene of the 1970s and reflected the band's short, simple songs. Tommy Ramone recalled that, both musically and visually, "we were influenced by comic books, movies, the Andy Warhol scene, and avant-garde films. I was a big Mad Magazine ^{Mad (magazine)} fan myself." Vega produced the band's t-shirts, their main source of income, basing most of the images on a black-and-white self-portrait photograph he had taken of his American bald eagle belt buckle which had appeared on the back sleeve of the Ramones' first album. He was inspired to create the band's logo after a trip to Washington, D.C.:

I saw them as the ultimate all-American band. To me, they reflected the American character in general—an almost childish innocent aggression.... I thought, 'The Great Seal of the President of the United States' would be perfect for the Ramones, with the eagle holding arrows—to symbolize strength and the aggression that would be used against whomever dares to attack us—and an olive branch, offered to those who want to be friendly. But we decided to change it a little bit. Instead of the olive branch, we had an apple tree branch, since the Ramones were American as apple pie. And since Johnny was such a baseball fanatic, we had the eagle hold a baseball bat instead of the [Great Seal]'s arrows.The Ramones had a broad and lasting influence on the development of popular music. Music historian Jon Savage writes of their debut album that "it remains one of the few records that changed pop forever." As described by Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "The band's first four albums set the blueprint for punk, especially American punk and hardcore, for the next two decades." Trouser Press's Robbins and Isler similarly write that the Ramones "not only spearheaded the original new wave/punk movement, but also drew the blueprint for subsequent hardcore punk bands".

The Ramones' debut album had an outsized effect relative to its modest sales. According to Tony James, a member of several seminal British punk bands, "Everybody went up three gears the day they got that first Ramones album. Punk rock—that rama-lama super fast stuff—is totally down to the Ramones. Bands were just playing in an MC5 groove until then." The central fanzine of the early UK punk scene, Sniffin' Glue, was named after the song "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", which appeared on the debut LP. The Ramones' first British concert, at London's Roundhouse concert hall, was held on July 4, 1976, the United States Bicentennial. The *** Pistols were playing in Sheffield that evening, supported by The Clash, making their public debut. The next night, members of both bands attended the Ramones' gig at the Dingwall's club. Ramones manager Danny Fields recalls a conversation between Johnny Ramone and Clash bassist Paul Simonon (which he mislocates at the Roundhouse): "Johnny asked him, 'What do you do? Are you in a band?' Paul said, 'Well, we just rehearse. We call ourselves the Clash but we're not good enough.' Johnny said, 'Wait till you see us—we stink, we're lousy, we can't play. Just get out there and do it.'" Another band whose members saw the Ramones perform, The Damned ^{The Damned (band)} , played their first show two days later. The Ramones' two July 1976 shows, like their debut album, are seen as having a significant impact on the style of many of the newly formed British punk acts—as one observer put it, "instantly nearly every band speeded up".

Ramones concerts and recordings inspired many musicians central to the development of California punk as well, including Greg Ginn of Black Flag ^{Black Flag (band)} , Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys, Mike Ness of Social Distortion, Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, and members of The Descendents. Canada's first major punk scenes—in Toronto and in British Columbia's Victoria ^{Victoria, British Columbia} and Vancouver—were also heavily influenced by the Ramones. In the late 1970s, many bands emerged with musical styles deeply indebted to the band's. There were The Lurkers from England, The Undertones from Ireland, Teenage Head ^{Teenage Head (band)} from Canada, and The Zeros ^{The Zeros (US band)} and The Dickies from southern California. The seminal hardcore band Bad Brains took its name from a Ramones song. Later punk bands such as Screeching Weasel, The Vindictives, The Queers, The Mr. T Experience, Beatnik Termites, and Jon Cougar Concentration Camp have recorded cover versions of entire Ramones albums—Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia, Road to Ruin, Pleasant Dreams, and Too Tough to Die, respectively. The Huntingtons' consists of Ramones covers from across the band's history. The Riverdales, made up of former Screeching Weasel members, have emulated the sound of the Ramones throughout their career.

The Ramones also influenced musicians associated with other genres, such as heavy metal ^{Heavy metal music} . Metallica's Kirk Hammett has described the importance of Johnny's rapid-fire guitar playing style to his own musical development. Motörhead lead singer Lemmy, a friend of the Ramones since the late 1970s, mixed the band's "Go Home Ann" in 1985. The members of Motörhead later composed the song "R.A.M.O.N.E.S." as a tribute, and Lemmy performed at the final Ramones concert in 1996. In the realm of alternative rock, the song "53rd and 3rd" lent its name to a British indie pop label cofounded by Stephen Pastel of the Scottish band The Pastels. Evan Dando of The Lemonheads, Dave Grohl of Nirvana ^{Nirvana (band)} and Foo Fighters, are among the many alternative rock musicians who have credited the Ramones with inspiring them. We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to Ramones (2003) is the best known Ramones tribute album, with artists such as Green Day, Kiss ^{Kiss (band)} , The Offspring, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Metallica, and Rob Zombie (who also did the album cover artwork). Green Day members have gone as far as naming their children in honor of the band. Billie Joe Armstrong named his son Joey in homage to Joey Ramone, and Tré Cool named his daughter Ramona.*Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin) – bass guitar, vocals ^singing (1974–1989)
*Johnny Ramone (John Cummings) – guitar (1974–1996)
*Joey Ramone (Jeffry Hyman) – drums ^{drum kit} (1974), lead vocals (1974–1996)
*Tommy Ramone (Thomas Erdelyi) – drums (1974–1978)
*Marky Ramone (Marc Bell) – drums (1978–1983, 1987–1996)
*Richie Ramone (Richard Reinhardt) – drums, vocals (1983–1987)
*Elvis Ramone ^{Clem Burke} (Clem Burke) – drums (1987)
*C. J. Ramone (Christopher Joseph Ward) – bass guitar, vocals (1989–1996);Studio albums
*Ramones ^{Ramones (Ramones album)} (1976)
*Leave Home (1977)
*Rocket to Russia (1977)
*Road to Ruin ^{Road to Ruin (Ramones album)} (1978)
*End of the Century (1980)
*Pleasant Dreams (1981)
*Subterranean Jungle (1983)
*Too Tough to Die (1984)
*Animal Boy (1986)
*Halfway to Sanity (1987)
*Brain Drain ^{Brain Drain (album)} (1989)
*Mondo Bizarro (1992)
*Acid Eaters (1993)
*¡Adios Amigos! (1995)