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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
The new-wave band that was going to have the greatest impact worldwide was the
most unlikely one: the Ramones, who simply
played inept rock'n'roll at supersonic speed.
Their frenzy was not exactly intellectual, and certainly had no artistic
ambition, but was exactly what legions of frustrated kids had been waiting for.
Inspired by New York Dolls and Dictators, Ramones (1976), a
rapid-fire collection of brief songs that were intentionally demented and
clownish, invented the most significant genre of the last quarter century
of the 20th century.
Blitzkrieg Bop stands as the anthem that woke up a slumbering generation.
Rocket To Russia (1977), their masterpiece, was the ultimate item of
"junk art": a ridiculous catalog of rockabilly, surf music, Mersey-beat
and bubblegum music, but charged with the violence of the slums.
Teenage Lobotomy and Rockaway Beach were
as irresistible as devoid of instrumental or vocal skills.
A few more classics followed, although
Do You Remember Rock And Roll Radio (1980) and
Bop Til You Drop (1987) flirted with heavy-metal and missed the
exuberant recklessness of their early days.
Their lifestyle was rude and barbaric, their philosophy was a simple
"I Don't Care" and their slogan was "gabba-gabba-hey": this was the
revolution that changed the face of western civilization.
Perhaps the title of their album, The End Of The Century (1980),
was appropriate.
Full bio.
The Ramones were as indifferent to the history of rock as they were influential on it. They were born precisely to oppose the seriousness of intellectual circles. Their music was deliberately “stupid.” Their lyrics were deliberately silly. Nothing about the way they played, dressed, or sang suggested even the slightest artistic ambition. Fate would have it that these jesters of music became the leaders of one of the most important artistic and social revolutions of the century. With them, punk rock was born, exported a few months later to London by Malcolm McLaren.
A prolific band to say the least, the Ramones owe their fame and glory to their first three albums, released between 1976 and 1977. Not only do these albums contain much of punk rock’s masterpieces (it can be argued that other punk bands merely played variations on Ramones themes), but they also forged from scratch a new theory of what it means to make music. After centuries of progress, their three chords marked a return almost to the Stone Age. That primitivism would influence thousands of musicians worldwide, from rock to jazz, from ska to the avant-garde.
The Ramones invented punk rock, by far the most widespread musical genre of the late twentieth century. No one had done it before them, and perhaps no one has ever done it quite like them since. The world before and after the Ramones are two completely different worlds. 1976 is a watershed in the history of music (not just rock, but also jazz and classical, as shown by the many John Zorns). When punk rock erupted, it radically changed the face of the planet; it was a shock comparable to Chuck Berry’s guitar riff and the hippies of San Francisco. A quarter of a century later, its seismic aftershocks are still felt. No one had ever played that music before, not even the wildest garage rock bands. More than that, no one before 1976 could have predicted that in 1977 such music would be played. The Ramones literally came out of nowhere. If that was not a revolution, it is hard to imagine what revolutions have ever been in music.
Yet at first, they were considered simply insane parodists of the “little song” (their own name, Ramones, is a parody of the Beatles, who used the surname Ramone when traveling incognito). But the Ramones played “little songs” as Beethoven played folk ballads. The Ramones’ “little songs” made melody fans shiver.
As a Ramones fan rightly told me, “When we watched them play, it felt as if we were the ones on stage.” An entire generation picked up the guitar and formed a band. The world would never be the same again.
The Ramones were formed in 1974 by a group of schoolmates from Forest Hills, New York. They debuted at CBGB’s under the patronage of the club owner, Hilly Kristal: Johnny (Cummings) on lead guitar, Dee Dee (Douglas Colvin) on bass, Joey (Jeffrey Hyman) on vocals, Tommy (Thomas Erdelyi, Hungarian) on drums. Joey was the true leader, the outsider driving a genuinely pop visionary spirit; while Dee Dee, a small-time criminal and drug addict, a cynical and egocentric figure, tended toward cartoonish parody, interested only in pure fun (the two wrote all the material, especially Dee Dee, who is responsible for nearly all their masterpieces); Tommy served as the authoritarian pole of discipline; and Johnny, an ex-soldier and troublemaker, with his razor-sharp riffs, was the band’s musical soul. They shared the same iconoclastic sense of humor and, above all, their uniform: leather jackets, dark glasses, T-shirts, ripped jeans, and sneakers. All had grown up listening to the New York Dolls and the Dictators.
The music of Ramones (Sire, April 1976) is raw, powerful, and fast. At first, it may recall the sonic bombardments of the MC5, but in reality its foundations are embedded in the beat and the nonsense nursery rhymes of the early ’60s. The Ramones serve up musical illiteracy, effortlessly oscillating between rockabilly, beat, surf, and bubblegum. Devoid of the intellectual vision of the “damned” who crowded the same club, and elementary in both composition (adolescent lyrics, childish chords) and execution (no solos), their style relies primarily on unadorned grit and the breathtaking momentum of Joey’s non-stop singing and the vitriolic wall of guitars.
The Ramones are a rowdy joke—but a joke that rediscovered the foundations of rock and roll: the simple, short chorus, grounded in the everyday reality of teenagers, with enough drive to support generational rebellion and enough irony to entertain at parties.
American graffiti, punk violence, and caustic humor combine wonderfully, producing a sound that pleases neither the few true nostalgics nor the few true punks, but which thrills hordes of fake nostalgic and fake punk teenagers, weary of endless blues-rock jams, the mega-productions of art rock, mile-long solos, and symphonic arrangements.
Their first street anthem is
Blitzkrieg Bop (1976),
a characteristically silly chorus sung monotonously, propelled by a cascade of guitar flurries and carefully syncopated pauses. The album caused a scandal precisely because it featured farce-like tracks such as this, with four- or five-line ridiculous lyrics ranging from
Now I Wanna Snuff Some Glue to I Don't Wanna Walk Around You.
I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
is a caricature of teen idols, and
Beat On The Brat
mocks the “bad” bands of the Merseybeat.
By bringing to light (not without caustic humor) the civilization of the 45 RPM single (songs that lasted no more than three minutes, a title, a refrain, and then shouting at full volume) and publicizing the image of the urban troublemaker, their naive, populist punk-rock paved the way for English punk-rock: their first tour across the Atlantic effectively exported the cliche'.
Having unleashed chaos around the world with so much ferocious anti-music, the Ramones reaffirmed their inclination toward gratuitous, subnormal pandemonium with
Leave Home (jan 1977),
a more mature album, full of other hilarious gags: above all, the anti-militarist parody Commando, but also the satire of punk sadism in Suey Is a Headbanger. Over all rises another powerful and grotesque anthem of youth alienation, Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment, ripped apart by wild heavy-metal flourishes. With Pinhead, inspired by a 1930s monster movie, they practically invented the horror-punk genre, and the line "gabba gabba / we accept you / we accept you / one of us" became the rallying cry of their fan militias.
The four pranksters (particularly Joey and Dee Dee, authors of much of the material) reached artistic maturity with their third album, Rocket to Russia (Nov 1977), a spectacular, breathtaking concentration of epileptic riffs and idiotic nursery rhymes. Masterpieces abound, from the martial rock and roll of Cretin Hop to the overwhelming surf of Rockaway Beach and Sheena Is a Punk Rocker, both comically structured and counterpointed as in the Beach Boys’ manual, to the absurd Merseybeat of Teenage Lobotomy, featuring the most visceral bursts and syncopations of their career and emblematic lyrics like "now I guess I'll have to tell them / that I got no cerebellum," to the rollicking ballad I Wanna Be Well. There are also anthems inspired by more serious nihilism, such as We’re a Happy Family and I Don’t Care, ridiculous but actually heartfelt tributes to the disenfranchised teenage masses. The album represented the pinnacle of their primary idiocy, but also marked the beginning of a downward arc.
With Road to Ruin (Sire, Sep 1978), the Ramones began producing more regular, (relatively) slower, and extended songs, often veering into mediocre, formulaic heavy metal, with the exception of the farce I Wanna Be Sedated.
The Ramones had always been, above all, an idea. The justified ridicule of critics was countered by the unconditional enthusiasm of fans. With no more than four chords, they had virtually reinvented rock.
The live double album Ramones Is Alive (Sire, 1979) marked, in a sense, the end of an era, more so than the grandiose End of the Century (Sire, Jan 1980), which, ennobled by Spector’s colossal production, featured Chinese Rock and, above all, the rollicking, clownish rhythm and blues of Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio.
We Want the Airwaves on Pleasant Dreams (Sire, 1981) and Psychotherapy on Subterranean Jungle (Sire, 1983) are what remains noteworthy from the band’s most stagnant period.
Too Tough to Die (Sire, Oct 1984) signaled a comeback of sorts, at least with the sinister rockabilly of Mama’s Boy, the catchy disco-rock of Howling at the Moon, and Wart Hog.
Updated to match heavy metal productions, the Ramones returned to their furious two-minute “thrash-punk” with the ferocious, hyper-kinetic Animal Boy on Animal Boy (Sire, 1986), alternating their “head-banger” neurosis classics with some throwback satirical tracks like Bonzo Goes to Bitburg and Somebody Put Something in My Drink. But the days of carefree, goliardic “sub-punk” were over: the Ramones now did seriously what they once did as a joke, and, ironically, sounded much less authentic than before.
The compilation Ramones Mania (Sire, 1988) collects the essentials of their history.
The Ramones closed the 1980s alternating fresh, brilliant works like Halfway to Sanity (Sire, 1987), with I Know Better Now, Go Lil’ Camaro Go, and especially the armored heavy-metal of Bop ‘Til You Drop, with mediocre, insipid albums like Brain Drain (Sire, 1989), in which only the parodic Pet Sematary stands out. Johnny Ramone, who had invented punk guitar with his supersonic chords, remained the only one consistently at the top of his game.
The 1990s seemed destined to continue the same stylistic rollercoaster: Mondo Bizarro (Radioactive, 1992), without Dee Dee (who had meanwhile left the band for an ineffectual solo career) is actually one of the best albums of their latter period, full of songs worthy of their past repertoire (Cabbies on Crack and Censorshit above all). However, the “I Don’t Care” philosophy had evolved into a minimal social consciousness.
Approaching retirement (they had publicly announced they would stop playing in 1996), the Ramones made the mistake of recording an album of imitations (of themselves and others) that left behind a bad memory: Adios Amigos (Radioactive, 1995).
The live album We’re Outta Here (MCA, 1997) definitively ended their story.
Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman), one of the most influential singers of all time, the epitome of the word “compelling,” the emblem of the energy that distinguishes rock and roll from other music, died of cancer in April 2001.
Joey Ramone’s posthumous Don’t Worry About Me (Sanctuary, 2002) and Ya Know (2012) were terrible ways to pay tribute to him.
Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin) was found dead of a drug overdose in June 2002.
Johnny (Cummings) Ramone died in 2004 at 55 of prostate cancer.
Tommy (Erdelyi) Ramone, the last surviving original member, died of cancer in 2014 at 62.
In retrospect, the Ramones seem more closely related to
Phil Spector’s sound than to the
Sex Pistols.
Their songs rested on two pillars: a simple chorus and a driving arrangement—the same principles behind Phil Spector’s (and Tamla’s) productions.
But the motto “gabba gabba hey” (stolen from filmmaker
Todd Browning’s monsters) remains the best and most cultured summary of their work.
"All revolutions start with an idea" (Karl Marx).
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