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Ramones
Anthology: Hey Ho Let's Go! Warner Archives/Rhino
From the punk oral history Please Kill Me to Joey and Johnny Ramone on
Howard Stern, the mythology around the Ramones lately seems to emphasize
failure--the stadiums they didn't pack, their eventual hatred for one
another, endless tours trapped inside a persona they'd outgrown, Dee
Dee's junkie exile to Europe. The indignities never end: Spike Lee sets
a film in New York in 1977 and his punk rocker protagonist prefers Who's
Next to "Rockaway Beach"? There's a new double-CD compilation just out,
Hey Ho Let's Go! It had better suffice because Ramones, Leave Home,
Rocket to Russia, and Road to Ruin are all out of print.
Yet to the postpunk kids who'd eventually brew up alternative, the
Ramones weren't merely a success; they were Year Zero. Those ecstatic
bar chords had long since replaced Chuck Berry riffs as the first thing
a rocker learned to play, the only thing needed to play. "Blitzkrieg Bop,
" "Pinhead," and "Teenage Lobotomy" were homilies: the stoopid Bible.
The '70s Ramones never flagged or compromised, despite recording for a
major label. They had hits, or what got played in high school dances
like hits, especially the new wave conquest "I Wanna Be Sedated." They'd
even made a movie, Rock 'N' Roll High School, where their music,
compared to as vital a force as pizza, saved the day for everybody.
My point isn't to recite a list of accomplishments overfamiliar to the
minority and paltry to the mass. It's to explain how, if you were young
at a certain time and oriented in a certain way, the Ramones replaced
the Stones as the universal medium: if you didn't love them, you
couldn't love rock and roll. (Is there such a group today? Unfortunately
not; the Beastie Boys come closest.) Yes, it was about loving rock and
roll, not some Situationist expose; that, as it applies to American punk,
can never be insisted on enough. When the Ramones covered "Surfin' Bird"
or "Let's Dance" they weren't being arch. They were filling their tank,
and pointing out where others might do the same. They defined the
essentials of rock and became rock's essence.
But weren't they a joke, the same incredibly smart dumb joke, repeated
over and over until no one could bear it any longer? Hey Ho says decide
for yourself. Quibbles: excerpts from the first four albums should have
occupied all of disc one, or a three-CD set could have included their
entirety in a recapitulation of the two, now deleted, All the Stuff (and
More) volumes. Not including "We're a Happy Family" is especially
insane. The 95 minutes given their remaining stuff are a bit loose: more
selections from the dismal Halfway to Sanity than the reputable
Subterranean Jungle. But unlike 1988's chronologically jumbled, patchy
Ramones Mania this is a coherent, comprehensive overview--with plot
twists, even.
Everyone who took the name Ramone brought something to the band. Joey,
the Frankenstein lead singer, had a hippie past and dreams of pop glory.
Dee Dee, the bassist and one true punk, wrote about selling his ass to
men for drug money on "53rd &/3rd." Tommy, the drummer, coproducer, and
first to leave, bequeathed ambition and the most impatient of beats,
returning to kick the boys into gear on 1984's Too Tough To Die.
Guitarist Johnny hated all things progressive, political or musical, and
instituted draconian cool rules: a uniform look, short fast songs, face
the audience while playing. He describes his sound in the notes as "Pure,
white rock 'n' roll, with no blues influence." Nothing the Ramones did
had a greater effect: Beasties aside, the white Negro stance largely
disappeared from the rock underground for two decades.
Instead of making like Micks, the Ramones fused their factions into a
cartoon: the glue-sniffing runt who'd either beat you up or moon under
your window. I Wanna and I Don't Wanna. That was the first album, the
setup. Turned out the real joke wasn't what world-class puds they were;
the real joke was that, as the self-aware end product of every sick urge
no democratic consumer could resist, they were destined to take over. By
Leave Home, they were campaigning, with a mascot, the Pinhead, and the
bald eagle clutching a bat on their homegrown version of the national
seal. By "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker," the victory lap Rocket to Russia,
and the Rock 'N' Roll High School film, they had won, Gabba over Abba.
What do you mean, Rocket never charted higher than 49? There are two
ways to respond to this real-world indifference. The Ramones lived with
it. They kept touring because onstage they were kings, gobbing out
classics like they'd never run out of new ones. But after "The KKK Took
My Baby Away" and "Psycho Therapy" in the early '80s they pretty much
did. The race for office was over; even the good songs would no longer
be stump speeches. In "It's Not My Place (in the 9 to 5 World)," Joey
exulted about his celebrity friends: Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, UHF
host Uncle Floyd; guess who he stayed tight with? Producers worked hard
host Uncle Floyd; guess who he stayed tight with? Producers worked hard
to make the Ramones sound as standard-issue as Motley Crue's "Home Sweet
Home" or General Public's "Tenderness." But they never even got a fluke
like James Brown's "Living in America."
For a moment in the Reagan years, Dee Dee and Joey seemed to wake up;
they wrote "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," about this B-movie crud they'd seen
on TV whose blitheness about Nazis incriminated every pop pose they'd
ever clung to--including considerable blitheness about Nazis. Johnny got
mad and insisted they retitle the song and never do anything like that
again. So, before and after he stopped playing in the band in 1989, Dee
Dee concentrated on laments that spun "I Don't Want To Live This Life
(Anymore)" against "I Wanna Live." They dominate Hey Ho's second disc, a
creepy solo album in disguise. "Pet Sematary" and "Poison Heart" are
wrenching; imagine the ones that were left off, like "Worm Man" and "Eat
That Rat."
Yet there's a second way to handle the reality, which people choose all
the time; you can opt to live in a world where the Ramones did become
president. Sonic Youth put a medley of Ramones covers into their set to
rev up for their late-'80s rock detour. Frank Black sang "I Heard Ramona
Sing" ("if they ever retire, I hope they pull a Menudo") to steel
himself for the long post-Pixies night to come. Courtney Love swears on
her current single, "If the world is so wrong/Yeah you can break them
all/With one song," the music swiping the bridge and fervor of "Bonzo
Goes." And when Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker belted out "I Wanna Be
Your Joey Ramone" she thrilled me more than a dozen Donnas could because
she wasn't just girling up the lyrics; she was declaring herself a
candidate.
Accepting every Ramones dream as the outright truth is a joke, too--a
put-on. But a lot of punk works that way. The fantasy of the world put
right is at least as powerful as the vengeful need to imagine it shaken
apart. These aren't opposing impulses, they're shades of the same color,
which is why so many angry rockers have found sweet relief in
Ramonesland. Their legacy wasn't just that anyone could do it, or a
sound as easily reproduced as fire. It was a surreality that could be
conjured when reality wouldn't do, that had to be honored, for year
after relentless year if necessary. For the band and so many who loved
them, the joke had become a calling.
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By Eric Weisbard