Rockers in comics, loosely drawn
In 1979, the Ramones were recording at a studio in Los Angeles with the producer Phil Spector, whose work with the Ronettes and the Beatles had earned him a reputation as both a musical genius and an exacting, combustible egomaniac. He hadn’t produced a hit since John Lennon’s “Imagine” in 1971, and the Ramones, known for their exuberant punk rock, were still searching for a breakthrough.
The sessions for the resulting album, “End of the Century,” were tumultuous, and the new book, “Gabba Gabba Hey!: The Graphic Story of the Ramones,” written by Jim McCarthy and illustrated by Brian Williamson, details some of Mr. Spector’s more notorious moments: forcing the guitarist Johnny Ramone to play a chord to one song more than 70 times; pointing a gun at the bassist Dee Dee Ramone.
“I wanted to open with a flash point,” Mr. McCarthy said from his home in England. “The Phil Spector thing was two worlds colliding in a culture clash.”
Neither Mr. McCarthy nor Mr. Williamson had access to images, video or audio recordings of the sessions other than those of the “End of the Century” album itself. They didn’t conduct any interviews; their main source material was previously published books and articles. Nonetheless, the gritty black-and-white illustrations, in a photorealistic style, depict scenes from the studio in detail, and all four Ramones and Mr. Spector are quoted saying things they surely never did.
“Obviously, you’re putting words in people’s mouths to a degree because who knows what was said,” said Mr. McCarthy, who has also written graphic biographies of Kurt Cobain, the Sex Pistols and Michael Jackson. “You try for a realistic way of speaking. I think I’m a lover of the Ramones’ music enough to know roughly how they would’ve spoken.”
This creative license isn’t unique. But it raises questions as to how “Gabba Gabba Hey” should be perceived. Does the presence of illustrations set up a different standard of truth than a traditional biography? Similarly does inventing dialogue undermine an author’s credibility?
Mr. McCarthy thinks not. “In a funny way, it’s almost like directing a film on paper,” he said. “There’s a lot you can do with a graphic novel that you can’t do with a biography. You can take liberties with the timeline and visuals, and open the story up.”
Barnaby Legg, who wrote “Godspeed,” about the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, with Mr. McCarthy, described it as “part biography, part dreamscape.”
“You don’t come to a graphic novel expecting something purely biographical,” Mr. Legg said. “You’re expecting something more imaginative and impressionistic.”
Music and comics share an intertwined history. Elvis Presley and the Beatles were frequent fodder for illustrators in the 1950s and 1960s, and since the late 1970s, few major stars have avoided being written about in a comic or longer graphic novel.
“Comics have always been a kind of disposable medium in which people find transcendent experiences,” Mr. Legg said. “Pop music can be compared to that. You’re talking about a medium that’s essentially trashy.”
The format’s creative freedom threatens to run afoul of the very people it aims to engage: fans. As one customer wrote of “Godspeed” on the book’s Amazon page: “Never before have I seen such a ham-fisted, inept and downright exploitive depiction of one man’s life.”
The roller coaster ride of rock stardom has been fertile ground, and Mr. McCarthy seems especially drawn to stories that don’t end well.
“I don’t have an unhealthy interest in people dying young,” he said. “I’d rather see people get out of the drugs thing and clean up.” Mr. McCarthy is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.
The Ramones’ story includes the deaths of three founding members: Joey, of cancer in 2001; Dee Dee of a heroin overdose in 2002; and Johnny of cancer in 2004. But according to Mr. McCarthy, their story appealed to him despite their deaths, not because of them. “The Ramones story seems bigger than them,” he said. “It lends itself to graphic novel because there was a cartoon aspect to the Ramones. They looked like parodies of themselves.”
Marky Ramone, a drummer in the band starting in 1978, has mixed feelings about the book. “It was a good attempt at showing the seedy underbelly of New York in the mid-70s, but a lot of things were overblown.”