“I don’t know how punk groups can sing about nukes when that’s what the hippies should be singing about.”
Article published in Sounds, 7th August, 1982
The Ramones | Ramones Stay Home | After four weeks of near-constant worrying about how I was going to build a Ramones article, I decided to chuck all that out the window and just let the Ramones talk —and I’ll talk around that. The Ramones certainly must have a lot to say after eight years.
CHANGE
Dee Dee Ramone: Well, maybe we shouldn’t change. It’d probably be better if we didn’t.
Johnny Ramone: We’ve probably changed too much already (laughs). Each album changes a little, y’know, but groups have their style; the closer they stick to their earlier style the better off they usually are. People start changing, you start losing interest in them. The Who changed, I stopped liking them.
I share a deli with Johnny Ramone. I’ll see him there in the middle of the night, clutching some beer or some milk, sneakers, striped shirt, c-shaped posture, eyes hidden by shades, he’s the Johnny Ramone I’ve seen loads of times in pictures or album cover cartoons.
But sitting in a midtown recording studio with cohort Dee Dee, he’s a different Johnny Ramone entirely . . . quick, funny, friendly, boyish good looks and an amazing smile no photos seem to capture — no leather jacketed punky acne or anything, and Dee Dee’s a nice suprise too — sharp cowboy boots and well-tended muscles, neat short-cropped jet black hair and granite handsome square set features hiding behind cool black specs.
The amiability and liveliness of this duo is great, particularly when held up to Joey Ramones’ droning drawl and predictability.
CHANGE
Joey Ramone: On record, we’ve always made it our business — well, not our business, but it is something you should want to do — to improve. Besides it being a natural progression, you wanna try out new ideas and experimentation and venture out, and that’s what rock’n’roll is all about, it’s change and trying out new ideas, y’know . . . that’s what keeps it fun, y’know?
If it had to be the same way it would be dull and boring and what’s the point, y’know? There’s plenty of room to grow.
I talked to Joey Ramone separately from Johnny and Dee Dee. Joey is, in a word, dull. Johnny and Dee Dee are animated and spontaneous; Joey is lifeless and predictable, at least in a mid-hot-afternoon interview.
He’s cordial and talkative, but without being exceptionally friendly or interesting. He seems delicate, almost effeminate, and uncomfortable with his height.
He’s very abreast of the press and latest musical developments — he likes the pop side of the Human League but has a fair disdain for most other new music, and speaks long and hard against Foreigner, Aldo Nova, REO Speedwagon, Journey and their ilk.
His apartment is small, plain, neat, dominated by a looming Hard Day’s Night poster and various tape machines. His hair is remarkably long and thick (with more than a few white strands showing through) and his eyes are remarkably small (as are his hands and feet) behind those round purple glasses.
Two nights in a row I see the Ramones on the ridiculous Uncle Floyd TV show — Floyd is an indescribable American phenomenon, sort of Tiswas with a tiny budget and hopelessly inept and casual production.
And they’re a lot of fun, churning out two of their oldies, and acting like the incredibly straightforward pop combo they are; the Ramones never wanted to be rebels or mutants, or so it seems, this was just their way of being normal.
THE RAMONES DIDN’T SOUND LIKE ANYTHING THAT CAME BEFORE THEM
Dee Dee: We made it up!
Johnny: Yeah. We started singing about things we found amusing, which other people thought was warped, our influences were weird: we were influenced by bubblegum music, and we were influenced by movies and the Stooges, the MC5 and Slade and things like that.
Plus we didn’t know how to play; we had just bought our instruments, we had to write songs that were very simple, basic, and we sang about crazy things which seemed normal to us, but nobody else was singing about them. Sniffing glue and things like that.
Dee Dee: We didn’t like jazz or blues or funk or soul or all those things — jazz especially. This band plays punk rock the best of anything. That’s what it’s for, You can do different things in the studio, that’s fun, but basically you are what you are and you can’t change.
THE RAMONES COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN THEY WERE MAKING PUNK ROCK WHEN THEY STARTED OUT IN ’74.
Dee Dee: No, we didn’t, but we fit into it . . . don’t know where, but we do fit into it. Somehow.
Johnny: They started calling us punk rock pretty quick, pretty much in ’74, ’75, before the term was used in England. Our first reviews said we were punk rock. Nobody else was being called punk rock. It didn’t mean nothing to us at the time — fine, we go around wearing leather jackets, I guess we’re punk rock. But we were being called punk rock right away, before ’76 happened.
INTENTIONS.
Johnny: Our intentions? Not much . . . we wanted to have something to do, to have some fun, then we were hoping that we’d get a record contract right away, record an album, and then just quit — break up. Just as long as we had our own album of our own songs.
At our first few rehearsals we tried to figure out other people’s songs, and we weren’t able to figure them out — we had just started to play — so we decided to write our own songs, we started writing right away, right from the first or second rehearsal.
AND IT’S BEEN EIGHT YEARS.
Johnny: Yeah, I guess I’m surprised.
Dee Dee: I’m suprised. We’ve had a lot going against us, we could’ve broken up a lot of times . . .
Johnny: I never thought when we started out that we’d reach this point where we had so many albums . . . and then after a while into it we thought had something good going, and we started to get up high hopes: that punk rock was going to take over the world, and that we’re going to become huge, and the Sex Pistols were going to become huge, and that’ll be it. Us and them will be the two biggest groups since we were the best at it. But . . . it didn’t happen.
A similar thing happened in ’64 when the Beatles came out, and the Rolling Stones, and it was something different — and the music industry really pushed for it to happen and become big, and it just took over. And I thought a similar thing was going to happen with punk rock.
I thought it would totally change everything, there would be no more Foreigners, and heavy metal, and all that, it would just be all punk rock. But I guess it was just too . . . extreme, or people got weird conceptions of it.
AND THE MUSIC BUSINESS.
Johnny: I think that the music business has taken a lot of fun out of certain parts of music, as far as being in a band goes. Just having to deal with it and knowing what goes on and how sickening a lot of it is . . . it’s just a sick thing. I want as little part of it as possible.
Dee Dee: But we’re not frustrated, because we’re not kissing ass. Thank God we’ve maintained a little bit of fame and we have something going for us — if we didn’t, if we were like Richard Hell or somebody like that, then we’d be frustrated. But we all have nice apartments and we’re doing all right.
Johnny: Beats getting up and going to work.
Dee Dee: Sure does.
The Ramones are working with Busta Jones, trying to add the D.O.R./dance rock side to the Ramones sound. And maybe it’ll work. The one finished demo I heard, ‘Chop Suey’ (with the girls from the B-52’s guesting on backup vocals) was pretty good — not classic, but pretty good.
They’re rehearsing two covers to consider for their next LP — ‘Surf City’ and ‘A Little Bit of Soul’.
ALBUMS.
Johnny: My favourite, I guess, is ‘Rocket to Russia’, or ‘Leave Home’ — those are my favourites. In my opinion ‘Rocket to Russia’ has our most classic songs on it. I think we still manage to put out good albums after all this time, with consistently good material on it — which is hard to do after six albums, almost all the songs on all the albums are pretty much good songs.
Dee Dee: ‘Rocket To Russia’ is one of my favourites, I like ‘Pleasant Dreams’ a lot, too. But I think my favourite is ‘Leave Home’; for some reason, that album . . .
Johnny: It has a lot of aggression in it, it’s a very violent album.
Dee Dee: But it’s not as naive; we knew what we were stirring up when we made ‘Leave Home’.
Johnny: Y’see, we had already written all of those songs before we recorded the first album. We had written everything on the first, second, and even a couple of songs on the third album. So we just decided to record them in chronological order, whatever we had written first we recorded first.
We thought about mixing them up, but then the first album would’ve been very similar to the second album, but we thought if we recorded everything we had wrote first first, then it would sound different. And it worked.
PHIL SPECTOR.
Joey Ramone: The first album for us to use an outsider was Phil Spector. Everything we’ve done is controversial, y’know, and always will be, y’know, and a lot of people didn’t like it and a lot of people loved it and even the band is mixed — but I loved it. I really think it’s a great album and I enjoyed working with Phil.
When we first met, he wanted to do a solo album with me, and at that time, y’know, the band was a unit and it had to be — the time wasn’t right back then. It just wasn’t meant to be.
AND DID DEE DEE AND JOHNNY ENJOY WORKING WITH SPECTOR?
Johnny: NO.
Dee Dee: Of course not. I didn’t really know what I was doing in those days, so it didn’t really matter —from a personal point of view.
Johnny: He was just impossible to work with whether you like his final results or you don’t like his final results — it’s just agony to work with the guy. He’s just crazy, he’s out of his mind; obviously he has a lot of problems when he doesn’t do any albums and he doesn’t get anything finished.
Dee Dee: He has emotional problems.
Johnny: We’ve already told these stories numerous times, but take the opening chord to ‘Rock’n’Roll High School’ — he just sat there and listened to it for ten hours straight — ‘Hit the opening chord’ — ‘Alright’ —he’d sit there listening to it and listening to it over and over, and about five hours later he’d say ‘Hit the opening chord again’ — we’d never get to the rest of the song, he’d just stop at the opening chord.
I don’t know how it ever got finished. He must have wanted to do it so badly that somehow he managed to finish it. That guy has a finishing complex, and I don’t think he’ll be able to finish anything ever again. He’s like Orson Welles or something, Orson Welles can’t finish a movie.
He’s crazier then anything you’ve ever heard. Whatever you’ve heard is true, and exaggerate it more and more and you’ve got him. He’s sadistic to almost everyone around him — he was nice to us, he really wanted to work with us.
To a lot of the new punks, myself included, the Ramones — are more of a legend or a base than an actively working recording group. To a whole generation they’re really nothing less then the Beatles of a certain era; they may not be actively thought of, but we owe a lot to them.
NEW PUNK/ HARDCORE.
Joey: Well, I don’t like that stuff. I see it as a recycling of our first album, and I don’t see them applying anything new or any new ideas, I don’t see the point or the purpose, really, except that, um, the only thing I can see is that it’s another generation, in a sense, a new youth or something. But these bands don’t hold as far as I’m concerned.
NEW PUNK/ HARDCORE.
Johnny: Well, it’s good that it exists. Not all of it is particularly good, but it’s good that it exists.
I’d hate for them to look back and see the Dead Kennedys as the foundations of punk rock. But a lot of those bands take certain things too seriously.
We have no real political problems in America, no issues that are too serious . . . I’m confused by them at times because I think a punk’s not supposed to care about anything, and yet at times they’ll have a hippie attitude, and I don’t understand that. I don’t know how punk groups can sing about nukes when that’s what the hippies should be singing about.
Punk is not supposed to care about anything or have any interest in anything, except having a good time. I’ve always associated the word ‘punks’ with a bunch of kids standing on the corner with greased back hair, they don’t care about what’s going on, they just want to stand there and hang out.
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