The Genius of the Ramones

“Music was my salvation really, and always has been.” – Joey Ramone

Years ago, a young woman sat across from me on a near-empty train. She looked like she had been crying. Pulling her sweatshirt sleeves down over her hands, she leaned her head against the window, a distant look on her swollen and scarlet countenance.

I was listening to the Ramones at the time, and took a chance. I moved over to the seat next to her and said hello. She seemed shocked by the abrupt intrusion, but very quickly recovered and managed to make some small talk with me. After a few moments, I offered my headphones:

“You wanna hear something?” I asked.

She took my measure for a long moment before, against what was surely her better judgment, slipping the headphones on. I pressed play and Cretin Hop poured into her head. After a second she put her hands over the phones, drawing the music further in. Beat on the Brat followed; she listened for a minute, then, mirabile dictu, her lips unfolded like tiny wings and a smile took flight on her face.

“I’ve never heard this,” she said, too loud.

“I know,” said I.

“Who is it?”

“The Ramones.”

“What are you, their agent?”

“More like an ambassador,” I smiled. I skipped ahead to the song I really wanted her to hear. “It’s gonna be OK,” Joey Ramone sang to her, “It’s gonna be alright….yeah, yeah, yeah.” I handed her the player, and – here is the amazing part – she turned the volume up. Her eyes closed, her head bobbed almost imperceptibly, a chewed and unpolished fingernail tapped ever-so-lightly the side of her leg.

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When the song was over, she took the headphones off and opened her mouth, as though about to ask me a question (Who the hell are you? would have been a good one). I noticed we had arrived at my stop, however, and so scooped up my player, bid her farewell, and skipped off the train just before the doors shut. Apparently it was her stop too, though she must not have noticed ’till it was too late – I turned to see her standing behind the closed doors, bag in hand, laughing, as the train pulled away.

A smile, a laugh. A temporary respite from the pangs of heartbreak. The wonder and beauty and joy of life crammed into two-minute bursts of electricity. This is the genius of the Ramones.

*****

Prior to 1974, few would have seen genius in the future Ramones. In fact, the original lineup included a mental patient (Joey spent time in psychiatric institutions), a right-winger (Johnny), and a dope addict and sometime prostitute (Dee Dee). All were misfits at best, delinquents at worst. And yet…

The Ramones are given a lot of credit (though not enough credit in England) for starting punk. But the band originally had no such revolutionary intent. Indeed, their aim was devolutionary, to return rock and roll to its roots, to strip it of the overindulgent impulses it had acquired by the 1970’s; the endless and tuneless solos, bloated production and ostentatious concerts that characterized so many bands in that era.

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The Ramones wanted to make the kind of rock they loved when they were growing up in the late ’50’s and ’60’s – short, melodic tunes, heavy on attitude and harmony, and -most importantly – FUN. The Ramones wanted rock and roll to be fun again.

By all accounts, it was at first hard to know what to make of these strange boys who could barely play their instruments, and who were prone to arguing with each other like ten-year olds on stage. Legendary music journalist Legs McNeil described the Ramones’ first performance in New York City in 1974: “They were all wearing these black leather jackets. And they counted off this song. And they started playing different songs, and it was just this wall of noise… They looked so striking. These guys were not hippies. This was something completely new.”

Indeed, and that is the irony at the heart of the Ramones – in trying to resurrect something old, they inadvertently created something entirely new. Viva la devolucion!

*****

Johnny Ramone has not been given nearly enough credit for the success of the band. Partly, I suspect, because of minimal contributions as songwriter. And then there is the tricky subject of his politics – a self-professed Republican, Johnny Ramone was a Nixon man in his youth; in retirement, he proclaimed “God bless President Bush” at the band’s induction ceremony to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

That Johnny’s politics were so at odds with those of band-mate Joey (a sucker for left-wing causes his whole life), to say nothing of the industry as a whole, no doubt contributed to Johnny’s strangely maligned reputation in Ramones lore. Yet the truth is – Johnny held that band together, often through sheer force of his will. Everyone involved with the Ramones saw Johnny as field marshal; when Dee Dee was strung out, Joey crippled by OCD, and Marky falling over drunk (all three regular occurrences), it was Johnny who made sure that studio time was booked, tour dates set, personnel hired. “Someone had to make those decisions,” Johnny dryly remarked in retirement.

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Joey was caretaker of the band’s image and legacy. He insisted they never stray too far from the simplicity of dress and sound that was the Ramones’ hallmark. When band members quit, or were fired, it was Johnny who insisted they could – must – go on. The Ramones’ mission, Johnny understood, was bigger than any one of them.

And then there is that guitar sound. Johnny single-handedly put paid the notion that expensive equipment or virtuoso talent are necessary to make rock and roll. Passion and will – that’s what Johnny brought, and it was more than enough. Critics scoffed that he only played three chords, maybe only knew three chords. Johnny’s response – what else do you need? He played the hell out of those chords, and did more with them than other bands did with all their jazz scales and sitars combined.

*****

Short and celebratory, Ramones songs don’t waste your time – they come on like the laugh of an old friend, sound somehow both comforting and thrilling. For those unacquainted with our friends, allow me to suggest the following gems as an introduction:

1) Blitzkrieg Bop – The perfect rock song, and therefore the perfect song, this was the opening shot in the punk revolution, the first track from the first album. Nothing was ever the same again. They’re forming in a straight line…

2) Danny Says – One of the great songs about being in a rock band, this track from the Phil Spector-produced “End of the Century” chronicles both the excitement (Joey hears one of his songs on the radio) and boredom (whiling away hours in a hotel room watching TV) of being on the road.

3) The KKK Took My Baby Away – Written by Joey after he had just lost his girlfriend (to Johnny, no less). His loss is our gain – funny, sweet, and sad, rock and roll, punk, and doo-wop all wrapped together, KKK is an eminently hummable slice of pop perfection.

4) It’s Gonna Be Alright – From the underrated “Mondo Bizarro,” this was the band’s response to critics who wondered if the departure of bass player and primary songwriter Dee Dee would be the end of the Ramones. The answer: Not a chance. “Got good feelings, about this year,” Joey sings, sounding better than he had in years. “All is very well, C.J. Is here,” he continues, introducing Dee Dee’s replacement. “It’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be OK,” he roars in the chorus. The message – every ending is also a beginning. The Ramones live, and so does rock and roll.

5) What’s Your Game – Many people think the best pop music ends up on the radio. Then they hear (if they’re lucky) the Ramones. What’s Your Game, like all exquisitely wrought pop tunes, sounds familiar the first time you hear it. That it was never a Top 40 smash is a crime.

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6) I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend – Sweet and simple, Joey wears his heart completely on his sleeve in this lilting paean to first love. Hey little girl, I wanna be your boyfriend…

7) Cretin Hop – Go ahead, try not to dance. I dare you.

8) 53rd & 3rd – The question is not: How could the Ramones write a song about male prostitution and murder? The question is: How could the Ramones write a song about male prostitution and murder that is so damn catchy?

*****

Last year the Ramones belatedly received a Grammy Award for “lifetime achievement.” That the industry chose to honor them only after three of the original four members had passed away surely counts as some sort of sick joke. When alive and in their prime, making some of the best popular music ever conceived, or later when they continued to plow around the world nearly year ’round, keeping a performance schedule that would have killed bands half their age (the Ramones played an astonishing 2,300 shows in some 20 years), the music industry ignored them. Radio ignored them. Legs McNeil put it best when he asked: “Those songs were classic American pop songs. Why weren’t they played on the radio? Why weren’t they?”

The Ramones themselves wondered the same thing. Joey, for one, never gave up hope that the next record, the next single, the next tour would be the one that broke them into the mainstream. Widespread acceptance was always just around the corner for Joey. Johnny, with a classic conservative pessimism, realized very early that it wasn’t going to happen for them, that the best they could do would be to make a living (hence their brutal tour schedule).

Part of the problem was the band’s own lyrics. Frequent themes of mental illness; Nazi references that disturbed even the band’s most ardent supporters; flavors from ’50’s horror comics and movies – all were guaranteed to spook Top 40 radio programmers.

But some of it wasn’t their fault at all. Tagged as the godfathers of punk, the Ramones suffered from the nasty reputation of the bands that followed and imitated them. The Sex Pistols spit on their audience, American programmers knew. The Sex Pistols are a punk band. The Ramones are a punk band. Therefore, the Ramones must spit on their audience. Better not book them. That the Ramones never displayed the anger and violence of their British contemporaries, that they were more interested in making party music than revolutionary music, was lost on the mainstream music press. The Ramones created punk, which soon became a cage that stifled them creatively and commercially.

*****

In the last decade, Joey and Johnny were lost to cancer and Dee Dee to drugs. The music, thankfully, cannot be taken from us so easily. Music, Joey, said, was his salvation. He wasn’t the only one. There’s me of course, and somewhere out there there’s a girl who, for a brief long-ago moment, found solace on a train from five strangers…

.four of them named Ramone.