FEATURE:
Beat on the Brat
The Ramones’ Eponymous Debut at Forty-Five
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SOME hugely important albums…
PHOTO CREDIT: Roberta W. Bayley
celebrate big anniversaries this year. I have covered a few already. Not only does The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers turns fifty on 23rd April. On the same day, the Ramones’ eponymous debut turns forty-five. I think that Ramones is not only one of the most important albums in the history of Punk/Punk-Rock; it might be one of the most influential and important albums ever. Rather than me expend a lot of words, I want to bring in reviews and articles that properly contextualise the album and explore its huge significance. Here is some background information regarding Ramones:
“Ramones is the debut studio album by American punk rock band Ramones, released on April 23, 1976 by Sire Records. After Hit Parader editor Lisa Robinson saw the band at a gig in New York City, she wrote about them in an article and contacted Danny Fields, insisting that he be their manager. Fields agreed and convinced Craig Leon to produce Ramones, and the band recorded a demo for prospective record labels. Leon persuaded Sire president Seymour Stein to listen to the band perform, and he later offered the band a recording contract. The Ramones began recording in January 1976, needing only seven days and $6,400 to record the album. They used similar sound-output techniques[clarification needed] to those of the Beatles and used advanced production methods by Leon.
The album cover, photographed by Punk magazine's Roberta Bayley, features the four members leaning against a brick wall in New York City. The record company paid only $125 for the front photo, which has since become one of the most imitated album covers of all time. The back cover depicts an eagle belt buckle along with the album's liner notes. After its release, Ramones was promoted with two singles, which failed to chart. The Ramones also began touring to help sell records; these tour dates were mostly based in the United States, though two were booked in Britain”.
Whilst some would debate the fact, Ramones is the first Punk-Rock record. It was a game-changer that introduced the New York band to a hungry and excited audience. I want to source from an article Louder Wire published last year to mark forty-five years of the Ramones’ debut album:
On April 23, 1976, the Ramones forever sped up rock music with their self-titled debut album. To many, it’s considered to be the first true punk rock album, still inspiring buzzsaw-guitared acts to this day.
After forming in 1974 and emerging as the leading act for now-iconic New York City venue CBGB, the Ramones took to the eighth floor of Radio City Music Hall to record Ramones at Plaza Sound studio. Thanks to the Ramones’ no-frills spirit, immense work ethic and Johnny Ramone's refusal to do more than a few takes for each track, Ramones was recorded in just seven days for a minute sum of $6,400.
Clocking in at just over 29 minutes in length, the Ramones committed 13 original tracks and one cover (Chris Montez’s “Let’s Dance”) to their debut. Though proto-punk acts like the Stooges and Television were of tremendous inspiration to the Ramones, a much less obvious influence, the Beatles, actually shaped much of Ramones’ final product. Extremely raw production in placing Dee Dee Ramone’s bass strictly in the left channel, Johnny Ramone’s guitar in the right channel and dropping Tommy’s drums and Joey’s vocals in the center was an homage to the Beatles’ earliest work. The original Ramones album cover was also inspired by the Beatles, but it was scrapped for the now-iconic band shot taken by Roberta Bayley, which shows Johnny Ramone slyly slipping us the middle finger.
An amalgam of tongue-in-cheek topics filled Ramones’ track listing. “We all kind of shared a dark sense of humor,” Joey Ramone divulged in the acclaimed documentary End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. Cartoonish Nazi rhetoric was placed into classics like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World,” the latter of which contains lyrics like, “I’m a shock trooper in a stupor / Yes I am / I’m a Nazi schatze / Y’know I fight for fatherland.” These weren’t the original lyrics, however. Sire Records president Seymour Stein pleaded with the Ramones to drop the verse, "I'm a Nazi, baby, I'm a Nazi / Yes I am.” After threatening to remove Ramones’ closing track completely, the band ultimately agreed to the lyrics we all hear today, though you can listen to Joey barreling through the song’s unrecorded verse on the Ramones’ legendary 1979 live album, It’s Alive.
Ramones was vastly ahead of its time, selling poorly upon its release. Sire still stuck to their guns and supported the Ramones, watching as the punk icons gained a big following overseas, especially England, leading to the formation of bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash.
It took Ramones 38 years to attain gold status by the RIAA, finally selling half a million copies in the United States as of April 30, 2014. To this day, Ramones remains the only studio album in the bands catalogue to go gold. Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone had all passed away long before they were awarded their gold plaques, though they did enjoy a victory in 1994 when the Ramones' Mania compilation went gold in 1994. Tommy Ramone lived long enough to see Ramones sell half a million copies domestically, but sadly died just three months later.
Four decades later, Ramones remains untouched by the rust of time. And though the Ramones would go on to release many more classics during the band's 22-year career, Ramones remains a brilliant recording from front to back”.
There is no doubt that Ramones is a flawless album. I have not seen a review for its any less than glowing and hugely enthusiastic. Although the band pack in fourteen tracks, each are so short that they blitz by. Ramones never sounds packed or too long. It is one of those albums that has not dated. One can spin it today and bond with each song. I want to bring in a review from the BBC. This is what they wrote in their review:
“Dumb, crude, three-chord thrash? Yes. Fast, exhilarating and brand new? Yes. Intelligent, boundary smashing and woefully underrated? Definitely. The Ramones were all of these things and more. Like a film’s opening credits their first album contains everything that their later career was to offer, and in 1976 nothing else sounded quite like it.
Formed in 1974 by a bunch of middle class kids with a mutual love of the Stooges , New York Dolls and 60s garage bands, they followed bass player Dee Dee’s lead and all adopted the surname Ramone, subsuming their identities beneath the concept and started pairing down their sound into the two minute rushes that we know and love them for today. Shows were understandably brief when they started growing a fanbase at New York’s CBGB’s.
Initially reviled by the American press for their seemingly crude approach to rock ‘n’ roll the barest glance at their lyrics reveals a dark sense of humour and a perfect understanding of rock’s dynamics. Nazi affiliations (“Today Your Love Tomorrow The World”, child abuse (“Beat On The Brat”), drug abuse (“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”), the Cuban Missile Crisis? (“Havana Affair”); all were fair game in da brudders alternative universe of nihilism and short sharp fun. But anybody who was looking closely would have also spotted a softer side. Their love of Phil Spector’s perfect pop, referenced in “I Wanna be Your Boyfriend” (interestingly the only song on the album with another instrument apart from guitar and drums – the glockenspiel) was to later put them in the hands (and allegedly at the end of a gun barrel) of the midget genius on their End Of The Century album.
Luckily some people did get the joke. In the UK they were first played not by cool figurehead, John Peel, but by that bastion of prog and metal – Alan Freeman! Like the Velvets’ first album, not many people did actually buy the album, but nearly all who did formed a band. For a couple of years they took their formula further and faster and the world resounded to the cry of "onetwothrefour!”.
I hope that a lot of people return to Ramones to mark its forty-fifth anniversary. In terms of its legacy, there are few albums as seismic:
“Ramones is considered to have established the musical genre of punk rock, as well as popularizing it years afterward. Rombes wrote that it offered "alienated future rock", and that it "disconnected from tradition." The album was the start of the Ramones' influence on popular music, with examples being genres such as heavy metal, thrash metal, indie pop, grunge, post-punk, and most notably, punk rock. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said of their influence on rock in general:
When the [Ramones] hit the street in 1976 with their self-titled first album, the rock scene, in general, had become somewhat bloated and narcissistic. The Ramones got back to basics: simple, speedy, stripped-down rock and roll songs. Voice, guitar, bass, drums. No makeup, no egos, no light shows, no nonsense. And though the subject matter was sometimes dark, emanating from a sullen adolescent basement of the mind, the group also brought cartoonish fun and high-energy excitement back to rock and roll.
Despite the lack of popularity in its era, the importance of the album for the development of punk rock music was incredible, influencing many of the most well-known names in punk rock, including The Damned, the Clash, Black Flag, Misfits, and Green Day. Billie Joe Armstrong, singer for Green Day, explained his reasoning for listening to the band: "they had songs that just stuck in your head, just like a hammer they banged right into your brain." The album also had a great impact on the English punk scene as well, with the bassist for Generation X, Tony James, saying that the album caused English bands to change their style. "When their album came out," commented James, "all the English groups tripled speed overnight. Two-minute-long songs, very fast." In another interview, James stated that "Everybody went up three gears the day they got that first Ramones album. Punk rock—that rama-lama super fast stuff—is totally down to the Ramones. Bands were just playing in an MC5 groove until then.” In 1999, Classic Albums by Collins GEM recognized Ramones as the start of English punk rock and called it the fastest and hardest music that could possibly be concocted, stating: "The songs within were a short, sharp exercise in vicious speed-thrash, driven by ferocious guitars and yet halting in an instant. It was the simple pop dream taken to its minimalist extreme." In 2012 the album was preserved by the National Recording Registry, deeming it "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".
I want to conclude by bringing in a review from AllMusic. Through the years, critics around the world have had their say about Ramones:
“With the three-chord assault of "Blitzkrieg Bop," The Ramones begins at a blinding speed and never once over the course of its 14 songs does it let up. The Ramones is all about speed, hooks, stupidity, and simplicity. The songs are imaginative reductions of early rock & roll, girl group pop, and surf rock. Not only is the music boiled down to its essentials, but the Ramones offer a twisted, comical take on pop culture with their lyrics, whether it's the horror schlock of "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement," the gleeful violence of "Beat on the Brat," or the maniacal stupidity of "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue." And 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. And that's the key to all of the Ramones' music -- it's simple rock & roll, played simply, loud, and very, very fast. None of the songs clock in at any longer than two and half minutes, and most are considerably shorter. 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”.
Ahead of its forty-fifth anniversary on 23rd April, I wanted to celebrate and spotlight a classic album. Ramones is an album that opened doors and minds back in 1976. It inspired a generation; its shockwaves and influence is still being felt and heard to this day. This is a passionate salute to…
AN iconic album.