The Beginning
The Ramones formed in 1974 in Queens, New York. The four members – singer Joey (Jeffrey Hyman), guitarist Johnny (John Cummings), bassist Dee Dee (Douglas Colvin), and drummer Tommy (Thomas Erdelyi) were not related, but all took the surname “Ramone,” inspired by Paul McCartney using the alias “Paul Ramon” when checking into hotels. They became part of the New York scene playing sets that didn’t even last twenty minutes at the clubs Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. They gained a cult following at the latter, “which is widely considered the club where punk and new wave were born.” CS The Ramones were signed to a record contract by Sire Records in 1975.
Punk Rock’s Rosetta Stone
“Prog rock, prepare to die.” BL “Very few albums are credited with starting a musical revolution, but this is definitely one of them.” CQ “Music historians long ago decided that Ramones is punk rock’s Rosetta Stone.” TL “The Ramones were the first true punk band, and their 1976 self-titled was the first true punk album.” CQ By way of “ripped denim, dumb lyrics and fuzz-toned guitars,” BL this “29-minute explosion of bratty speedy unschooled punk knocked the wind out of art-rock.” UT As Joey Ramone said, “Rock & roll had got bloated and lost its spirit.” BL
“In comparison to some of the music the album inspired, The Ramones sounds a little tame – it’s a little too clean, and compared to their insanely fast live albums, it even sounds a little slow – but there’s no denying that it still sounds brilliantly fresh and intoxicatingly fun.” AM Tommy Ramone said, “Rock ‘n’ roll, man, just rock ‘n’ roll. THe way it should be – entertaining, a lot of fun, sexy, dynamic, exciting.” CS
“Only The Beatles can claim to have influenced more bands than Joey Ramone, whose group somehow defined punk music and gave rise to an entire music movement.” RV Within a year of the album’s release, “thousands picked up guitars, and punk rock grabbed headlines.” BL “Prior to the Ramones every rock group started out learning blues and Chuck Berry. After the Ramones every group started out learning Ramones songs.” CM
Short and to the Point
Ramones “begins at a blinding speed and never once…does it let up.” AM The album “packs 14 songs into 29 minutes of pure punk bliss.” CQ “None of the songs clock in at any longer than two and half minutes, and most are considerably shorter.” AM Maybe the Ramones knew that “if you don’t like one of their songs, who cares, because it won’t last more than a few minutes anyway.” NR-87
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“The Ramones is all about speed, hooks, stupidity, and simplicity.” AM “It’s easy to consider Ramones a dumb album, considering the quirky lyrics, a nuance-free lead singer, simple three chord progressions and band members who haven’t quite learned to play their instruments. But the album is a carefully disguised act of rock criticism, knocking down rock ‘n’ roll’s idols.” RV
New Sound?
It wasn’t so much that the Ramones’ brand of punk was a revolutionary, new sound. “Earlier groups contributed to what would become the punk aesthetic – the Kinks’ fuzzed-out power chords, Iggy Pop’s primitive stage antics, the Velvet Underground’s minimalism, MC5’s raw politicking, the New York Dolls’ amateurism – but the Ramones were the tipping point.” CS
Heck, even the term “punk” wasn’t new. It “had been used in the 1960s, usually applied to what were more commonly called garage bands, such as The Standells, ? and the Mysterians, and the Sonics.” TB The Ramones shared “a certain brazen attitude” TB with these bands as well as “a slavish devotion to the notion that a great song never lasted more than three minutes and never employed more than three chords.” TB
These “four misfits from the ‘burbs of New York were not trying to tear rock & roll down. They loved it. It’s just that the things they loved, such as glam rock, the Stooges, Phil Spector and the early British invasion were no longer being heard. The Ramones simply wanted to play the music they loved.” CM
“The over-amped guitars recalled Sabbath and other metalsters – and even the New York city-scum persona had its antecedents in the Dolls and whatnot.” JSH They delivered a “kind of adrenaline bubblegum bounce” JSH that were really just “imaginative reductions of early rock & roll, girl group pop, and surf rock.” AM “Classic rock fans ambivalent about ‘punk’ should recognize that the Ramones were really just the Beach Boys on speed: a ‘1-2-3-4’ intro, simple 4/4 beat, and 3 surf guitar chords played at rapid-fire pace.” PK
The Ramones “reminded their fans that music is supposed to be fun, loud and fast, like The Beatles and The Beach Boys before they strove to be ‘artists.’” RV However, the Ramones “somehow articulated it in a way that was new – and that’s a rare feat.” JSH Critic Robert Christgau said, “It’s clean the way the Dolls never were, sprightly the way the Velvets never were, and just plain listenable the way Black Sabbath never was.” CS
Subject Matter
“Instead of singing about surfing and riding in hot rods,” PK the Ramones wrote “about what they knew – which was being a drug addict and male hustler, in the case of bass player Dee Dee Ramone, or being OCD and too tall and kinda strange, in the case of Joey.” CM They created “a repertoire of songs that brought the sparkling innocence of the Ronettes to the mean streets of ‘70s Manhattan.” CM “Songs about sniffing glue sit with songs about schlock horror films, cartoonists, kids with death wishes and the eternal quest for the pure love of a girl.” CM “Then repeat-repeat-repeat until the neighbors complain. Now, that’s rock & roll!” EW’12
“They understood the structures of pop songcraft but were young and steamed up enough to use it as a canvas on which to paint scenes from their favorite horror films, real-life scenes from the grimy streets of downtown New York and valentines to potential partners rendered in garish colors. The snotty and the sweet presented in one under-30 minute speed trip.” PM
“Not only is the music boiled down to its essentials, but the Ramones offer a twisted, comical take on pop culture with their lyrics.” AM “Songs about sniffing glue and headbanging would never again prove so incredibly revolutionary.” RV They also offer “the horror schlock of I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement, the drug deals of 53rd & 3rd, the gleeful violence of ‘Beat on the Brat,’ or the maniacal stupidity of Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” AM
In addition, “the Ramones highlight the difference between American and British punk in the mid-1970’s – unlike the Pistols and other British punk bands, who had a frequently political message (if an occasionally garbled one) behind their aggressive and stripped down music, the Ramones opted for a raw, regressive sound without the political sloganeering.” PK
Recording
Recording for the album started on February 2, 1976, at Plaza Sound Studios at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Sire Records’ A&R man Craig Leon took on production duties. TB The album “came together in a blur. A week-long recording session wherein all the instrumental tracks were knocked out in a few days and the vocals were kicked down in a few more.” PM Sure, they could barely play their instruments but these songs “work because they’re so simple. Anyone could play them – even though the Ramones had a relentless energy that was hard to duplicate.” TM
The record was done by February 19, reportedly costing a mere $6400. The question is, “Where’d all the money go? These…tracks sound like they were mixed on a runway at LaGuardia, but the playing is impressively clean…and Joey’s singing proves you don’t need range to sound exuberant.” TL “While in-fighting would afflict the band throughout its history, the chemistry…on their first album is undeniable.” CQ
“The process sounds like the ultimate, do-it-yourself, amateur reckless ethic that is associated with punk. In truth, however, the Ramones approached the recording process with a high degree of preparedness and professionalism. They had already been playing together for roughly two years – including at least seventy live shows – and had fully developed their defining sound.” NR-5
The Songs
Here’s insights into individual songs on the album.
“Blitzkrieg Bop”
The album kicks off “with the sing-along anthem Blitzkrieg Bop,” CQ which Joey Ramone described as “a call to arms…for everyone to start their own bands.” NR-77 It is “perhaps the most recognizable punk anthem.” NR-76 It is instantly identifiable with its “three-chord assault,” AM and “famous ‘Hey! Ho!/ Let’s go!’” TL line, “an homage to the Bay City Rollers,” TL a decidedly pop group.
Author Nicholas Rombes goes so far as to call it “the best opening song to any rock album.” NR-76 It “sets the stage for an entire album that would be fast and loud.” NR-76
“Beat on the Brat”
Beat on the Brat “is the only song on the album that’s not sung in the first-person…This seemingly trivial fact of narrative theory helps explain part of the unease of the song, transposing its literal violence into a violence of telling…Joey has said that the idea for the song emerged when he ‘lived in Birchwood Towers in Forest Hills…a middle-class neighborhood with a lot of rich, snooty women, who had horrible spoiled brat kids. There was a playground with women sitting around and a kid screaming, a spoiled, horrible kid just running rampant with no discipline whatsoever. The kind of kid you just want to kill.” NR-79
“Judy Is a Punk”
Songs like “Blitzkrieg Bop” as well as Judy is a Punk and “53rd & 3rd” “succeed mostly because of the pop influences at their core.” TL “Judy Is a Punk” “is a perfect blend of humor and casual nihilism, undergirded by a mystifying political dimension.” NR-81 It is “a microcosm of what makes punk so difficult to categorize. With its blend of aggressive take-no-prisoners speed and more innocent 1950s ‘ooh aah’ chorus…the song stands against all that punk would reject from the weepy, indulgent, baroque AOR music of the era.” NR-82
“I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”
Unlike the political stance of the Sex Pistols, “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend has nothing in common with ‘Anarchy in the UK,’ save a DIY aesthetic that had no need for the pretentious artistry which had seized control of mid-70’s rock music.” PK The song “seems to be a straight-ahead homage to a sixties-era love song. Taken alone and out of context from the rest of the album, there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of cynicism here.” NR-83
“Chainsaw”
The sweetness of “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” “is immediately dispelled in the next track, Chainsaw.” NR-85 “Framed by Joey’s bizarrely expressionistic vocalizing…the song plugs into the narrative of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released in 1974. Like the low-budget, do-it-yourself aesthetics of the film itself, ‘Chainsaw’ is among the fastest songs on the album and the most homemade sounding.” NR-85
“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”
Despite the controversy generated by the song it “does, in fact, efrain from fully endorsing the desire expressed in its title.” NR-86 Dee Dee said of the song, “Well, that comes out of an adolescent trauma that all us kids probably went through…It’s really just a frustrating thing, there was nothing else to do.” NR-86
“I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement”
The album’s longest song “ends abruptly at 2:35, as if the power has been cut out.” NR-86 It closes out the first side of the album – a side in which “the promise of the band has been fulfilled…Side two is merely a confirmation, and while there can be a thrill in confirmation, it is never the same sort of thrill as the thrill of discovery, which was side one.” NR-87
“Loudmouth,” “Havana Affair” and “53rd & 3rd”
“Mixed with the album’s humor is a deeper menance and sense of pervasive violence running through songs like ‘Beat on the Brat’ and Loudmouth…that is reminiscent of films like Death Wish and that in fact constitutes a wholesale rejection of the feel good, peace-love-and-understanding ethos that informed the rhetoric of the counterculture.” NR-45
As the two opening songs on side two, “Loudmouth” and Havana Affair “proceed at nearly exactly the same tempo.” NR-88 These songs and 53rd & 3rd “show how “Ramones-style punk sounded like a speeded-up version of heavy rock, or heavy metal.” NR-88 “Songs like ‘53rd & 3rd’ are much closer to heavy metal than to Herman’s Hermits or early Beatles.” NR-89
“Listen to My Heart”
Although “it is among the fastest songs on the album, Listen to My Heart has much in common with ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,’ one of the slowest songs. Both are straightforward love songs, with approaches leaving only the slightest possibility for an ironic reading.” NR-89-90 The Ramones “recast the love song into a 1:56 burst of declarative statement.” NR-90
“Let’s Dance”
“The cover of Chris Montez’s Let’s Dance isn’t a throwaway – with its single-minded beat and lyrics, it encapsulates everything the group loves about pre-Beatles rock & roll. They don’t alter the structure, or the intent, of the song, they simply make it louder and faster.” AM
“I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You” and “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World”
I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You has “the closest thing to a guitar solo – really an anti-guitar solo – on the album. [It] lasts just barely one second.” NR-91 The last song, Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World, “distills ever further the sound and sensibility of the Ramones into the shortest possible time.” NR-91 “Its lyrics, like most others on the album, are really a sort of a loosely linked chain of phrases that suggest or imply a larger story that the listener can fill in.” NR-92
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