The problem is me, part 3: Ramones

Cover of the Ramones' first album. Photo credit: Roberta Bayley. Image source: Discogs.com

As described in the first post in this series, The problem is me: The Sex Pistols, Steve Jones, and Lonely Boy, hearing The Sex Pistols on my college radio station in 1978 was a life-altering experience. One of the many changes it inspired was that I began to seek out the music of other punk bands. The New York publications I started to explore, including the Village Voice and the New York Rocker, extolled a group of four leather-jacketed guys from Queens who called themselves the Ramones.

It was an era when rock album covers often displayed fantasy art featuring spaceships, surrealist landscapes, knights or wizards. In stark contrast, the Ramones' first album offered a grainy black and white photo of the band standing against a grafittied brick wall. Each Ramone wore the bands' uniform of black leather jacket, well-worn blue jeans, and sneakers. And on the back cover Joey (born Jeffrey Hyman, vocals), Johnny (born John Cummings, guitar), Dee Dee (born Douglas Colvin, bass), and Tommy (born Thomas Erdelyi, drums) each took the last name Ramone, as though they were a band of brothers. By punk standards their hair was shockingly long (for the origins of the spiky punk haircut, see Betrayal takes one: Richard Hell).

The songs on that first album were incredibly simple and short, usually constructed around three chords and rarely lasting more than two minutes. They were also incredibly catchy, with melodies hearkening back to the early 60s. On that first album "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and "Listen To My Heart" sounded like lost classics, and they covered "Let's Dance" by Chris Montez. They'd go on to cover "California Sun" (The Rivieras) on Leave Home, "Do You Wanna Dance?" (Bobby Freeman) and "Surfin' Bird" (The Trashmen) on Rocket to Russia, "Needles and Pins" (The Searchers) on Road to Ruin, "Baby I Love You" (The Ronettes) on the Phil-Spector-produced End of the Century, and many others.

They quickly became one of my favorite groups, but I was suspicious of my own enjoyment. While they were one of the first CBGB bands and some of their songs portrayed gritty New York street life (hustling in "53rd & Third," hitching a ride to an urban beach in "Rockaway Beach," scoring heroin in "Chinese Rock"), other songs evoked the worlds of comic books and horror movies. Were the Ramones an elaborate joke, or did they mean it, man? (That the answer to that question could be "both"—that they were completely sincere, and at the same time had a sense of humor about their obsessions—was hard for me to grasp.)

Ramones, Ritchie Coliseum, University of Maryland College Park, Tuesday 14 July 1981

Mark Sullivan, "The cretins bop," The Diamondback, 16 July 1981, p. 6. Photo credit: Debbie Gertler.
Image source: University of Maryland Libraries

I had seen the Ramones for the first time in May 1980 at Ida Noyes Gym at the University of Chicago. I had stayed out overnight in line to buy tickets, needlessly afraid that they'd sell out, but when I awoke cold and sore on the flagstones there were perhaps only twenty people in line with me. Sensible people waited until the box office opened that day, walked up and bought their tickets; the show didn't sell out. (An amazingly loyal friend stuck it out with me all night. When I opened my eyes and realized that it had been pointless, I felt worse for him than for myself.) Perhaps it was my lack of sleep, the bright gym lighting on the Ramones' pasty skin—the gym definitely lacked a rock 'n' roll ambience—or the relatively sparse and largely uninvolved crowd, but after the concert that night I left feeling underwhelmed, even chagrined. If the Ramones were a joke, it was on me.

But despite that first experience, while home the next summer in Baltimore I decided to drive 45 minutes to the University of Maryland on a Tuesday night (a work night!) to see them again. It was a summer in Baltimore; to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, what else was I going to do? When I walked into the venue, my heart sank: it was another gym, this time the arena where the Terrapin volleyball teams played. It was cavernous, seating perhaps 1500 people on bleachers, with standing room for another 750 or so on the floor. Only about two or three hundred people had shown up to the Ramones gig at the University of Chicago, and although the University of Maryland was substantially larger, it was summer. I feared that there would be a relative handful of us rattling around in this huge space. A less congenial place to see a band like the Ramones was hard to imagine.

But to my amazement, the arena kept filling; ultimately it was packed. And when the Ramones took the stage they seem to have been inspired by the size and enthusiasm of the crowd. They played one of the fiercest, tightest, most intense sets I've ever witnessed. No sooner would one song end in ringing feedback from Johnny's guitar than Dee Dee would count off "onetwothreefo" and they'd launch into another song. I was right in front of the stage in the mosh pit, and it was in a constant frenzy. I later read that the band blazed through 34 songs in an hour, which is completely believable. For a taste of how fast and tight they could be, here is a clip of "Cretin Hop" from their 1977 New Year's Eve show at the Rainbow Theatre in London:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkucRqyySdA

At the end of the concert I staggered out into the humid Maryland night completely soaked in sweat, bruised, battered, and happily exhausted. This still ranks among the best concert experiences I've ever had. Some bands didn't need to experiment much; they just needed to perfect what they were.

Coda: Although they played hundreds of concerts a year to tens of thousands of fans, the Ramones never achieved the radio play they wanted or the recognition they deserved. Unfortunately, none of the members of the original band is still alive: Joey died in 2001 (of lymphoma), Dee Dee in 2002 (heroin overdose), Johnny in 2004 (cancer), and Tommy in 2014 (cancer).

After the death of Joey Ramone in April 2001 it emerged that in his final moments of consciousness in the hospital he had asked to hear U2's "In A Little While." During U2's summer tour that year Bono would introduce the song by paying tribute to Joey and the Ramones. At a concert in Boston in June he introduced the song by saying "This is a song that Joey Ramone loved. . .it was the last song that Joey Ramone heard in his life here. And that's an amazing thing for someone who grew up as a fan of Joey Ramone."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJXwG-1Oy4 (song ends at 4:20)

At a concert in Berlin in July he asked a woman in a Ramones t-shirt to come on stage, and then said, "The Ramones are the reason why we started this band, and we owe so very much to the Ramones." U2 then performed the song with the utterly dazzled woman clinging to Bono throughout. The moment was captured by an audience member on video. 

But U2 hadn't always played arenas.

Next time: U2 at the International House Assembly Hall, University of Chicago, 11 (or 12?) April 1981.

Last time: The Psychedelic Furs at the Marble Bar