Looking back at Tommy Ramone
Ramones encapsulated the dumb essence of rock’s eternal youth
The last of the original Ramones, Tommy Erdelyi, died last week at age 62, finally bringing to an end the saga of one of the most loved bands in rock ’n’ roll history, New York’s original cartoon punks.
They were not related, but the four original players adopted the surname Ramone, which Paul McCartney had used to reserve hotel rooms in the Beatles years. Erdelyi — Tommy Ramone — died on July 11.
Masquerading as inbred cretin siblings, singer Joey Ramone, guitarist Johnny Ramone, bassist Dee Dee Ramone and drummer Tommy Ramone emerged from New York’s scuzzy art-rock scene in 1976 with a sonic blast that reverberated around the world. They boiled rock down to its essence: three chords and a beat. It was so fantastically dumb it could only be genius.
Their chord progressions were simple and arrangements boiled down to everyone playing the same notes at the same time as fast and loud as possible — yet the overall effect was fantastically dynamic. It was a style completely at odds with the prevailing 1970s trend of floridly attired, quasi-operatic, lead-soloing progressive rock.
The Ramones had an image of iconic purity: long hair, black leather jackets, T-shirts, ripped jeans and sneakers. They blasted out short songs over a non-stop, tom-tom-dominated beat with basic melodies and repetitive lyrics, an approach developed to overcome technical deficiencies. Many songs were indistinguishable from each other, a fact not helped by Joey’s peculiar enunciation, in which words were strung together by syllables alone, consonants jettisoned in the frenzy.
They did print lyric sheets, allowing scholars to study such gems as Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, which contains these lines repeated as many times as possible in two minutes flat: “Now I wanna sniff some glue/Now I wanna have something to do/All the kids wanna sniff some glue/All the kids want something to do.”
And therein lay their strength and their weakness. When you have condensed something to its purest form, how do you improve upon it? The Ramones are one of those groups who should probably have broken up at the height of their powers, or better still, spontaneously combusted on stage.
Tommy departed after Rocket to Russia in 1977, to follow a career in production, aware that the group really had nowhere to go. Marc Steven Bell, as Marky Ramone, took up the drumsticks in 1978.
The Ramones tried to develop, but each additional chord change betrayed their raison d’être. Johnny’s guitar solos demonstrated what a limited player he was. Lyrics got longer without getting better. They tried light and poppy and big and heavy. They embraced the emerging hardcore scene, with bassist Dee Dee ranting tunelessly over thrashmetal. And eventually they reverted to what they knew best, becoming the Status Quo of punk.
They never achieved the commercial success their influence warranted, until one by one the original four shuffled off the stage. (Marky survives.) Joey died in 2001 aged 49, Dee Dee in 2002 aged 50, Johnny in 2004 aged 55. For a band that encapsulated the dumb essence of rock’s eternal youth, perhaps old age was never an option. Tommy, the first to leave, was the last to go.
Hey Johnny, hey Dee Dee, Little Tom and Joey. They were fast. They were loud. And all the songs sounded the same. Those of us who emerged from the blank generation may never experience rock this pure, this sweet and this ridiculous again.