R.I.P. Joey Ramone
A tribute by the PSF posse (May 2001)
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
by Jason Gross
Joey was truly an ‘everyman.’ That’s why Hilly Kristal thought he and his band mates where thugs ready to case CBGB’s when they auditioned and still thought they were after they played the first time. That’s why a woman walked up to their manager after he came off a tour bus to ask 'Are you taking care of those retarded men?' That's why he ditched his birth-name and took up a McCartney alias with this other band mates to look like a brotherhood. That's why they made 'stupid' a desirable concept as much as George Clinton and P-Funk did in the '70's. That’s why hundreds of bands heard and saw them and imagined ‘fuck, I can do this!’ and help put New York back on the map as a rock and roll town with their 'minimalist' rock (that's what scribes were calling it then, honest).
That’s important ‘cause that wasn’t always the case. The rock star was somebody who was a mythical figure, a larger-than-life character (not that Joey wasn’t) to be worshipped on a holy shrine (ditto). Joey was a guy who dressed up in leather jackets, ripped jeans and crooned about beating up kids with sluggers, sniffing glue and getting lobotomized and electroshock therapy from behind a long mop of hair and shaded little glasses. Even more than the Sex Pistols, this comic-book mentality knocked rock off its pedestal, back to the fun and games and sex realm from where it came: Rotten and the boys never did a decent adolescent song, after all. He wasn’t a great singer and didn’t need to be- yelling in front of Tommy’s relentless pounding and Johnny’s roar and Dee Dee’s countdowns in two minute bursts was inspiration enough.
Just so nobody thinks that J.R. was an ignoramus, here was a guy who also sang tunes where he berated the Klan for ruining his love life, made a monkey out of Reagan for honoring the Nazis (courtesy of Dee Dee), questioned Tipper Gore’s sex life and contributed to an anti-apartheid album- not to mention the fact that Joey was a Republican at heart. Did Eddie Vedder ever make such forthright political comments in his songs or in print? Or what about the time that Joey proudly told an interviewer that John Cage once said the one rock band he would have really liked to collaborate was (his fellow minimalists) the Ramones? He actually performed Cage's "The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs" on a tribute album, for chrissake.
Even after the brothers Ramone were history, Joey carried the flame for the music he loved with showcases of his favorite music and bands, from the ol’ CB’s crowd to girl groups to up-and-comers who were weaned on the three chords they heard on Rocket to Russia.
Other than the history, the great music and the legacy of so many bands, Joey will be missed as a music nut (he loved to DJ) whose work encompassed all those things: a bubblegum-music fan who dove into tunes as solace from his broken-home childhood. Such is his influence that even if upcoming rock bands don’t dig it, they’re playing the Ramones songbook and going through Joey’s paces. He’ll be with us for a long time, no doubt.
Alan Crandall
Somebody on the Jason and the Scorchers mailing list (where I, incidentally, first heard this sad news -- and, alas, I already deleted the message, so I don't know who said it, or I'd gladly give them credit) said it better than I can --- "this one hurts."
It's not that I'll miss The Ramones -- oh, hey, I wore out copies of their early albums, rarely missed a chance to see them live (including paying scalper's prices to catch their farewell tour), and rate them as one of the all-time greats. But they've been gone for a while now, and I've grown accustomed to their absence.
The thing is, it's more than the music or the group or their status as "pioneers of punk rock." Joey was an icon; one of the last real icons, he was a kind of living symbol; gawky, weird, creepy, too tall, too skinny, bleating out those inane lyrics over the melodic-train-wreck sound of his band. To me, he seemed to exist only for the music -- some Frankenstein-ian creation they trotted out for the gigs, propped up on stage, powered up with decibels and pure aggression. I could never imagine the guy down at Safeway buying Corn Chex in his sweat pants... it would ruin the fantasy.
Still, my favorite memory of Joey himself isn't any of the times I saw him on stage, but about a dozen years ago when he appeared with his mother on Geraldo Rivera's talk show, in an episode devoted to "Rock Stars and Their Moms." Rivera spent the entire evening trying to goad the collected moms (the rest of the musical guests consisted of a handful of L.A. headbangers and one member of Jethro Tull, and their respective mothers) to say something like "oh gawd, I'm so ashamed of my disgusting kid!" Rivera failed, of course (and managed to make himself look even dumber by assuming that the Ramones really were related). "These guys sing a song called `Beat on the Brat'!" shouted the faux-incredulous Rivera; Mama Ramone responded by singing the lyrics to "Brat." She was very proud of her boy. As for Joey, he seemed just as strange and unreal as he always did. I have no idea what the man was really like in private. I'm not even terribly concerned about it. He was a particular kind of rock'n'roll fantasy come to life, and I'll miss him.
Jeff Penczak
It was twenty-five years ago today (April 23, 1976), while I was enjoying punch and cookies at my kid brother's birthday party that my world changed forever. I didn't know this, of course. While I was trying to come up with some goofy face or incredibly hysterical joke that would result in my brother passing his birthday cake through his nose, Sire Records was busy stocking the shelves with an album by four hoods from Queens who dressed in leather biker jackets, Converse All Stars and denim jeans with the knees missing and sang songs about Nazis, glue sniffing, Texas Chain Saw Massacres, beating up kids with baseball bats and male prostitutes trading their wares for heroine. In fact, it would be another two months before I even heard reference to the new Ramones album; and even then I was still in the dark after I misheard my college history teacher say what a masterpiece the "new Ramones album" was: I thought he said the "new Rolling Stones album."
In less than a year, word of mouth had spread on this little dittie (14 songs in under 30 minutes) and I was well on my way to the "punk phase" of my record buying career. It was also the beginning of a lifelong process of never buying stuff I heard on the commercial radio stations (where there was no way this record was gonna get played in the midst of the El Lay sound of Linda Ronstadt, Eagles, Jackson Brown and Fleetwood Mac.) Before the decade ended, my collection was bursting at the seams with releases by The Sex Pistols, The Undertones, The Boys, The Ruts, The Clash, The Buzzcocks and all the CBGBs bands like Television, Blondie, another Ramones record and even some plagiarized stuff from good ol' El Lay in the form of X and The Dickies before the hardcore crowd unleashed The Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Black Flag, The Circle Jerks, et. al. I was now wearing Ramones T-shirts and buttons on my own leather motorcycle jacket and would never look back. To this day, my record buying suggestions come from internet mailing lists and discussion groups made up of cretins and pinheads like me – people who buck the commercial trends and have come to realise that if an album is on the Billboard Top 200, it sucks big time (just take a look at this week's list if you need confirmation.)
Twenty-five years ago today, Joey Ramone and his "bruddahs" took everything that was right with music up to that point – the catchy Top 40 a.m. hits of bands like The Beach Boys and the more obscure one hit wonders later to be immortalized in the Nuggets collection, added nonsense lyrics, three chords and a prayer and changed my world as well as the lives of other like-minded kids who were tired of the pretension rock and roll had become: twenty minute guitar solos, 25 trucks worth of drum kit paraphernalia and two and a half years in the studio perfecting a ten-second mellotron wash. It would be four albums before a Ramones track even topped the three minute mark and they released six albums (nearly 75 songs) in a little over 3½ years. The Brits and the Californicators would politicize "punk," but that's not what Joey and The Ramones were all about (although Joey would later enter the fray with his polemic about Bonzo going to Bittburg.) They were about fun, girls, geeks, freaks, cars, sun and the cretins and pinheads that made up their world were people just like you and me. People who were "mad as hell and weren't gonna take it anymore." Johnny Rotten told the audience at the final Sex Pistols gig in San Francisco that "rock and roll is supposed to be fun. You remember fun, don't you." Well, Joey Ramone did. And everytime I pop another Ramones record on, I'll thank him.
Shane Xmas
One of my favourite Ramones moments is in fact not a musical one. It’s the start of It’s Alive where Joey walks out, amidst the crunch of Johnny hitting a chord and thousands thundering ‘Hey Ho, Let’s Go.’ Joey heads into the microphone and says - ‘WAIT - Hey!, we’re The Ramones and this one's called Rockaway Beach!’
Joey Ramone always struck me as being the sweetest, with a penchant for playing out teenage masculine fantasies. What was at his core was a romanticism, much like one of his heroes in Phil Spector. Joey with his pseudo-English accent gave me an understanding, as to what is inherent in good soulful Rock N’ Roll. I’m sure he was loved, he had to be, have you heard that naff string version of "Baby, I Love You." How can you do that, not at all taking yourself seriously, but deep down knowing someone was gonna swoon to it.
The Ramones, but Joey in particular, made it all right to be me. They never made me get self-obsessed, when you listen to them everything goes outwards from you, nothing gets inbred, nothing becomes inward, you stifle nothing in your bones. Basically, The Ramones were Punk Gospel- they uplifted the disaffected to a joyousness from their rotten situation. They were role models, if you took them seriously, and they spoke to me seriously. Joey sung about shit I knew about, and it was the first time I’d heard it mentioned.
After hearing that Joey had passed away, it occurred to me that I owed him some of my happiness. I resisted putting on Leave Home, thinking it might make it all worse - strange considering I never knew him. It didn’t make it worse - a stupid grin came over me, I felt great and my feet kept banging on the floorboards. He may have gone, but the best way to remember, isn’t to remember, but to chuck those records back on - and play them dammed LOUD... Right now I got "Locket Love" playing and in four hours, I’m gonna see my girl - it’s kinda a Ramones world y’know.
"Eulogy to the thin white mook" by Aaron Goldberg
The Ramones in many ways were really THE greatest capital 'P' punk-rock band ever. Their sound when you hear it for the first time is truly revolutionary, and without doubt, I would have to say they are the undisputed and unsurpased kings of the three chord chugga-chugga four-to-the-floor 'punk rock' sound. Maybe only the Velvet Underground have had a more profound legacy on modern popular left-field music. When you hear the Ramones, you never hear punk-rock the same way again - their influence is profound - from the Limeys like the Sex Pistols and the Clash to metal-grebos like Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeath, to Aussie shnorrer alcho-punks like the Hard-ons, Cosmic Psychos, the Meanies and Mach-Pelican to any band on Estrus records or Au-go-go for that matter, to even nerd-gods the Offspring and beyond. The Ramones were the first band to really up the ante for heavy rock, and really make it 'heavy'. A bizarre dichotomy, since most of their songs were inspired by the booming Phil Spector 'Wall of Sound' music from pop bands like the Shangri-Las, the Ronettes and the Shirelles. Joey was the ultimate anti front man. For one he was too tall, hairy, ugly, and never moved. But that was so cool.
All he wanted to do was like any real rock n’ roller - and that is to FUCK SHIT UP! I actually met Joey once in Sydney airport. Ironically I saw the Ramones play a really mediocre set the night before on the Gold Coast (a banal surf resort, where incredibly, the Ramones rule amongst the surfie-skeg locals)- it was like some weird Karmic consolation! He looked really pale and clammy, and talked in a really cool, slow New York drawl. He was so weird, he could only be a rock n’ roller. I am also incredibly lucky to have all the Ramones autographs on my now cherished rock bible ‘From the Velvets to the Voidoids,’ so the memory of this legend will be with me for a long time to come.
The second time I saw the Ramones play was at the Big Day Out in ‘93-‘94 and they were fuckin’ hilarious. Johnny was in a shit mood, and did an illegal sound-check while the Smashing Pupkins were trying their hardest to at least get one chord as crushingly pure and ‘reet’ as a Ramones chord. The Ramones breezed through their set in like 30 minutes, and brought out Zippy the Pinhead at the end. It was hilarious and bizarre, and the highlight of a boring day.
Most of all, the Ramones were a band with real guts and not some bullshit macho posturing like many of the crummy ‘punk’ bands in their wake. Whether it’s their early stuff with lyrics about glue sniffing and psychotherapy and shock treatment, to their cheesy ballads recorded by Phil Spector, to even their remarkable and not wanky political song - ‘Bonzo Goes to Bittburg’ - possibly the only song which I feel addressed issues like war and the Holocaust and had a deeply personal effect on me, without sounding like some righteous Limousine-Leftie hippy brow wipe. All of them truly punk rock statements, and one of the things that I personally found really inspiring about them. Sadly now, Joey is dead, but his music and anti-rockstar legacy stand tall like the man in life did himself.
Brian Turner
My experience with the Ramones unfortunately didn't fall within the hallowed walls of CB's, but rather seeing them from underneath bleachers in a Bingo parlor near the airport in Allentown, PA. It was Nazi skinhead central, and teeth, bottles, and human bodies were flying through the air nonstop. It wasn't the Ramones' fault, the skinheads probably even came out to folk shows to cause a ruckus, but even in that insane environ the Ramones were even more alien. It was everything I had expected; loud, fast, and fantastic, with Joey just up at the mic like some kind of beanpole creature, not even stopping a second between songs before they went into another one. It was like 50 songs in 40 minutes. The Ramones were fantastic, and it wasn't until Joey left us that it really hit home that they just wouldn't be around anymore, which is bizarre, because they have always been an institution you just thought was there like solid rock. Chainsaw bubblegum, hilarious lyrics, a total ground zero from which almost everything cool from the late 70s on sprung. I saw the sidewalk memorial outside CB's for Joey this past weekend and it sure wasn't like the Princess Di thing, let me tell you. It was a big mess of glue bottles, crumpled notes, scribbled drawings, Yoo Hoo bottles. Totally unglamorous but real and right on, just like the Ramones.
Michaelangelo Matos
Whenever I feel my faith in three-chord rock and roll fading, I slap on the first Ramones album and let it slap me upside the head for 29 perfect minutes in a row. And not only did da bruddas’ original lineup possess the most conceptually perfect rock-band persona in history except the Beatles, each members mini-niche was carved out to perfection. But if Tommy was the savvy agent/producer and Dee Dee the gifted junkie and Johnny the right-wing Mosrite machine, Joey trumped them all by possessing so much heart--and placing that heart dead center of the maelstrom. The live stuff I’ve heard (I never did see them perform, unfortunately), as well as their best records, is like a tank, implacable and determined--until you see the glint in the driver’s eye and realize that he doesn’t want to run you over--he wants you to hop aboard. Two generations of listeners and musicians did just that, and the world is a better place for it.