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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.
- [00:07]
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- [00:41]
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This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music and fast free delivery, prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more.
- [01:08]
Alan Cross
Friday, August 16, 1974, was a hot summer day in New York city. It was 31 degrees, but the humidity made it feel a lot hotter. And if you were down in the Bowery amidst all the concrete, it was hotter still. And it smelled. This part of the city was, to be honest, rather uncivilized. Okay, it was a slum, lots of garbage, broken windows, abandoned buildings, drug addicts and homeless people. But there were also businesses and places to hang out, like this dive bar at 3:15 barri at Bleecker called CBGB. Even though it was a Friday night, there was almost no one in the bar. There was the owner, the owner's dog, two people from a transvestite band from San Francisco called the Cockettes, the manager of another band called Television, an artist from the neighborhood who had moved up from Chihuahua, Mexico, and a scenester named Legs McNeil. And that was it. That was the entire population of the bar. Sometime after 9 o' clock, four guys in leather jackets, T shirts, torn jeans and Converse high tops got up on the tiny stage. They counted off this one song, Leggs McNeil remembers, and it was just this wall of noise. They looked so striking. These guys were not hippies. This was something completely new. Fifteen minutes after their set started, it was over. They had blown through all their songs, and they had also found time to fight about which song was next and to struggle with broken guitar Strings. Whole thing scared the crap out of the owner's dog. When it was over, the owner said to the band, listen, nobody's going to like you, but you know what? I'll have you back. And he did. The band came back the following night, and then again and again and again. And by the end of 1974, the group had played CBGB a total of 74 times. But back to August 16th, that was the night music began to change forever. You'd never have guessed it, but when the bass player counted in that first song, it was the equivalent of Let There Be Light. This is the ongoing history of new Music podcast with Alan Cross. All right, if we're going to do this properly, let's count things in. Dee Dee, if you please. The Ramones with Rockaway beach from their third album, Rock to Russia, released on November 4, 1977, and featuring the original classic lineup of the band. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross. They're all gone now. Joey of lymphoma in 2001, Dee Dee of a drug overdose in 2002. Johnny of prostate cancer in 2004, and Tommy from cancer of the bile duct in 2014. So I thought this would be an appropriate time to look at this very first version of the Ramones and salute the influence that they had on so much that happened after August 16, 1974. Take virtually any rock band of the last 25 years, 35 years, and you can draw a line back into the past, and that line will inevitably lead back to the Ramones. Everyone from Rise against to metallica, from Blink 182 to Motorhead, from Green Day to Guns N Roses. They all owe a debt to that original version of the Ramones. And so did the Clash and the Sex Pistols, two of the most important British bands of all time. Rancid, the Pixies, the Beast Boys, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, the Strokes, the Offspring, the Chili Peppers. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. But why? What was it about the Ramones, a band that scored just two gold records in 22 years, that made them so important? Why do so many musicians name check them? And why do we see their T shirts everywhere? The answer lies in those first three Ramones albums featuring the original members. We'll go through each of them individually and feature songs from those incredibly influential records. The first guy that we need to talk about is Joey. His real name was Jeff hyman. Born on 19th May, 1951. Same day as Pete Townsend, by the way. Young Jeffrey grew Up with all sorts of health problems. He was tall and gawky as the result of something called Marfan syndrome, which is an inherited disorder living on chromosome 15 that messes with connective tissue. People with Marfan's end up being tall and thin with long arms, legs and fingers. It can also lead to serious heart problems if undiagnosed and untreated. The average lifespan of someone with Marfan's is 32. Another symptom of the disorder can be ADHD or OCD. In fact, Joey was diagnosed with OCD when he was 18 and it plagued him for the rest of his life. For example, he sometimes had to step on and off a curb a prescribed number of times before he could move on. Leaving his apartment could be a struggle because of the ritual he had to follow every single time in school in the Forest Hills area of Queens. Joey, or I guess Jeff back then, was an outcast, a loner, a weirdo. The jocks always handed out for him. And he dabbled with drugs enough to have him land in a psych ward at least once. His big escape was music. He loved the Beatles. He loved the Rolling Stones and the Stooges and the who, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and all the groups coming out of Motown. He loved listening to the big AM radio stations that boomed through New York in the 1960s and early 70s. Using trading stamps she collected at the local supermarket, his mum Charlotte got Joey a snare drum. His grandmother then bought him a full set of drums for his 13th birthday. And later mum let Joey and his buddies rock out in the basement of the art gallery she ran on Queens Boulevard. When Joey turned 21, he got big into glam. David Bowie was his hero and he'd dress up in satin jumpsuits with rhinestones and knee high platform boots that pushed him up to 6ft 8 inches. He also became a big fan of Alice Cooper. His first real band was called Sniper. Joey was their singer, going by the name Jeff Starship, and he specialized in writing songs about weirdness and perversion. One of the places that they used to play was a club called Coventry, a venue that also saw early gigs by a band called Kiss, and this lasted from 1972 to 1974. Now, sadly, their there doesn't seem to be any recordings of the Joey version of Sniper. However, he did take a song that he wrote for Sniper with him when the Ramones were formed. Here it is. This is called I Don't Care. The Ramones were the song carried over from the time Joey was the singer in a Band called Sniper. The second member of the classic Ramones was Johnny. His real name was John Cummings and he came from a solid blue collar family and went to two different military schools. So discipline was a really big deal with him. He didn't miss a single day of four years of high school. But when he got out into the real world, he turned into a super delinquent. Drinking and doing drugs for a couple of years. He went back to being super straight edge by the age of 20 and this guy ended up with the demeanor of a drill sergeant. He loved the New York Yankees. He was a lifelong baseball freak. His parents hoped that he'd turn out to be a pro baseball player. And there are stories about how when there was a big game on, Johnny would have a TV set up just off stage so he could play the gig and watch the game at the same time. He also loved music. Of course there was Elvis and Buddy Holly and Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. Although there's another story that says that when the Beatles played Shea Stadium on August 23, 1966, Johnny went to the show with a big bag of rocks, which he then proceeded to throw at the band. In 1974, Johnny got a job as a construction worker on a site of a 50 story building at 50th and Broadway. That was also where his friend from across the street back in Forest Hills, a guy named Douglas Colvin, also worked. Douglas was an army brat from a very unhappy military family where domestic violence was the order of the day. After growing up on various American military bases in Germany, he ended up in New York where he got deep into drugs and eventually turned the odd TR raise money. There's one story that he was diagnosed as being bipolar, but he didn't seek any treatment for it. He was, in short, a very scary dude, prone to huge mood swings. Douglas worked as a hairdresser for a while before becoming a mail clerk in that office building. When he was 12, he picked up a guitar and turned into a fan of the Stones and Jimi Hendrix. In high school, Douglass was in a bunch of bands, all of which went nowhere. On January 23, 1974, Johnny and Douglas decided to smoke a joint after work. That's when it suddenly became a very good idea to head over to Manny's guitar center on 48th Street. Johnny spent 50 bucks on a blue moss right guitar. Douglas dropped his 50 bucks on a Dan Electro bass. The final piece of the puzzle is Tommy Erdeli. He was born in Hungary and escaped communism when his parents fled to New York and eventually The Forest Hills area when he was just four. Not only did he play guitar, but he also found a very sweet gig working as a recording engineer in a studio called the Record Plant. And one of the very first people he got to work for was Jimi Hendrix. This explains why Tommy ended up producing those first Ramones albums. Alright, so we have Jeffrey Hyman, John Cummings, Douglas Colvin, and Tommy Erdelier. Jeffrey met Douglas at one of the shows by Jeffrey's old band Sniper. Douglas introduced Jeffrey to Johnny, and Johnny introduced him to his friend Tommy, who was, as it turns out, already knew Joey from the neighborhood. It was Tommy that told the other three guys that they should form a band, all advise and manage. And so they did. The first rehearsal was at Johnny's apartment and included a bass player named Richie Stern. He barely lasted through that first practice before he quit on January 24, 1974, five days after Douglas and Johnny smoked that joint and bought the guitars, they had a more formal rehearsal at a place called the Performance Studio. Plans were made to stage their first gig on March 30th. They put out flyers and a bunch of friends showed up paying $2 each. About 30 people were there. It was Jeffrey on drums, Johnny on guitar, and Douglas on lead vocals and bass. And I gotta tell you something, they were terrible. They were not ready, not even close. They had next to no idea how to play their instruments. Now they tried playing covers, but they didn't really know where to begin. Basically, the band could only play their own songs because that's all they knew how to do. In Douglas's case, the only talent he had was the ability to thump on one string at a time, very, very fast. Another part of the problem was that Jeffrey was such a loud drummer, his playing cut through everything. Douglas managed to shut himself hoarse after two songs, so Jeffrey moved a mic over to his drum kit. Turned out that he was a better singer than a drummer. He was loud, but he couldn't play fast enough for the other guys. Even after all the rehearsals that spring and early summer, Jeffrey was terrible. Just sing was the decision. And they auditioned a bunch of new drummers. But nothing clicked. Until one night in July 1974 when Tommy sat down behind the kit. That's good. Why don't you be the drummer instead of the manager? And so it came to pass. What about a name for this band? Douglas was a huge Paul McCartney fan, and he knew that McCartney used to sign his name on a hotel register as Paul Ramone, after Phil Ramone, the legendary record producer. Douglas liked the sound of that. So he started calling himself Dee Dee Ramone. In fact, he'd been referring to himself as Dee Dee Ramone for a couple of years already. The plural of Ramon Ramones sounded like it could be the name of a gang. And since none of the other 50 or so names that were being bandied about, including Spice, by the way, really clicked with anyone, they went with Ramones. And to cement that gang mentality, it was decided that everyone would wear leather jackets, jeans, and T shirts. An image of solidarity, you know. And everyone agreed to adopt the last name Ramone. It was like they were brothers. The last change came when Jeffrey decided that he'd rather go buy Joey. Joey Ramone just sounded so much cooler than Jeff Ramone. Now they were ready to write some songs. The first song they wrote together was I Don't want to get involved with you. The second was I Don't want to Walk around with you. That was followed by I don't want to be Learned, I don't want to be tamed. And then there was I Don't Want to go down in the Basement. Notice a trend here. I Don't Want to Go down in the Basement, the fourth song the Ramones ever wrote together, and a track from their debut album. But hang on, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves. Back in a sec. With the official and formal launch of the band that ended up changing so much. Once Tommy joined the band in July 1974, things got more serious. They needed more songs, so they started to write about what they knew. Which was, well, what exactly? Well, they were all a bunch of ne' er do wells, bunch of hoodlums, but they weren't that good at it. One of them, I think it was Dee Dee, once tried to rob a neighborhood drugstore, but broke into the laundromat next door by mistake. They were better at things like hanging out, drinking, getting in fistfights, and doing drugs. After writing four consecutive songs, starting with the negative phrase I don't Wanna, the Ramones put together their first ever positive song. If you can call it positive now I want to sniff some glue. Running 94 seconds. The Ramones never believed in belaboring the point. Another example. Joey lived with his mom in an apartment building called Birchwood Towers. Although it was basically a middle class neighborhood, there were enough rich, spoiled wives, and they were entitled, snotty kids. So one day in the playground, one of these women was letting her crazy, undisciplined child run around, disrupting everything and everyone, including Joey. And he remembers thinking, you Know, if I had a baseball bat, I'd take care of that kid. I wonder if that kid knows he inspired a punk anthem. Probably not. The Ramones and Beat on the Brat, a song that eventually made their debut record in 1976. Now, you may have noticed something about all the songs we've heard so far. They're loud, they're fast and they're fuzzy. But if you really pay attention, they're nothing more than really amped up, 60s style pop songs. This was their template, the simple pop of the 1960s. Sing along melodies with no politics, no guitar solos, and nothing over three minutes long. Oh, and did I mention it had to be loud? Here's Tina Waymouth, bass player of the Talking Heads, talking about those early days.
- [17:19]
Tina Weymouth
There were always arguments backstage in the early days for the Ramones. When people would complain that the Ramones didn't play long enough. They would say, well, they only played 45 minutes in the contract. Said they were supposed to play for an hour. And, you know, the reasoning was, well, they play an hour's worth of material in 45 minutes because they don't do any stage pattern between.
- [17:44]
Alan Cross
And the audience grew to love them. You go to sporting events, they have T shirts there and caps and stuff.
- [17:50]
Ramones Fan
Yeah, but it's a little. I mean, it's like, like our fans, like. Like they're not like. Like any other band's fans. I mean, they're like. They're like devoted to the Ramones, you know what I mean? So, like, wearing a Ramone shirt isn't just like wearing a Def Leppard shirt or something, you know what I mean?
- [18:09]
Alan Cross
They're proud to wear.
- [18:10]
Ramones Fan
They're proud. Yeah, they're proud. You know what I mean?
- [18:11]
Alan Cross
The Ramones considered bands like these to be their competition. These are the Bay city rollers, the mid-70s equivalent of a modern boy band, like One Direction.
- [18:24]
Ramones Fan
S A D U R D a Y N S A D Y D A Y N S A T U R D a Y N.
- [18:36]
Alan Cross
Hey, you got that The S A T U R D A Y night chant. Where do you think the Ramones got the idea for this? I O let's go O O let's.
- [18:50]
Ramones Fan
Go the fallen interstate time you're going through a tight.
- [19:00]
Alan Cross
The Ramones and their unself conscious rip off of the Bay City Rollers. Saturday night. By August 1974, the Ramones were ready to try playing live again. But where? Well, Joey came up with this new place in the Bowery called cbgb. It was surrounded by flop houses and Soup kitchens and drug dens and all sorts of misery. It used to be a country, blues and bluegrass bar, but since the spring of 74, the owner was allowing young rock bands the occasion occasional slot. That owner, an ex Marine named Hilly Crystal, had an opening on Friday, August 16th. And that's the gig we talked about. At the beginning of the show, the Ramones got up on the tiny stage and blew through their entire repertoire in just over 15 minutes. Nine songs or so, all two minutes or less. They weren't great, but they were sure different. Were they serious or was this some kind of joke? Whatever the truth, it was kind of cool. And even though things started slow, the Ramones kept being invited back again and again and again. And word started to spread about these leather jacketed weirdos. Crowds started to get bigger and people started to get it. There's a song where the Ramones 60s pop influences really shined through. It's I Want To Be youe Boyfriend, a track that would end up on their debut record. We'll continue tracking what happened with the original lineup of the Ramones in just a sec. As the CBGB scene began to grow, people from the rich side of town began to slum it. There's a story about how Linda Ronstadt showed up one night in a limo to see this band and she lasted for less than five minutes. Critical reception was mixed. Some of the more progressive music writers were very receptive and became big fans. Lisa Robinson, for example, worked for the New York Post and she was a huge fan. She turned another music writer named Danny Fields onto the Ramones and he fell in love with the band and became their manager. And so at the end of 1974, he found $1,000 to pay for the Ramones to record a demo. They burned through 15 songs and here's one. The Ramones, with one of those 15 demos they recorded at the end of 1974, CBGB was the Ramones home. They played elsewhere. But in 1975 they played CBs 33 times. Sometimes they'd play alone, other times they'd be on a bill with the Talking Heads or Blondie or a band called Tough Darts, which, if you want to get technical about it, was sort of a direct descendant of Sniper Joey's old band. Meanwhile, even the New York Times was starting to take note of what was going on. This has got to be one of my favorite dry music critic remarks of all time. Guys writing about the band. The Ramones are a highly stylized extension of the punk idiom. They deliver a non stop set of brisk, monochromatically intense songs where conventional considerations of pace and variety are thrown calculatedly to the wind. Wow. I want to go see that band. More demos were recorded on September 19, 1975, and those made their way to Seymour Stein, the head of Sire Records. He'd heard about the band and was interested, but now he wanted to act. Stein went to see the band at a three night stand at Mother's, which was this gay bar on 23rd Street. That October, negotiations for a record deal resulted in the band signing to Sire for $6,000. The Ramones started recording their first album on February 2, 1976, in Plaza City Sound, a huge studio on the eighth floor of Radio City Music Hall. By February 19, they were done. Total cost $6,400. $400 more than their advance. When the master was set to the record plant, it turned out to be so loud that it blew the cutter head right off the machine. That first Ramones album was released on April 23, 1976. The COVID photo of the band standing against a brick wall was now considered to be an all time rock and roll classic. The photographer was Roberta Bailey, a friend of the band and someone who often worked the door at cbgb. She led the band around the corner from the bar to a vacant lot on First Street. She fired off three rolls of film and sold the whole thing to Syer for $125. 53rd and 3rd. Written by Dee Dee Ramone about the days he spent turning tricks for drugs in that part of New York. And it's also one of the tracks from the Ramones self titled debut record. Again, reviews were mixed. Almost no radio station would play the record. They thought the Ramones were crap, but things were very different in the uk. Punk was stirring, but it really hadn't coalesced into anything firm. The Sex Pistols existed, but hadn't recorded yet. The Clash were together, but they'd barely played a note together. One thing that kept them and a bunch of other nascent punks together was what they heard was happening in New York. And the band that they were most anxious to see was the Ramones. On July 4, 1976, while America was celebrating the big Bicentennial, the Ramones were second on a bill at the Roundhouse in North London. That event did more to kickstart British punk than anything else that had happened up until that point.
- [24:48]
Marky 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. 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. Fieldga was the big band at the time in Brimsley Schwartz and you know, doing. I remember we were like, treated like royalty when we got there. And then we did this club Ding Wall. 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.
- [25:40]
Alan Cross
Things moved very fast after that first album. A second album, Ramones Leave Home, was released on January 10, 1977. Tommy Ramone was once again the co producer. The main producer was Tony Bon Jovi, the cousin of a guy you might have heard of, Jon Bon Jovi. Yes, him. It was a little more poppy than the first one, but this isn't exactly mainstream pop, if you know what I mean. Gimme, gimme Shock treatment from the Ramones Leave Home. And now that you know that Joey had bad OCD, that song resonates a little more, doesn't it? 11 months after that record came out, the Ramones issued a third album, Rocket to Russia. It came out on November 4, 1977. That was three albums in 18 months. Okay, so they weren't long albums. Total time for all three put together was barely 90 minutes. But there were still a lot of songs. It's just that they were, well, you know, short. Rocket to Russia was out just as punk rock peaked. And for the time. This is a seriously important record. And they were seriously motivated by the Sex Pistols. God Save the Queen. Johnny was absolutely furious that the Pistols had ripped off the Ramones sound. The album contained songs that would forever be part of the Ramones set. Rockaway Beach, Sheena is a punk rocker. Cretin Hop, We're a Happy Family. And this track, which let off side two of the original vinyl. What would a Ramones album be without a couple of songs about mental illness? That's Teenage Lobotomy. From Rocket to Russia, a fine record, but it would be the last with drummer Tommy Ramone. Like the first two albums, he co produced this one. But he was really annoyed at the band's lack of commercial success. They just weren't selling any albums. They were getting almost zero radio airplay. The only thing that kept the band alive was constant touring and merch sales. And even then they were making just 750 to 1,000 bucks a show. Each member of the band was living on $125 a week, and in Dee Dee's case, 100 of that was going towards heroin. Tommy got very depressed at the situation and at some of the idiot fans that were starting to dominate gigs. There were issues with Johnny and his hardcore, disciplined style, something that Tommy didn't really appreciate. And then there was the teapot incident. It was backstage at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. Joey had a cold and rigged up a makeshift humidifier by heating up the teapot on a hot plate in the dressing room. Somehow it ended up blowing up in Joey's face, sending scalding water all over him. Second and third degree burns. He was rushed to the hospital, where he received treatment and then rushed back to the venue to play the show. He must have been in tremendous pain. A little later, Joey started writing a song that would end up on the band's fourth album, a song about having to be on the road 365 days a year. The original lineup of the Ramones came to an end on New Year's Eve 1977. Tommy played one final show and gave up his position as the drummer so he could concentrate on being in the recording studio. His replacement was Mark Steven Bell Marky Ramone, who would stay in that position until the official end of the band on August 6, 1996, after a gig at the palace in Hollywood. 22 years and 2,236 gigs since that first performance as a trio in March of 1974. Like I said, of those four original members, none remain. The last time they were all together was on July 20, 1999, when they appeared for an autograph session at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. Joey went first. In 1995, he was diagnosed with cancer, lymphoma, after he couldn't shake what he thought was a bad bout of the flu. Just after Christmas 2000, he slipped on some ice outside his apartment and broke his hip. Surgery was needed, and that meant he had to come off his chemo. During that recovery time, the cancer roared back and he died on April 15, 2001, a month short of his 50th birthday. The corner of East Second street in Bowery is now officially known as Joey Ramon Place. That's right near where CBGB's used to be and close to his last apartment. Joey is buried in Hillside Cemetery in New Jersey, which overlooks Manhattan. Dee Dee went next. He was with the band until 1989. After that, he went solo, played with a bunch of other bands and wrote a book. On June 5, 2002, he was found dead of a heroin overdose by his wife at his apartment in Hollywood. Dee Dee is buried in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. He was 50. Then came Johnny. He died on October 8, 2004 after suffering from prostate cancer for five years. He was 55. He was cremated, but there's an eight foot bronze statue of him at Hollywood Forever, not too far from where you'll find Dee Dee. And last it was Tommy. He co produced the fourth album, Road to Ruin and the eighth album Too Tough to Die. He also produced albums for the Replacements and Red Cross before forming a bluegrass folk band called Uncle Monk. But then Tommy was diagnosed with bile duct cancer. It spread throughout his body despite treatment, and he died in hospice care on July 11, 2014 at the age of 65. The Ramones remain one of the most influential rock bands of all time. They inspired thousands of kids to pick up guitars. Some people call them the Johnny Appleseeds of rock because wherever they stopped to play, new bands sprung up in their wake. But here's a really weird fact. Only two Ramones albums have ever sold more than 500,000 copies. One was a greatest hits record and in early 2014, their self titled debut finally tipped over that number. Thank God for all those T shirt sales, huh? If you ever need to reach me for anything to do with this program or anything else, just send an email to alanalancross ca. I promise that I will read your message myself and get back to you as soon as I can. I'm always looking for feedback and topic suggestions and tips about anything you think is cool from the universe of music. I also maintain a website@ajournalofmusicalthings.com it's updated every day with music news, music recommendations and of course, music history. There's even a free daily newsletter that goes with that and I really think you should subscribe. Really, you really ought to. Technical productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross.
- [32:42]
Connie Britton
A celebration of strength. We have to be so brave as singles of sisterhood. You look so good of success.
- [32:50]
Tina Weymouth
I want my boys to see how resilient mommies can be.
- [32:53]
Connie Britton
This is more than a makeover. It's a movement.
- [32:56]
Alan Cross
We're gonna start this community together.
- [32:58]
Connie Britton
Hosted and executive produced by Connie Britton.
- [33:01]
Alan Cross
I just feel more confident.
- [33:02]
Connie Britton
Yes, the motherhood all new Sunday at 9 only on W stream on Stack TV.