The following text is meant to be for those who know nothing or only a little about the RAMONES. For the "Die-Hard"-Fan the largest part of what can be read here should already be well known.

The Ramones were founded in 1974 in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Among the original founders were Johnny Ramone, DeeDee Ramone und Joey Ramone who at that time played the drums, while DeeDee sang. Joey was replaced on the drums by Tommy Ramone whereas Joey changed the drumsticks for the microphone. To avoid misunderstandings: The Ramones are in no way brothers. Of course the surnames are "stage names". In fact the "brothers" are called: Jeff Hyman (Joey Ramone, *19.05.1951), John Cummings (Johnny Ramone, *08.10.1951), Douglas Colvin (DeeDee Ramone, *18.09.1952) und Tom Erdelyi (Tommy Ramone, *29.01.1952). Tommy was later replaced by Mark Bell (Marky Ramone, *15.07.1956), who used to play the drums in the cult-band Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

Contrary to the "Zeitgeist", thinking of bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and so on, the Ramones played their songs straight forward, in downright minimalistic line-up (guitar, bass, drums and vocals), every song scarcely two minutes long. This was due to, following the Ramones' own statements, the unability to play more complicated stuff. But instead of giving up, they perfected their minimalism and a new music-style was born: Punk-Rock. (Of course the Ramonse benefitted from predecessors like Iggy and the Stooges, the New York Dolls and so forth). Strictly speaking the Ramones oriented themselves towards classic Rock 'n' Roll bands of the 50's and 60's, but only with distorted guitars and a few rounds per minute faster. So it is not by accident that the Ramones covered such songs (but so brilliantly that one could things they are their own) like Surfin' Bird, Do you wanna dance, Let's dance or California Sun. The Ramones always thought of themselves being a small and dirty Rock 'n' Roll band rather than being a Punk Band. Nevertheless in 1974 evolved what today's bands like Green Day, Offspring or even Nirvana still benefit from.

In 1976 the Ramones published their first studio-record "Ramones" on which absolute classics like "Blitzkrieg Bop", "Beat on the Brat" or "Judy is a Punk" are. Within eighteen month the second "Leave Home" (including "Gabba Gabba Hey - Pinhead") and third record "Rocket to Russia" (including Sheena is a Punk Rocker, Rockaway Beach, Cretin Hop) were released. When the Sex Pistols published their first record in 1976, and this goes out to all who still think of the Sex Pistols (with all respect!) as being the primal Punk-Rockers, the Ramones had already the three mentioned records out! These three records are warmly recommended to any Ramones-Novice, because here the Ramones Sound the way their fans love them (Also the 1978 Live-Album "It's alive", justly counted among the most important live-records in rock-history, is an ideal starter, because here the Ramones' power and energy can be felt best).

In their song-lyrics the Ramones proved a lot of humour, a virtual adolescent "snotiness" (every third track is called "I don't wanna...") and the skill to dense a message on four lines without going flat. Although the Ramones toured a lot even in their early phase and a lot of their songs had by all means hit-quality (according to DeeDee Ramone in "Poison Heart" even the Bay City Rollers wanted to have "I wanna be your boyfriend" - the Ramones refused), they never, apart from a few exceptions, could convince the musical mainstream and thus reach Top10-Positions.

Even in 1989, when the Stephen King novel-based movie "Pet Semetary" was published, which the Ramones wrote the title-track for, and star-author outed himself as being a Ramones-Fan, they could not break through. And exactly this not-being-accepted by the mainstream made things really hard for them after 1978. With the record "Road to Ruin" (whose title is certainly not chosen by accident), they published once again an album which lead musically a step further, without diluting the original Ramones, but after that came, and this is probably the unanimous opinion of all Ramones-Fans, the preliminary crash. In their effort to reach a Top10-Position they chose a producer who understood about Punk Rock as much as let's say a priest about fucking: Phil Spector.  

With his "Wall of Sounds" he produced the Ramones and "The End of The Century", whose song-material is actually resourceful, down the drain. Not to no purpose Marky, Johnny and DeeDee fell out with Spector (who, like the Ramones, had a heavy drinking problem). DeeDee claims in "Poison Heart" that he does not know, who played on the album, but the mentioned three did not!

In any case "The End Of The Century" was fortunately the last studio-record with Phil Spector on the knobs. With the cover-version "Baby I love you" the Ramones eventually made a Top10-Position in England.

In the years to come, until 1984, the Ramones published "Subterranean Jungle" and "Pleasant Dreams" of which only the tracks "The KKK took my Baby away" and "Psycho Therapy" survived for the live-set. When in 1984 "Too tough to die" (a title absolutely to be understood as being autobiographical) came out, things really went up again for the Ramones. Meanwhile the Ramones had changed the drummer after drunken Marky had missed a plane, because of which the band had to cancel a gig. Mark was replaced by Richie Ramone (this was not Elvis Ramones as it is sometimes believed. In fact Elvis Ramone was Blondie's Clem Burke who was kicked out after two shows because he could not play the Ramones-style drums). With Richie they published "Too Tough to Die", "Animal Boy" and "Halfway to Sanity".

But because Richie Ramone wanted more money he was kicked out and Marky, having got his alcohol-problem under control, returned. With him "Brain Drain" was published in 1989 (on which Pet Semetary appears, besides Blitzkrieg Bop the song best known by most non-fans!).

An event, which certainly shocked a lot of fans at first, also happened in 1989: DeeDee Ramone, one of the creative heads left the Ramones. DeeDee, who already was on heroin for a long time and felt himself at the end of his tether with the Ramones image (long hair, leather jacket, sneakers), because of which he had cut his hair before, got out to make Rap henceforth and call himself DeeDee King. A substitute was needed and one made a strike: Engaged was C.Jay Ramone (Christopher Joseph Ward, *08.10.1965). An unbelievably sympathetic and exceedingly youthful substitute for DeeDee. The largest part of the fans accepted him form the first second. His debut was on the 4th of September 1989. The first studio-record with C.J. was "Mondo Bizarro". There followed "Acid Eaters" and finally "Adios Amigos".

The Ramones ended their career in 1996 at its height. "Adios Amigos" got only the best reviews and the shows in all the world were sold out. In Argentinia the Ramones filled even stadiums. Because they did not want to end like the "Rolling Stones", Johnny pressed to make an end.

On April the 15th 2001 Joey Ramone, the Ramones' legendary singer, died of lymphatic cancer. In his last years Joey worked on his, meanwhile published, solo-record called "Don't worry about me". The legendary first four Ramones - albums have been re-published in digitally remastered form on CD on Rhino Records, including some up to now unpublished bonus-tracks. On the booklet's last page there is the following quotation by Arturo Vega, the long-standing, in his own words, "minister of propaganda" (who designed the T-Shirt-Logos), which that nice that it cannot be quoted often enough: "... I know you wouldn't want us to be sad. But we are. We are very, very sad.".

The same goes for Dee Dee Ramone who died on the 5th of June 2002 by an accidental drug overdose. The "Chinese Rock", a Ramones song written by Dee Dee tells about, eventually buried Dee Dee (I'm livin' on a chinese rock, all my best things are in hug, I'm livin' on a chinese rock, everything is in a pawn shop). The phrase "Chinese Rock" denoted heroin or heroin addiction in New York of the seventies.

On September the 15th 2004 Johnny Ramone, the legendary eighthnotesdownstrokingguitarhero died of prostate cancer. To his memory his wife Linda initiated a Johnny Ramone Memorial with a statue in California. The statue shows Johnny as his fans always knew him: With leather jacket and guitar-playing.

One can confidently call the Ramones one of the most influential bands of the last thirty years and, as the music-magazine SPIN once wrote, rank the Ramones among the most important bands of rock history next to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Not by accident are they now in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Fame. In New York there is going to be a "Joey Ramone Place" in Joey's honour. Mötorhead's Lemmy wrote about the RAMONES: "The Ramones were special. That's why I wrote a song for them. They were better than they knew. DON'T FORGET THEM". To prevent this, namely that the Ramones could be forgotten, is the declared goal of the RÄMOUNS.

This is the literature this text refers mostly to:

Bessman, Jim (1993): Ramones. An American Band. St. Martin's Press. New York. ISBN: 0-312-09361-1

Ramone, DeeDee und Kofman, V. (1998): Poison Heart. Surviving the Ramones. Interlink Publishing Group Inc. ISBN: 0946719195

Important Ramones-Links:

www.ramones.com

Site by Arturo Vega

Joey Ramone

THE Ramones-Book by Monte A. Melnick

Jari-Pekka Laitio-Ramone's Website

GABBA - Ramones and Abba mix-up

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