The Ramones' bizarre legend continues to grow 50 years after it accidentally sparked a punk-rock revolution — even though all of the New York City band's founding members are long dead.
The odd-looking quartet has traveled an unusual pop-culture trajectory, going from a mismatched outsider band with little commercial success to one of a handful of bands likely to earn a spot on rock & roll's Mount Rushmore.
Fifty years after the band's first performance Played CBGB on August 16, 1974 – one of the moments now seen as the birth of punk – the band's “Blitzkrieg Bop” and its “Hey Ho! Let's Go!” chant echoes through stadiums at every sporting event, the leather-and-jeans uniforms are instantly recognizable, and T-shirts bearing the band's presidential-seal logo are so popular they're worn even by people who can't tell the difference between a pinhead and a parrothead.
If the leading original members — singer Joey Ramone, guitarist Johnny Ramone, bassist Dee Dee Ramone and drummer Tommy Ramone — were alive today and in playing condition, they could buy tickets to stadiums after spending most of their careers headlining clubs and theaters, longtime tour manager Monte A. Melnick told The Post.
Melnick, author of the 2003 book, said the main reason for their lasting power is that their straightforward rock sound, with its three-chord simplicity and single hook, has served as an instruction guide for legions of punks and inspired everyone from U2 to Soundgarden. “On the Road with the Ramones.”
“They were like Johnny Appleseed, where he would walk around planting apples everywhere,” Melnick said. “These kids would come to see them and say 'Hey it's not that complicated' and all these bands started after seeing the Ramones.”
It wasn’t magic
The four original Ramones were four guys from Forest Hills trying to make catchy rock music in the same vein as the early Beatles or ’60s garage rock — simple, two minutes long and without any pretentious melodies.
“I was tired of watching these guys play guitar solos and make funny faces,” Joey's brother Mickey Leigh said last month. “I loved hearing these songs without the guitar solos. It was refreshing, really.”
The first show at CBGB on Aug. 16, 1974, is now the stuff of legend, but the reality is those early days weren’t exactly magical, Melnick said.
“I didn't like them when I first saw them,” said Melnick, who was a touring musician and recorded two studio albums. “They weren't that good musicians at first… so when I first saw them, it was a little difficult for me, but they evolved over the years. They really worked hard at it.”
Melnick said they played their first show as a trio on March 30, 1974 at the now-defunct Performance Studios, with Johnny (real name: John Cummings) on guitar, Joey (real name: Jeff Hyman) on drums, and Dee Dee (real name: Douglas Colvin) struggling to sing lead vocals and play bass at the same time.
Melnick's friend, Tommy (real name: Erdelyi), worked in a studio and wanted to produce and manage the band, but he joined as the drummer at the time of the Ramones' chaotic debut at CBGB, which took place about a week after President Richard Nixon had resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Dive bar owner Hilly Kristall told the boys, “Nobody’s going to like you, but I’ll let you play here,” according to Punk magazine co-founder and artist John Holmstrom — who illustrated the band’s “Rocket to Russia” and “Road to Ruin” albums.
The band eventually perfected their air-tight high-octane live show and look. Joey would grip his mic stand tightly and hardly move, while Dee and Johnny would play their instruments so fast that onlookers could cramp their wrists.
But that first night the band was still dressed a little glamorously, and Joey was trying to do some weird dance moves “like David Bowie or something,” his brother said.
He said it took him some time to let go of the anxiety of “fitting in” and do something different.
Location, location, location
CBGB wasn’t a magical place either, it was located in the Bowery on New York City’s Lower East Side – a place most people avoided in those days.
Leigh remembers driving his old Plymouth Duster car to the Forest Hills neighborhood and being very cautious when he parked his car in an area full of prostitutes, alcoholics, and “junkies.”
“Anything could happen,” he said. “You could get shot, stabbed, your car could be broken into or stolen — it was like a Wild West town.”
But soon the venue, one of the few places in the city that welcomed original music, became a haven for the flashily dressed hipsters of the time, and the artists and creatives defining the “punk” style in music, fashion, and art.
Punk Magazine's Holmstron first saw the Ramones in 1975, and by then they were in full force.
He said, “When I first saw them I thought this band was going to be huge. It was like seeing the Beatles at the Cavern Club.”
“Everything about them was revolutionary, but at the same time it was kind of — what's the word? — retrospective,” Holmstrom said. “It borrowed a lot from the past, but it was futuristic at the same time.”
Holmstrom said “punk” eventually got a name, even though artists like the Stooges or even the early ’50s rock’n’roll pioneers were punks in their attitude and sound. The Ramones and other early “punks” drifted away from the phrase as backlash grew and older generations began to view the budding genre as aggressive, rude and even dangerous.
It was an uphill battle because as the Ramones left CBGB and went national, contemporary audiences didn't always “get” their music. At times, they had to face hostile crowds and projectiles being thrown at the stage.
Chasing the hits
His band's 1977 self-titled debut is considered one of the greatest records of all time, but it wasn't a hit. Neither were its 13 studio follow-ups.
After three albums, Tommy left the group and was replaced by former Dust drummer Mark Bell aka Marky Ramone, but yet the next level of success never came.
With Markie, the band recorded one of its most famous songs, “I Wanna Be Sedated,” starred in Roger Corman’s B-movie “Rock’n’Roll High School” and worked with legendary record producers such as Phil Spector.
The marquee was taken out and replaced by Richie Ramone (real name: Reinhardt), including “Too Tough to Die,” considered a raucous comeback. Still no hits.
“Joey was always thinking about that,” Richie Ramone said in a phone interview from California. “He kept trying and every record we made, he'd say, 'Richie, this is it' – he looked at me through his rose-colored glasses … and it was never the same.”
The Ramones wrote songs like “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and “Teenage Lobotomy,” and their lyrics mention Nazi stormtroopers, Charles Manson, and beating a child with a baseball bat. Those close to them say this may have hurt them in getting to the next level – but most people believe songs like “Rockaway Beach” and “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” could have been hits.
Richie abruptly left the band in 1987 and Markie returned, but then Dee Dee — the creative force behind a large portion of the band's catalog — left the band in 1989 to pursue a bizarre, short-lived rap career.
The band, now known as the godfathers of punk, moved on with bassist CJ Ramone (real name: Christopher Ward), who gave the aging rockers an extra spark and took on Dee Dee's responsibility of yelling “1-2-3-4” at the beginning of each song. The band broke up in 1996 as a new wave in punk was taking off, with bands like Green Day achieving multi-platinum success that the Ramones never got a sniff of.
'They will last forever'
There wasn't much time to hope for a reunion after the breakup. Joey died in 2001 after a battle with lymphoma, before he could see the band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Tragedies struck as quickly and fiercely as the band's performances – Dee Dee died of a heroin overdose in 2002 and Jonny and Tommy both succumbed to cancer in 2004 and 2014 respectively.
Melnick said he sometimes finds it sad that the boys aren’t around to see their legend grow, even though they got a taste of the rabid fan base in South America and other countries where they got the royal treatment and were chased by fans in their limos as if it were a scene from “Help!”
“I tell a joke a million times — if the Ramones were that big when I was working for them, I would have gotten a big raise,” Melnick said.
But Holmstrom said the Ramones' story is not a tragic one, but one of triumph and good music.
“It's awesome and I think it was a triumph for them that they overcame all those obstacles,” he said. “The story of the Ramones is that they're a band that got to this point without radio play or even real MTV acceptance.”
The Ramones never got along – liberal Joey had OCD and was a romantic while conservative Johnny was an uptight street guy who was hard to get close to, friends said. Johnny married Joey's ex-girlfriend, ending whatever friendship they had in the '80s and '90s.
Joey's brother and Johnny's widow, who share control of the Ramones brand today, are now feuding with each other others in court While the remaining members do not get along or connect with each other. Markie is now on tour playing Ramones tunes and CJ is on tour with Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a band that plays radio songs with a punk flair.
In the end, “the fans don't care about any of the controversy,” said Richie, who recently released his third solo album, “Live to Tell” and has begun acting. And the reason we're still talking about the Ramones 50 years after that awkward first CB's gig is because of the music, Richie said.
“Their songs – they're timeless, they don't really get old,” he said. “When you hear a Ramones song, you don't think 'Oh, it's 1977' … I think that's important to their legacy and being innovators – that's why they've lasted forever. They'll be around forever and ever, you know.”
