Excerpts from two Bob Christgau pieces that sum up The Ramones pretty neatly:
I think it was that Tuesday that my wife and I went to CB's with Voice critic Tom Johnson, laconic explicator of Reich and Glass and the "one-note music" of Rhys Chatham, after Tom had lured us to the Kitchen. The 20 or so patrons included Danny Fields at the bar in back. Soon the Ramones played 13 songs in 24 minutes or whatever it was, and among the converts was Johnson, who had little interest in pop but lots in minimalism. For me, it was a life-changing experience. These four inept-sounding geeks had figured out what the Stooges had done wrong--the expressionistic stuff, the long and the slow and the chaos-for-its-own-sake. Over the next four years I would see the Ramones more than I've ever seen any band (even the Grateful Dead!). But having followed the tragic trajectory of the New York Dolls, who had changed my life in a similar way, I wasn't optimistic about "potential hit singles." The Ramones were obviously aesthetes one way or another, and in rock and roll, aesthetes rarely conquer the world.
Of course, the Ramones never did--as hitmakers. In 1994, two years before they finally broke up, the 1988 Ramones Mania comp went gold, and maybe eventually the remastered and bonused-up Ramones or Rocket to Russia will join it. Because of course, they have now been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Because of course, they did conquer the world, if changing rock and roll utterly counts. And somewhere in between they gained and/or created a following far closer to the idealized rock and roll audience they'd imagined than anyone knew existed.
Starting with their names and costumes--yes, costumes: note that Dee Dee, who was bitching about the prescribed look long before he quit in 1989, did not wear leather to the Hall of Fame induction--the Ramones strove to convince fans they were all alike. Even today it's like they were all alienated and nothing else mattered. But they were far from alike. Johnny was the son of a construction worker, Dee Dee an army brat in Germany until his mom got them out; both probably felt outclassed in a Forest Hills where there were loads of families like Joey's, whose divorced parents owned a trucking company and an art gallery, and who was Jewish, hence higher in the Forest Hills pecking order. And Tommy's background is murky. He escaped Hungary with his otherwise unchronicled family in 1956, started a high school band with Johnny, liked Buñuel, worked in some vague capacity on Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, ran the performance space where the Ramones took shape, and managed them before stepping in as self-taught drummer. Most bios give his birthdate as 1952, within a year of the others; some say 1949, which makes more sense, and not just because 18 is young for a Hendrix credit. He seemed more mature. He was the businessman, the promoter, the conceptualizer, the guy who declared them "an original Rock and Roll group of 1975."
Tendencies crisscrossed. Joey and Dee Dee were the head cases, and also the songwriters. Dee Dee and Tommy romanticized America from a European perspective; Tommy and Johnny romanticized fuckups and kept their shit together. Around 1981, Johnny stole Joey's girl, a secret bond and disastrous rift. But although all four were formalists, surly prole Johnny and stoned wildman Dee Dee were instinctive if not compulsive about it, while Tommy and Joey maintained some semblance of aesthetic distance from the rock and roll ideal Johnny and Dee Dee represented--a distance they could make something of because they knew the ideal from the inside. Musically, the four groundbreaking neoprimitives split into the same pairs. Dee Dee amplified the Dolls' one-note basslines into a barrage that underpinned Johnny's from-the-wrist downstrum to create the band's sound. But the deepest innovator in this rhythm band with tunes on top was Tommy and his brand new beat: "Tommy basically played eighth-notes across, with the 'one' on the bass and the 'two' on the snare, constant eighth-notes on the high-hat. Playing fast with eighth-notes constantly--a lot of people try it, but they get sloppy and can't keep up." And since, as 10,000 hardcore bands soon proved, the beat would have gone nowhere without the tunes, the weirdo who sang them ended up defining the band's emotional identity as opposed to its sonic signature.
The trained drummer whose analysis I just quoted is Marky Ramone, who joined in 1978 after Tommy had had it with touring and left only for a four-year detox. Tommy geared his acute taste to his limited technique, playing no fills or rolls and hardly any accents--he was a little guy with small sticks and a light touch, and his quick forcebeat propels and permeates Ramones, Ramones Leave Home, and Rocket to Russia. Marky admired and replicated Tommy's groove. But he'd played metal before hooking up with Richard Hell and had a show drummer's chops, and his muscular sound and well-chosen flourishes helped galvanize the community of brainy anti-intellectuals, postpunk losers, and assorted hitters brought together by the Ramones' hard work, word-of-mouth, and faith in what they'd wrought. He was the link between the punk they'd invented and the good old hard rock they believed it to be--as well as a sign that they were the road band God made them rather than the radio band they so much wished they could be.
In 1981, I opined that in future centuries 1981's Pleasant Dreams would sound pretty much like Ramones Leave Home. In 2002, however, the first four albums are clearly not just classic but sui generis, which with Marky on board for Road to Ruin I attribute to a remarkably long-lived initial songburst. But there were many good albums and important songs after that, and what holds them together is less Johnny's sound than Joey's sensibility, even though his writing declined after he got his heart broke. Spurred by Marky, the son of a left-leaning longshoreman-turned-lawyer, Joey emerged--the signal was "The KKK Took My Baby Away," which preceded "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" by four years--as a staunchly unelitist, no-BS version of the bohemian liberal his background would suggest. He joined Artists United Against Apartheid. He supported Rock the Vote. He did a Jerry Brown benefit. He got saner. He stopped drinking. He became a patron of the rock and roll arts.
And then he died, and everyone was so sad that Lucinda Williams, for Pete's sake, sent "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" out to him from Roseland, and in no time the Ramones were elected to the Hall of Fame, and only Tommy mentioned him at the induction, and Don't Worry About Me came out. He'd been recording his solo debut forever with Eighth (or Ninth) Ramone Daniel Rey; Marky's on half of it, also a Dictator and a Del-Lord and the keyb honcho from Loser's Lounge. Joey can't outpower the Ramones-qua-Ramones gestaltwise, and Don't Worry About Me probably isn't as good as 1992's Mondo Bizarro, much less 1984's Too Tough to Die. But it sure beats most other late Ramones albums, which it resembles without benefit of Johnny's downstrum for the reason just cited--in their postclassic, touring-icons period, which (I repeat) was far more productive musically than that otherwise accurate characterization suggests, Joey was the identity marker. Despite the persistence of Johnny's scowl-and-chop and Dee Dee's wart hogs and cretin families, and despite the hitters they were finally attracting, a certain softness rose to the surface. It had always been there, but as the songs departed from their strictures and Joey gargled more emotively, it got bigger, undercutting what was already a play toughness--a tuffness, as physically enthralling as any hard rock without the menace--with shows of feeling that at times were almost coy and girly. (Village Voice)Tommy quit the band in 1978 because he couldn't take life on the road with the three volatile geniuses who all dressed the same and all made trouble in different ways. Johnny was a taskmaster, Joey was OCD, Dee Dee bipolar and then some.
But Tommy hung in there to school Marc Bell and co-produce Road to Ruin anyway. And somehow the band outlasted its four-album flash-in-the-pan, generating more first-rate records than their maddest fans had dreamed possible and becoming tireless road dogs who regularly thrilled the proletarian fan-base that some, Johnny especially, had always thought they deserved.
For nearly two decades, Johnny and Joey practically never spoke. Marky took five years off for alcoholism. Dee Dee quit to become a rapper in 1989 (it didn't work). [Tommy] came back to produce their finest post-'70s album, 1985's Too Tough to Die. He also produced the Replacements' Tim and Redd Kross' Neurotica, and formed a bluegrass duo called Uncle Monk with his longtime partner Claudia Teinen. But though he tried never to miss a New York Ramones show, neither Johnny nor Joey was an easy guy to remain close to.
When the Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, Tommy was grizzled and bearded – the other three sported the same dark bowl cuts the Ramones had made a uniform in 1974. Neither Johnny nor Dee Dee mentioned Joey, who had died a year before. Tommy and Marky both did. (Billboard)
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Essential Listening
The first four, Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket To Russia (my favorite) and Road to Ruin are collected on All The Stuff and More Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - along with some demos, outtakes, etc. A surefire investment. It's Alive is a perfect live set.
After that it gets trickier. Christgau likes their later albums better than I do. I agree Too Tough To Die is their best. I'm also rather fond of the all-covers Acid Eaters. Weird Tales of the Ramones is a good sampler of the last 18 years, but still misses a few, and overlaps some with the All The Stuff sets. Downloads are probably your best bet.
Essential Reading
There's a whole cottage industry of Ramones books by now. I've only read Mickey Leigh's I Slept With Joey Ramone, a memoir by Joey's actual (not musical) younger brother. Clinton Heylin's From the Velvets to the Voidoids gives a good account of their early days in context. All the members save Tommy (and the various fill-ins) seem to have a bio or autobiography. Good luck sorting through `em.
Essential Viewing
There are several DVD's, of which The Ramones: Raw looks the most comprehensive. End Of The Century is a solid documentary. Trufan's should check out Rock `N' Roll High School, which is not the classic it should've been but still a lot of fun.
