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THE RAMONES BY THE RAMONES
by Johnny Black
The Ramones is the album that invented the 70s incarnation of punk rock.
The term punk had been applied to bands in the sixties, usually referring to what were more commonly called garage bands such as the Standells, ? And the Mysterians or The Sonics. There’s no denying that The Ramones shared with these bands not just a certain brazen attitude, but a slavish devotion to the notion that a great song never lasted more than three minutes and never employed more than three chords. The slogan on The Sonics first album, ‘Four great guys … three great chords’ would have been equally valid for The Ramones a decade later.
This was a band whose first gig, in early 1974, was so bad that many of their friends stopped speaking to them afterwards. Vocalist Joey Ramone, however, was undaunted, believing firmly that by 1974, “Rock’n’roll had got so bloated and lost its spirit. We stripped it down and re-assembled it under the influence of the MC5, The Beatles and The Stones, Alice Cooper and T.Rex.”
So The Ramones persevered, tightened up, and won a sizeable live following. Even so, Hilly Kristal, owner of legendary New York venue CBGB’s, vividly remembers the night when 70s MOR queen Linda Ronstadt and her entourage pitched up at the club to see what the fuss was about. “They lasted less than 5 minutes. She literally flew out the door holding her ears.”
The buzz was enough, however, to get them a low budget deal with Sire Records, who put them into Plaza Sound studios at Radio City Music Hall, New York City, to start recording the album on 2 February 1976.
Production on the album was in the hands of Sire’s in-house A&R man Craig Leon with some assistance from Tom Erdelyi, aka Tommy Ramone. Leon recalls, “A lot of people didn’t even think they could make a record. There were weeks of pre-production on a very basic level, like when the songs started and when they ended.”
Once the band was fully rehearsed, it became a matter of deciding on a sound. Leon’s point of reference for the guitars was the rasping din on Silver machine, the only hit by British acid-rock warriors Hawkwind, whose bassist Lemmy went on to form Motorhead. To achieve the huge yet dry overall ambience of the album he put each musician’s amps into separate rehearsal halls so that, “You could crank it up and still get isolation.”
To the uninitiated, every Ramones’ song sounds identical to every other Ramones song but, as with deep reggae dub, the subtle differences emerge with repeated listens. Each compact capsule is crammed with minimalist hooks, hints of Phil Spector, almost buried Byrds-like guitars and much more.
When it was finished, on 19 February, it had cost a mere $6,400, at a time when superstars could easily eat up (or snort up) half a million dollars in the studio. And all fourteen tracks took up a mere 29 minutes. Punk rock, as we know it today, was born.
(Source : Johnny Black, first published in the book Albums by Backbeat Books, 2005)
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by Johnny Black
The Ramones is the album that invented the 70s incarnation of punk rock.
The term punk had been applied to bands in the sixties, usually referring to what were more commonly called garage bands such as the Standells, ? And the Mysterians or The Sonics. There’s no denying that The Ramones shared with these bands not just a certain brazen attitude, but a slavish devotion to the notion that a great song never lasted more than three minutes and never employed more than three chords. The slogan on The Sonics first album, ‘Four great guys … three great chords’ would have been equally valid for The Ramones a decade later.
This was a band whose first gig, in early 1974, was so bad that many of their friends stopped speaking to them afterwards. Vocalist Joey Ramone, however, was undaunted, believing firmly that by 1974, “Rock’n’roll had got so bloated and lost its spirit. We stripped it down and re-assembled it under the influence of the MC5, The Beatles and The Stones, Alice Cooper and T.Rex.”
So The Ramones persevered, tightened up, and won a sizeable live following. Even so, Hilly Kristal, owner of legendary New York venue CBGB’s, vividly remembers the night when 70s MOR queen Linda Ronstadt and her entourage pitched up at the club to see what the fuss was about. “They lasted less than 5 minutes. She literally flew out the door holding her ears.”
The buzz was enough, however, to get them a low budget deal with Sire Records, who put them into Plaza Sound studios at Radio City Music Hall, New York City, to start recording the album on 2 February 1976.
Production on the album was in the hands of Sire’s in-house A&R man Craig Leon with some assistance from Tom Erdelyi, aka Tommy Ramone. Leon recalls, “A lot of people didn’t even think they could make a record. There were weeks of pre-production on a very basic level, like when the songs started and when they ended.”
Once the band was fully rehearsed, it became a matter of deciding on a sound. Leon’s point of reference for the guitars was the rasping din on Silver machine, the only hit by British acid-rock warriors Hawkwind, whose bassist Lemmy went on to form Motorhead. To achieve the huge yet dry overall ambience of the album he put each musician’s amps into separate rehearsal halls so that, “You could crank it up and still get isolation.”
To the uninitiated, every Ramones’ song sounds identical to every other Ramones song but, as with deep reggae dub, the subtle differences emerge with repeated listens. Each compact capsule is crammed with minimalist hooks, hints of Phil Spector, almost buried Byrds-like guitars and much more.
When it was finished, on 19 February, it had cost a mere $6,400, at a time when superstars could easily eat up (or snort up) half a million dollars in the studio. And all fourteen tracks took up a mere 29 minutes. Punk rock, as we know it today, was born.
(Source : Johnny Black, first published in the book Albums by Backbeat Books, 2005)