On The Ramones Dissolution - An Uncharacteristic Fan-ish Adulatory Writeup Without Apology (nb - written upon the break-up of the Ramones and prior to any of their deaths)
It’s time to say goodbye to a band possibly as important to the course of popular music as the Beatles were. Sure, the Ramones should have called it quits over 10 years ago but at least they finally had the courage to do so and, despite their seemingly never-ending farewell tour, can no longer be called punk/New Wave’s Rolling Stones. So it’s time for a few words on the boys who, with the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols, the Modern Lovers, Blondie, and the Talking Heads (and, yes, the list probably fairly stops there) really served as the provocateurs of “New Wave”. It can be said they forever changed the way popular music would be appreciated and that they refined the rock that the Beatles and, to a lesser extent, the Kinks had defined.
So what’s the deal here? Why are four leather-jacketed minimally skilled guys from New York so important that their influence is incalculable despite a distinct lack of commercial success?
Because, if nothing else, they stood up and said “FUCK YOU AND FUCK EVERYTHING” at a time when no one else except the New York Dolls seemed capable. Furthermore, they said it in a way that could be understood and could be built on.
In tunes like “I Don’t Care”, “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”, “Beat on the Brat”, “Pinhead”, and a dozen others, the Ramones talked not just about a miserable presence unredeemed by promise but of a future borne of individual fortitude, of the importance of taking up arms against outrageous misfortune. Listen to not just the catharsis of “I Don’t Care” but the creed of not giving up and of individualism exemplified by “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” (“The kids are all hopped up and ready to go/they’re ready to go now......they’re goin’ to the discotheque-a-go-go/but she just couldn’t stay/she had to break away/New York City really has it all.....”) and a dozen other tunes where “losers” such as pinheads, geeks, and, of course, punks, get their say against crass conformity and intolerance, even though it’s clear that they will always be met with scorn and violence. No delusions. No “give peace a chance” idiotic rhetoric claiming that we can oppose society with “good thoughts” and get greeted with anything substantive.
This sort of talk kicked off a revolution. It kicked off a post-mod ethos of self-directed living in the face of adversity. It also established that while there weren’t many of us who rejected prevailing notions of “consensus” and “progressivism” that at least “we” existed; “we” were a group that would endure well beyond the platitudinous, dirty, well-intentioned but planet-destructive hippies. No more peace and love rhetoric. Everyone wants peace and love - duh. But it’s neither a reality nor does it just happen. Instead we learned to deal with reality, we learned to climb or fall but to do so deliberately, to do so with RESPONSIBILITY. Meanwhile, in the ‘90s the GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING HIPPIE GENERATION is the generation of VICTIMIZATION now in charge of societies- “oh I bought something based on a TV infomercial, I’m going to sue because it’s not my fault that I’m STUPID” - “oh McDonald’s coffee is too hot, I’m suing because I’m a klutz and spilt it on myself”. Bill Clinton embraces lawyers - how fitting. The personification of not accepting responsibility (“I didn’t inhale”).
Back in the days of high school when I truly hated 90% of my peers and felt alone, “I Don’t Care” was a virtual mantra; it’s lyrics, set to a fierce martial beat and horrible wall of guitar chord, in entirety were
I Don’t Care (he don’t care)
I Don’t Care (he don’t care)
I Don’t Care about this world
I Don’t Care about that girl
I Don’t CARE (he don’t care)
repeated something like a million times.
This was intuitively based on notions of minimalism, Eastern trance and chant methods, etc., but it was all distilled into a modern musical language that ANYBODY who took ANY time could understand, not as distant as the repetitive Glass, but so serious and so dense it ranks with Wagner’s program music in its conceptual basis. Absolutely nobody understood (and consciously of course I’m sure the Ramones didn’t) prior to the Ramones the impact of creating a sound so dense with a message so direct; few still do. You can hear echoes of this attempt with Filter and Ministry, but they lost the tuneful way that this was somehow delivered. This set the Ramones apart from everyone, from the Dolls, from the Clash, from the Pistols, from the Damned, from the Buzzcocks, and from successors such as Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Fall. Their sound, particularly in this instance, combined Phil Spectre’s conceptual wall of sound with something subversive and with something straight from the soul. It was TRUTH. It THROBBED. It actually MOVED.
Perhaps more importantly it established a new tonality to the guitar and, on a purely musical level, represented the next great innovative step after Hendrix' work, which, in a sense, it diametrically opposed. The sound of the Ramones served as an inspiration to not only punk rock but also to bands such as Sonic Youth and thus indirectly to progressive bands such as My Bloody Valentine and subsequent movements such as shoegazer where we see the maturation and blending of Berry, Hendrix, and Johnny Ramone.
Can we credit the Ramones with punk, with the establishment of a culture that could survive Reagan and Thatcher without embracing Nader and Harrington? Yes and no. Certainly they were the key influence sonically and attitudinally on the punk counterculture of the late ‘70s that seems to still be inspirational. However, they were foremost musicians who celebrated life while acknowledging reality. They were surfers rather than bikers. They were at heart suburban rather than urban boys in terms of aspirations. But they, in the early days, synthesized what we saw, the corrupt, politically correct yet jock-driven mentality dominating the middle class and thus the rules of societal engagement, and exploded into pieces while promoting a sense of fun and clean living.
Thank you Johnny, Joey, DeeDee, and not least of all Tommy.
(and, hey, Johnny, quit whining that you invented punk rock and only you and Lemmy are keeping the torch alive - grow up and get a job)