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- [00:00]
Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon. Music included with Prime.
- [00:10]
McDonald's Advertiser
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- [00:34]
Alan Cross
Refreshers contain caffeine. Copyright 2026 the Coca Cola Company. Sprite is a registered trademark of the Coca Cola Company.
- [00:43]
State Farm Advertiser
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- [00:58]
Alan Cross
There are many godfathers in music. The Godfather of Rock, well, there's the King, Elvis Presley, but Chuck Berry is probably a more accurate choice. The Godfather of Funk, James Brown, hands down, Godfathers of hip hop. DJ Kool Herc was the OG Run. DMC should be in there, along with Africa, Mabata, spoonie G, and Fab 5 Freddy. How about the Godfather of Punk? Well, that's Iggy Pot. There's no question there. But what about the Fathers of punk? I'm gonna say that that title belongs to the Ramones period. Full stop. End of discussion. Okay, wait, back up. In the early 1800s, an American pioneer named John Chapman traveled from Massachusetts collecting seeds from Pennsylvania cider presses. And for the rest of his life, he planted thousands of apple trees throughout what is now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Chapman was given the nickname Johnny Appleseed because wherever he went, apple trees sprouted in his wake. In the mid-1970s, the Ramones, four middle class kids from Forest Hills in Queens, began to have the same effect with a new style of rock and roll known as punk. Whenever they played a town on one of their endless tours, new bands would inevitably start popping up just a few days later. What began as a cartoonish attempt at making goofy, bubblegum pop music. Think of what the Beach Boys might sound like if they sniffed glue and took a lot of meth. The Ramones stumbled on something profound and eternal. It was all a big, happy, dumb accident. The Ramones had no idea that they were about to change the world of music. They were just four regular guys who wanted to rock in the most basic way. They certainly accomplished that. But they also reminded everyone that when it comes to the power and joy of rock. Sometimes less is more. They gave rock and roll a much needed kick in the ass and it took a long time for them to be recognized for what they gave us. They got punk going on both sides of the Atlantic. The guys who would eventually become the Clash worshiped them. The Sex Pistols took cues from them. They'd go on to be an influence on hardcore metal, thrash, grunge and every flavor of guitar based alt rock fans include Nirvana and the Foo Fighters and Metallica, Soundgarden, Pixies, Faith no More, the Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, the Strokes, the Offspring, the Chili Peppers, Guns N Roses, motorhead, green day, blink 182, rancid, fall out Boy, and hundreds, probably thousands of others. 2026 is an important year in Ramones history. It's the 25th anniversary of Joey's death. He was the first member of the band to leave us. It's the 30th anniversary of the last Ramone show and. And it's the 50th anniversary of the release of their debut album. So let's cover all that with this triple tribute to one of the greatest and most important bands in the history of rock. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross, The Ramones in one of their classics. Sheena is a punk rocker from 1977. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and. August 16th, 1974, a day that has gone down in history. It was a smoking hot and very humid day in New York City. Down in the Bowery with all the concrete, it was even hotter and it stunk. You see, New York was in decline. It was broke, it was riddled with crime. There was garbage everywhere, drugs everywhere, poverty, homelessness was all rampant. Buildings were abandoned with broken windows. It was pretty grim and frankly, uncivilized. But at 3:15 Bowery at Bleecker, there was a bar called CBGB. And that Friday night again, August 16, 1974, the place was almost empty. There was the owner, Hilly Crystal, his dog, two people from a San Francisco transvestite band called the Cockettes, the manager of another band called Television, and. And a local seamster named Legs McNeil. At about 9:00', clock, four guys in leather jackets, T shirts, torn jeans and Converse high tops got up on the tiny stage and, well, Legs McNeil remembers it this way. They counted off this song and it was just this wall of noise. They looked so striking. These guys weren't hippies. This was something completely new. It was 60s rock and roll, distilled to its essence, played at the speed and volume of a jet engine. Fifteen minutes after their set started, it was over. They had blown through all their songs and had even found time to fight about which song was next and to struggle with broken guitar strings. The owner's dog hid behind the bar at the end of the set, such as it was hilly, Crystal said, nobody's going to like you, but I'll have you back. They would come back to CBGB a total of 74 times that year. And by the time they retired forever with the final show in Los Angeles on August 6, 1996, they changed the world of rock forever. Now, like I said at the beginning, 2026 is a triple anniversary. The 25th anniversary of Joey's death, the 30th of that last show, and the 50th of the release of the first album. So let's start there. The roots of the Ramones go back to when a Yankees baseball fanatic named John Cummings shared a joint with a new friend, a former hairdresser named Douglas Colvin. They were working construction that day, a 50 story building at 50th and Broadway. That joint led to a couple of beers at a local strip club. And many drinks later, it was decided that they should form a band. With about 100 bucks between them, they bought a guitar, a bass and an amp. Four days later, January 28, 1974, they had their first rehearsal, just the two of them. In March, they hooked up with a six foot three drummer named Jeff, who had defected from a glam band called Sniper and from his job selling plastic flowers on the street in Greenwich Village. This new band was awful. Douglas, soon to be known as Dee Dee Ramone, didn't even know the names of the strings on his bass. He just thumped away on the open string. That sounded good with the bar chords that Johnny was playing. But what they lacked in ability was more than made up for by their enthusiasm. Since they found it too hard to learn other people's songs, they just stuck with making up their own stuff. Basic bar chords and a 44 beat. What else did you need to construct the perfect two minute pop song? There were rules for these new songs, however. No politics. Sing about real stuff like girls and drugs. Follow the example of Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Remember your favorite pop songs, cartoons and comic books. And above all, don't worry about getting all the notes right. And what about a name? Well, I talked to Joey and Marky Ramon about that back in the 90s.
- [07:56]
Marky Ramone
We like to fib about it, but the truth is that deity was a Big fan of Paul McCartney and the Beatles. And in the days of the silver Beatles, Paul McCartney used to check on two hotel rooms using the alias Paul Ramone. And Dee Dee was such a big Paul McCartney fan that he started. He changed his name to Dee Dee Ramone because of the days of the Silver Beatles, what Paul E. Did. So when we met Dee Dee, like he was calling himself Dee Dee Ramone. When we think of a name for the band, we thought, oh, the Ramones, that'd be kind of unique.
- [08:36]
Joey Ramone
And that's how it started.
- [08:38]
Marky Ramone
Yeah. And then so we all like used our first names. And Ramones kind of signifies unity or family. Family, brother, gang brotherhood, all that crap. So here we are, the Ramones.
- [08:55]
Alan Cross
Let's go back to that first Friday night, August 16, 1974. There is actually audio and film of this performance. It's hard to describe how dark, different the Ramones were by the fall of 1974. Here were these four brothers, all dressed in torn jeans and leather jackets, playing to what amounted to bubblegum pop music at a million miles an hour. No solos, no stage patter, no acknowledgement of the audience, no letting up. The only breaks came when Johnny counted off the next song. 1, 2, 3, 4. Were they serious? Was this a joke? Depending on who you talked to, the Ramones were either complete idiots and morons or or minimalistic artistic geniuses. After a Ramone show, every song seems slow. That's a 1974 demo of Judy is a Punk. Eventually word started going around about these guys, and with each gig the buzz got bigger. CBGB was soon crammed with everyone from the Andy Warhol crowd and stuffy intellectual types to rich uptowners slumming it on the bad side of town with the kids who were genuinely bored with music and needed something new and exciting. And music at that time was having difficulties. Prague was the big thing. Music so complicated that you had to be a virtuoso to play it. Bands like Led Zeppelin were so big that they were playing stadiums, meaning that the separation between band and and fan was enormous. And pop music that summer was absolutely awful. When the Ramone showed up that August, the biggest song on AM radio, which dominated everything, was this. Okay, please, that's enough. But I had to play that, because context is everything. No wonder the Ramones were such a shock to the system. Even the New York Times sent a reporter to the Bowery to check things out. Here's a quote from that review. The Ramones are a highly stylized extension of the punk medium. They deliver a non stop set of brisk, monochromatically intense songs where conventional considerations of pace and variety are thrown calculatedly into. Into the Wind, which I guess was a rave. Finally, an offer of a record deal came from Sire Records.
- [11:39]
Johnny Ramone
I remember originally we got turned down by, like, every label there was. And then Sawyer was interested in us, you know, we eventually went with Sire, though there were, you know, later on, you know, as time went on, there were Electra, Asylum was in. You know, there were bigger labels interested. But we decided to go with Sire because we felt the Seymour Stein understood us best and that we wouldn't get lost in the shuffle being on a major company. All the labels watched our success, you know, because we were sort of the trailblazers. We, you know, we went out and did the first, you know, a national tour. I mean, there was nobody like us. And then when they, you know, saw how well we had done, like, the world got signed. You know what I mean? See, like, you know, when we go into the studio, we. We've rehearsed everything for like three or four months, you know, so that we go in and knowing exactly, you know, everything is ready to be put down. And usually we get it in one take, two takes tops, and, you know, we'll put it album together in a month's time, you know. I mean, like, you know, most bands, they, you know, they sort of. When it comes down to recording, they just sort of blow all their money and people can be in the studio for, like, for years, you know, and the idea is to capture the spontaneity and the excitement and to see your profits stay in your pocket, not blown. I mean, there's no reason why you have to go to, like, a studio that costs you $200 an hour when you can do it for $35 an hour. You know what I mean? The place is just as good. It just doesn't have hot tubs or something.
- [13:20]
Alan Cross
The Ramones started recording their debut album on February 2, 1976. By February 19, it was done. And the bill, $6,400, not counting the price replacing the cutter head on the mastering machine at the record pressing plant. Because the album had been recorded at such a high volume that the tapes literally blew the cutting head off the machine. Here's Seymour Stein, the guy who signed the Ramones Desire Records.
- [13:46]
Seymour Stein
I can remember going into the studio like they had gotten there three hours earlier. And I said, how's everything going? And Johnny says to me, well, you know, things aren't doing that great. We only got seven tracks down. I mean, that was like, in three hours. If everybody was like them, I mean, record companies would have no worries.
- [14:08]
Alan Cross
That first album was short and to the point. 14 songs over in about 28 minutes. And it was released to an unsuspecting public on April 23, 1976.
- [14:19]
Joey Ramone (song vocals)
What can you do? What can you do with a friend like that that was on your phone? What can you do?
- [14:30]
Alan Cross
To say that mainstream rock was not ready for the Ramones is, well, it's a really big understatement. The debut album was ignored by most and ridiculed by many. They called it noise. It was music made by morons for morons. Or was it? Despite the initial bad reviews from people who just didn't get it, this is the record that really established punk rock. It was revolutionary. By being reactionary in a rock world where everything had become so complicated, the Ramones took everything back to the beginning so we could start again with voice, guitar, bass, drums, and plenty of energy and fun. Again, context. This record was the fastest and hardest rock that we'd heard of up until this moment. On July 4, 1976, the Ramones played the Roundhouse in London. This brought punk to the uk. Tony James, a wannabe guitarist who would later be part of Generation X with Billy Idol, remembers that the speed of British punk tripled overnight after the Ramones played.
- [15:48]
Joey Ramone
It was really wild going over to England where, I mean, we were like, you know, we were selling out CBGB's and all. And I mean, kind of there was a wild scene going on there. But when we got over to England, it was, we're playing for 3,000 kids and everybody was already tuned into what it was that we were all about. And I remember at the time, the big thing going on in England was Pub Rock. Dr. Feelgood was the big band at the time, and Brimsley Schwartz. And I remember we were treated like royalty when we got there. And then we did this club, Ding Walls, and basically the whole makeup of Ding Walls were all these kids that would later form their. These kind of groundbreaking bands of their own. And like, at our soundcheck, we met like, Johnny. Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer and all these people, and they were really,
- [16:49]
Alan Cross
you
- [16:49]
Joey Ramone
know, they were totally taken with the band. And. And really after that, when we left England at that point, you know, they told us that we had turned them on, kind of opened them up and inspired them to form their own bands. Basically, when we came back in 77, the whole thing was full blown. And I feel like from that point on, you know, we really kind of brought upon a radical change that would really sweep the world.
- [17:23]
Alan Cross
British punks ate it up and then they recycled it with their own style. And boom. The summer and fall of 76 after the Ramones became the big bang of what would be called alternative music. How important is that first record? Listen to this. In 2012, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the United States because it is culturally, historically and aesthetically significant. So there's our first anniversary. 50 years since the release of the first album. Next, we'll talk about the 30th anniversary of the final show. Where is Daredevil? I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again.
- [18:08]
State Farm Advertiser
So what's next?
- [18:09]
Alan Cross
I feel liberated.
- [18:10]
Joey Ramone (song vocals)
Rated.
- [18:11]
Alan Cross
We're gonna take this city back over medicated in an all new season. Now streaming only on Disney plus.
- [18:18]
State Farm Advertiser
They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them.
- [18:21]
Alan Cross
I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. Now streaming only on Disney plus.
- [18:30]
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- [18:36]
Joey Ramone (song vocals)
Fit.
- [18:37]
Alan Cross
Wow.
- [18:38]
Joey Ramone
No photos, please.
- [18:39]
Alan Cross
I'm just a regular dad who happens to have a stylist. I really look my best when someone else makes the decisions. Hey, we can all see you two way mirrors.
- [18:48]
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- [19:01]
Alan Cross
The Ramones second album was Leave Home. It appeared on January 10, 1977. 14 songs less than 30 minutes. And outside of their small group of fans, it was ignored. The third Ramones record was Rocket to Russia. We got that one ten months later, November 17, 1977. And like the previous two albums, there was at least one song that touted the benefits of mental illness.
- [19:25]
Joey Ramone (song vocals)
Now I guess I'll have to tell that I got no seraphim Don't I get my pain?
- [19:37]
Alan Cross
Rocket to Russia was the Ramones at their peak. It was the perfect marriage of punk rock and top 40. But the album also marked the end of the original lineup. Tommy Ramone, the drummer, had decided to go back to being a record producer so he could no longer tour. His replacement was Mark Bell, hitherto known as Marky Ramone. And Markey was on board for the next album, Road to Ruin. The first Ramones album to run more than 30 minutes. It was released on September 15, 1978, and featured the Ramones biggest hit. Here's the story behind that. Before our show at the Capitol theater in Passaic, New Jersey on November 19, 1977, Joey was trying to deal with a cold. To get his vocal cords to loosen up, he built a makeshift humidifier, a kettle, with the lid held down with a big rubber band. That was a bad mistake. The kettle was blew up, sending hot scalding water all over his face, resulting in some nasty third degree burns. But because the show had to go on, Joey sang that night anyway. From there, the tour just got worse. Show after show, city after city, night after night. And by the time the Ramones played a New Year's Eve gig at the Rainbow Theater in London, a phrase kept repeating itself in Joey's head. Put me in a wheelchair and get me on a plane Hurry, hurry, hurry Before I go insane. I want to be sedated with the famous one note guitar solo, played not by Johnny, but apparently by producer Ed Stasiam. The closest the Ramones ever came to a mainstream breakthrough happened in 1979, when schlock film director Roger Corman put together something called Rock and Roll High School. The movie told the story of Riff Randall and her encounter with her principal, the evil Miss Togar, and the exploding white mice of Vince Lombardi High. Now listen to this opening chord very carefully. This track was recorded and remixed by legendary producer Phil Spector, and the story goes that he listened to this single chord over and over and over again, making Johnny play it for 10 hours until he felt that it was just right. End of the Century was supposed to be the record that finally sent the band over the top. Instead, though, it was a creative disaster. They were at the mercy of Phil Spector, bit of a nut, who insisted on overproducing the Ramones smart style. The cost of recording the record ballooned to over $200,000, and the Ramones were not happy with the results. Perhaps, maybe with the exception of this song. By 1982, the Ramones had peaked and were well on their way down. There were personnel problems, there were lineup changes, there were problems with drugs and alcohol. The original punk scene had died away, leaving the Ramones basically to fend for themselves. With album sales slowing to a trickle, and they weren't great to begin with. The only way to survive was to tour, tour, tour and tour some more, stopping just long enough to record another album. The 80s were a tough time for the Ramones. They were largely ignored, if not outrightly ridiculed, and it didn't help that Joey and Johnny had stopped talking because Joey's girlfriend Linda went from team Joey to Team Johnny and stayed there. So imagine those long van journeys where the singer and guitarist refused to talk to each other. But then grunge hit and Starting in about 1991, the Ramones found their work and their image and their influence being reevaluated. After being declared out of step and out of date for years, more and more people came to realize the enormity of the Ramones contribution to what had become known as alternative music. As punk rock bubbled up on the mainstream, pro Ramones articles began to appear in major music magazines as more writers began to realize the band's influence on superstar groups like Nirvana and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Green Day and the Offspring and White Zombie and all those other bands I mentioned earlier. In 1992, Spin magazine named the Ramones one of the seven most influential acts of all time, noting that you can draw a straight line from the Ramones through to Nirvana. Compilations of Ramones material began to sell in large numbers, thanks in large part to this retroactive praise. And as a result of a growing retro 80s movement that also began to take hold by 1993, with more and more people becoming acquainted with the history of alternative music in new rock, the Ramones were being held up as the founding fathers of all punk rock, and thus the entire alternative rock sound and attitude. Joey Ramon took this all in very carefully. By the time his 44th birthday rolled around, he made a decision. After more than a dozen years in the wilderness, the Ramones were on top again. What better time to retire? So after a worshipful appearance during the 1996 Lollapalooza festival, the Ramones played their last show. The date was August 6, 1996, at the Billboard Live Club on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. This was just 10 days short of the 22nd anniversary of that first show at CBGB. It sounded like this,
- [25:54]
Joey Ramone (song vocals)
That's a lot tonight.
- [25:57]
Alan Cross
And that was that. After exactly 2,263 shows, 146 original songs, and 14 studio albums between 1974 and 1996, the Ramones were over. Two anniversaries down, one more to go, and that's next.
- [26:17]
State Farm Advertiser
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- [26:43]
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- [26:58]
Alan Cross
This episode is taking a look at a triple Ramones anniversary in 2026. The 50th anniversary of the release of the first album, the 30th anniversary of their last show and and now the 25th anniversary of Joey Ramon's death. He was the first of the original Ramones to go. It was April 15, 2001. He died of lymphatic cancer. Joey had actually been sick for at least six years, but no one made a big deal about it because, you know, Joey always seemed kind of sickly. A beanpole, skinny, a sallow complexion and a perpetual stoop. So anyone who knew that Joey was sick just expected him to pull through as he had always done in the past. This time though, was different. Let's take a quick look at his life. His real name was Jeff Hyman, a self styled loner and outcast. Jeff was born on the same day as Pete Townsend of the who May 19, 1951. He was from the Forest Hills section of Queens, dad owned a trucking company and mom, who was an artist and collector of art ran a gallery. But then his parents divorced when he was eight and that's when Jeff really started to get into music. He was always listening to his transit to radio and Jeff was a huge fan of the pop music of the 1960s. Like most of the kids his age, Jeff grew up wanting to be in the Beatles. His grandmother, who had a job singing and playing piano at Macy's department store, gave him his first musical instrument, which believe it or not was an accordion. Jeff loved it and he literally played the thing to death. When he was 13 he graduated to drums. His mom bought him his first set with stamps she collected at the supermarket. Eventually though, Jeff pulled together a Keith Moon sized kit. When Alice Cooper came along in the early 1970s, Jeff thought he might like to try singing. It was his uncle's side that really encouraged him to give it a shot. Jeff hadn't been much of a student and he didn't seem too keen on getting a job even after he drifted into Manhattan. Like I said earlier, he had a job selling plastic flowers on the street in Greenwich Village. He handed out flyers for massage parlors. Whatever he did, though, he'd earn, let's say 50 bucks and then blow it on one beer and some drugs. After a while, he found himself in a glittery glam rock band called Sniper, where he specialized in writing songs about violence and various perversions. Jeff liked being in Sniper, but he didn't like the uniform. A stretchy black satin jumpsuit, pink and lavender platform boots and leather gloves that went up way past the elbow. He must have looked like, you know, Marilyn Manson without the makeup. Jeff then met Douglas Dee Dee at a Sniper gig at a venue called Coventry, a hangout of this other glamish band called Kiss. Maybe you heard of them. At this time, John Johnny Ramone was in another band with Jeff's brother Mitch. They talked a little and decided to jam a bit. It was Jeff on drums, Douglas on bass and vocals, and Johnny on guitar. And they called themselves the Ramones. The best musician in the bunch, Joey, he was a pretty good drummer and it didn't take Dee Dee long before he decided he didn't want to sing anymore. So he stepped aside and Jeff stepped from behind the drums to the mic down front. Then in July 1974, their friend Tommy, who had been sort of acting as their manager, was offered to be the drummer. The classic Ramones lineup was now complete. Back in the early days of the Ramones, let's say this is sometime in 1976, Joey's dad went to a gig to see what his son was doing with this band thing of his and he said, boy, I hope he makes it at this because he just can't do anything else. And this bears repeating. Through the middle and late 80s, the Ramones showed how rock and roll could be distilled down to its very basics. The simple thrill of a two minute pop song played with as much energy as possible. We're just looking for stupid fun here. But to the English punks, the Ramones were just the beginning. They took this music and layered it with heavier messages. Youth alienation, political protest. It was open class war, and punk rock in the UK was the soundtrack. Over the years, more things were added, like fashion. What started with the Ramones, leather jackets and long hair and torn jeans turned into tattoos, fetish gear, piercings and wild haircuts. In places like Southern California, a hotbed of Ramones activity, New York punk mutated into hardcore. A former punk with a solid and serious political and social ideology. The punk that started with the Ramones back in 1974 evolved into a genuine international language for Bored and disaffected kids everywhere. By 1995, Joey was getting tired of the grind. There was the touring, the band going in and out of fashion, all the lineup changes. So after that final show at the Billboard Live Club on the Sunset Strip, he was done. And then there was this. Sometime in the middle 90s, Joey Ramone realized that he wasn't feeling good. A couple of shows had to be canceled because he was ill. And over the next couple of years, a series of interviews and promo tours were called off, some at the last minute. And most people just chalk this up to typical rock star excess. Joey can't make it because he's got the flu. Yeah, that's it. The flu. But there were those who suspected that there was something else going on. In the spring and summer of 1997, I was working on a book called over the The Revolution and Evolution of New Rock. And one of my editors suggested that it would be very cool if I could find somebody famous to write a foreword or introduction to the book. At that point, the only guy I wanted was Joey Ramone. So I called some people and. And after a while, I was given Joey's home phone number. So one night, I screwed up enough courage to call him, and he just happened to be at home.
- [32:48]
Joey Ramone
Hello?
- [32:49]
Alan Cross
Yeah. How you doing? We had several long conversations over the next few weeks. We talked about the end of the Ramones. We talked about how Joey was going to mentor several New York punk bands. We talked about the possibilities of a solo album. And eventually we got around to talking about my book. And at first, he was excited about the idea, but as we got closer to the due date, his enthusiasm waned. At the time, I thought he was just getting sick of me, but what I didn't know was that he was just plain sick. He did tell me that he had hurt his ankle and it wasn't healing properly, which was causing him problems. So, okay, fine. But the reality was that Joey had been diagnosed with lymphatic cancer sometime in 1994. 1995. But at Joey's request, no one was told. If someone in the music media did find out, they respectfully declined to report on it. They just liked Joey way too much. And besides, Joey didn't want to make a big deal of it. He thought of telling everyone that he had, quote, this is Joey speaking, come down with a little case of cancer, but decided against it. Besides, the chemotherapy was working just fine. Meanwhile, Joey went about reinventing himself. The man was incredibly political, offering opinions and support to a variety of causes, including Anti apartheid projects. He became a record producer. He was a radio DJ for a while. In fact, a Toronto company even tried to pair me and him up for a national radio show. But by that time, Joey was in chemotherapy and wasn't up to doing much. Then a series of things conspired against him. Joey had a terrible case of ocd, something that he had since he was a kid. And this is the kind of OCD where he had to return to his apartment multiple times to make sure that he turned off the stove or locked the door. He'd sometimes have an uncontrollable urge to step on and off a curb a specific number of times. On December 30, 2000, he had this unbearable sense that he'd forgotten to close a door at an office across town. He couldn't leave it, so he set out to close it. And while walking down the icy street, Joey fell and broke his hip. As a result of this really bad injury, doctors had to take him off his cancer fighting drugs, drugs that weakened his immune system so he could undergo surgery. He was released for a few days in February 2001, but he was soon back in the hospital. He never went back to his apartment again. The lymphatic cancer went after Joey's immune system, all but shutting him down and leaving him susceptible to infection. On Sunday, April 15, his family was called to his room at Presbyterian Hospital in New York. His brother Mickey Lee put on a U2 song called In a Little While from the all that yout Can't Leave behind album. There was a little boombox in the room. In a Little While had become Joey's favorite bedside song. Some say the song was a gift from Bono. In fact, Bono had given him a call on Good Friday that year. Joey wasn't able to say much. He was that sick. But those who were there could see how much that call meant to him. As the song played that afternoon, Joey slipped away. And by 2:40 that afternoon, just as the song ended, Joey Ramone was gone. Meanwhile, the front door of CBGB had become something of a shrine. Candles, flowers, cards. Someone set up a boombox that blurred nothing but Ramon songs. Joey was buried on Tuesday, April 17, 2001, at Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, which looks across the river to Manhattan. Some of Joey's longtime musician fans were there, including Deborah Harry of Blondie, who noted that at least he's got a good view. May 19 was declared National Joey Ramon Day by Congressional proclamation. The American flag that flew over the US Capitol building in Washington was given to the family. Here's what Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day had to say. I can firmly say that rock and roll will not be the same without Joey Ramone alive. The one thing no one will be able to capture was how cool he was. He was rock and roll coolness. The glasses, the leather jacket. He barely moved a finger. He just stood there. To me, what I saw was the perfect rock band. They had songs that just stuck in your head just like a hammer. They banged right into your brain. By the way, Billie Joe's first son is named Joey. Green Day drummer Trey Cool has a daughter and her name is Ramona, which should tell you something. Let me play you this. It's the opening track of U2's 2014 album, Songs of Innocence. It's the first single and it's called the Miracle of Joey Ramon.
- [37:31]
Joey Ramone (song vocals)
I woke up at the moment when the miracle came. Heard a song that made some sense out of the world.
- [37:44]
Alan Cross
You can draw a straight line back from any punk today through all the punk of the 90s, through grunge, through the hardcore of the 80s, and through all the colors of punk of the 1970s. And the line stops at the four guys from Queens led by 6 foot 3 inch beanpole Jeff Hyman. Joey and the Ramones may have started as a goofy, but it was a joke that conquered the world. Three chords, sometimes two, and an attitude. That's all it took. The original Ramones are all gone now. Joey was the first to go on April 15, 2001. Dee Dee OD'd on June 5, 2002. Then it was Johnny prostate cancer on September 15, 2004, and finally, Tommy on July 11, 2014, because of bile duct cancer. It's hard to overestimate the role of the Ramones in the evolution of today's rock and roll. When they first appeared in 1974, they were a refreshing slap in the face, A reminder that rock didn't have to be overblown, overproduced and pretentious to be significant. They proved that all you really need was a few chords, a little wit and a lot of energy. And what started out as a joke ended up being a serious lesson for several generations of wannabe musicians and fans. Quite simply, the Ramones changed everything by mating top 40 pop of the 1960s with the aggression of Iggy Pop and the Stooges. They came up with a special formula, A formula that was spread by the Ramones themselves, city by city, across North America and the world, year after year after year. Hardcore punk, pop punk, grunge they all have their roots in the Ramone sound and the Ramones hey ho, let's go attitude. They then exported that same formula to the UK in 1976, and from there the British punk rock explosion found a new beginning with the Sex Pistols and the Clash and a million other bands, some of whom also went on to change the course of music history. The Ramones, one of the first punk rock bands ever, maybe the first true punk rock band ever, and certainly one of the most important rock and roll bands of all time. There are hundreds of ongoing history podcasts available for download. They're all free. And if you're looking for another podcast, try my True Crime project, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. And yes, it is true crime meets music. My website is ajournalofmusicalthings.com it's always being updated and comes with a free daily newsletter. I'm on most of the social media platforms and I'm always into getting email. Use Alan Alencross ca Technical productions by Rob Johnston. Talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross.
- [40:25]
State Farm Advertiser
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