Marky Ramone counts to four with Blitzkrieg at Heavy Montréal
Marky Ramone pays tribute to his fallen brothers with Blitzkrieg
Talking to Marky Ramone is as close as you’ll get to talking to an original Ramone.
All four original members of the Ramones — Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy — are gone. Joey, the lead singer, died in 2001 from lymphoma. Bassist Dee Dee — Marky’s best pal, the genius behind many of the New York quartet’s greatest lyrics, and the guy who yelled out “1-2-3-4!” before most of their songs — overdosed the following year. Johnny, the guitarist, died from prostate cancer in 2004, and cancer also claimed Tommy, Marky’s predecessor on drums, last year.
Marky — who brings his band Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg to the Heavy Montréal festival Sunday — may not be one of the founding brothers, but he joined in 1978, just two years after their worldchanging self-titled debut album. Within weeks of joining, he was recording Road to Ruin, their fourth album. He did two stints with the band — first from ’78 to ’83, when he was booted out for his drinking. He rejoined in ’87 and stayed with the group until it disbanded in ’96. Along the way, he pounded the skins during 1, 700 Ramones shows and played on nine albums.
So when Marky talks, you listen. If you care about the Ramones, that is. But you do, right? I still remember hearing those early songs as a teenager — Blitzkrieg Bop, Beat on the Brat, Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment — and realizing the revolution had arrived. Most people I knew at the time thought they were beyond terrible — odd-looking hoods who couldn’t play their instruments. But here we are nearly four decades after that first album, and the Ramones are casting more of a shadow on pop culture than ever. The “hey ho / let’s go” chorus of Blitzkrieg Bop plays in hockey arenas across the continent, Ramones T-shirts are omnipresent, and even U2 penned a song inspired by them on their latest album. On the phone from his home in Brooklyn Heights this week, Marky said he knew the band had it from the very first time he saw them at the Manhattan punk hot spot CBGB in 1974.
“I knew this was going to change a lot of people’s record collections,” he said. “I knew that because of what it sounded like.”
It sounded like buzz-saw guitars and an amphetamine-fuelled rhythm section playing at reckless speed, topped with Joey’s one-of-a-kind vocals that were part Queens drawl, part put-on British accent. Marky captures the excitement of those early days and the highs and lows of the ensuing years in his highly entertaining autobiography Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone.
Marky knows first-hand just how influential the Ramones remain: he tours the world with Blitzkrieg, playing the band’s tunes with Andrew W.K. handling lead vocals.
“There’s a whole new generation that loves the Ramones, and the older generation continues to love the Ramones,” Marky said. “What the band does, through its lyrical content and its energy, has bridged the generation gap. You see the old generation hanging out at the back going: ‘Oh yeah, I’ve seen it, I’ve been there. I was in the mosh pit. Now I’ll let the younger guys and girls do it.’ It’s a cool get-together.”
Marky has his theory as to why his old band may still be selling more T-shirts than anyone this side of AC/DC.
“People want to hear real music. They’re sick and tired of hearing samples and Auto-Tuning.”
Famously, the Ramones, pop fans that they were, always dreamed of topping the charts, which never happened in their lifetime. (The closest they came may have been when major fan Bruce Springsteen considered giving them his song Hungry Heart, a plan quickly nixed by his manager Jon Landau.)
Marky also has his theory on why they didn’t have a big hit single back in the day.
“Back then, radio wasn’t going to play I Wanna Be Sedated, because it involved sedation. So they didn’t want that over the airwaves. They didn’t want to lose their advertising. Before that, you had Blitzkrieg Bop, and the lyrical content was ‘shoot ’em in the back now.’ Nobody at that point was going to play that. Now you look at every movie, there’s violence. Now before you go on the plane, half (the passengers) are sedated.”
The very first song Marky recorded with the band, in fact, was I Wanna Be Sedated, which may be their most famous tune. He has many happy memories of his years with the Ramones, but it wasn’t always easy; much of his book chronicles the tension between band members, particularly between Joey and Johnny.
“The toughest thing was having to deal with the bickering between Joey and Johnny, which I didn’t expect,” Marky said. “I thought they all got along, butt hey didn’t. Thank god Dee Dee was in the group, because he was my best friend. I really didn’t want to get involved with the arguments, but later on I did, because you’re in a van, you’re doing 110 shows a year, and naturally you’re going to get caught up with that s--t. I ended up being the mediator.
“But if there weren’t any animosities, would the music have been different? Probably we let our aggression out on our instruments. But basically it was 90 per cent a great time. The 15 years I played with them was a dream come true.”
The Blitzkrieg show Sunday will consist entirely of Ramones songs.
“Me and Dee Dee were the first to put out original music (after the Ramones) in the ’90s, but when I would do a tour, I’d start doing original songs and the kids would start yelling for Ramones songs. So I said, ‘You won. You got me.’ The new generation wants to hear the Ramones songs, so that’s what I do, with Andrew W.K. as my singer, and he definitely knows how to engage the audience. We’ve been to China, Russia, Dubai, Spain, France, Italy, Germany. The same places the Ramones played. (The fans) love the music so much.”