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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Friends, musicians and journalists remember an avatar, a star -- and a lonely guy who never felt appreciated enough.
Apr 16, 2001 |
Sasha Frere-Jones:
In 1977, I was 10. I read a review by Steve Simels of the first Ramones album in Stereo Review. I bought it at A&S on Fulton Street and brought it to my friend Bryan Lawrence's house. He only had the soundtrack from "Grease."
I played the first song and Bryan's dad, a stockbroker, came out and looked at us like we had taken a crap on the rug. He smiled, like he knew that we'd make it home from jail without car fare but it would be good for us. We took it off.
I took it home and played it over and over, trying to figure out what it was. My first thought was that it didn't sound as good as my Aerosmith records. It was kinda tinny. My father, an open-minded fellow and a lyricist to boot, heard the music and did something he hadn't done before and didn't do again, even during the reign of rap ('82-'84).
He came into the living room and, without asking, picked up the lyric sheet and read along for a few minutes. "Do you know what this means?" he asked.
I shrugged. "I just got it."
He paused. "Be careful" were his only words to me on the subject and, unfortunately, I never was. If you see Joey, Dad, say hi. You can blame him now.
(Sasha Frere-Jones is a musician and writer in New York.)
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Mike Watt:
The Ramones meant so much to a lot of cats like myself who felt marginalized by "correct rock" and the whole load of shit that was getting foisted on anyone trying to be different in the '70s. They represented a way of letting your freak flag fly -- not by asking folks to copy what they were doing and sound and look just like them but just go for it and find your own way. For me and D. Boon, it was the biggest gulp of fresh air our lungs ever took in. It made us Minutemen. Made me what I am today and am still becoming. Much respect to Joey Ramone.
(Mike Watt was a founder of the Minutemen.)
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V. Vale:
What a horrifying shock! Joey Ramone dead at age 49 -- maybe I better make out my will.
Instantly I recalled the first time I saw the Ramones -- in August 1976 at the Savoy Tivoli on Grant Avenue, San Francisco. I counted 30 people in the audience. Behind me was a scruffy bunch of intriguingly dressed musician types, all in dark clothes (not the style in California that year) -- they looked like refugees from Warhol's Factory. One of them was a ravishing '50s blond in a black cocktail dress. Later, they turned out to be members of the Nuns, one of San Francisco's first punk bands.
I'd never seen anything like the Ramones before. This was the pre-MTV era, when on Don Kirshner's "Rock Concert" you'd watch rock extravaganzas like Emerson, Lake and Palmer playing a grand piano revolving in the air on a giant crane. If you were an aspiring young musician, you could never afford props like that.
When the Ramones hit the tiny stage, Joey yelled, "One-two-three-four," and they launched into a 30-minute blitzkrieg that seemed nonstop, with one song segueing into another.
They were dressed in shockingly ripped-up faded blue jeans, basic U.S. Keds sneakers, tiny baby doll T-shirts and black-leather motorcycle jackets. The bass player, Dee Dee, seemed the most menacing; his T-shirt sported a Special Forces logo, "Death From Above."
But Joey seemed the most alien -- like an enormous, gangly human spider. Wearing thick, dark maroon glasses beneath a shock of shoulder-length hair, he screamed to be heard over the Marshall-amp machine-gun assault of the band. Joey, who admitted to writing most of the lyrics, sang "Commando" (nobody was writing about the Vietnam War; most musicians were still in denial), "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" and other decidedly non-peace-and-love songs. Finally, the new "punk rock" era had arrived.
(V. Vale is the founder of Search & Destroy and RE/Search Publications.)
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Stephanie Zacharek:
Maybe it wasn't about brains -- but then, the best rock 'n' roll often isn't. What you could hear in the music of Joey Ramone was a particular kind of passion, cooked down to its bare essentials: two minutes and three chords. Songs like "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" weren't exactly love songs, but there was a peculiar strain of love in them. "Sheena" was an ode to a girl who just had to bust out. Beyond that, you didn't know much about her, but that glorious beach-party beat gave you everything you needed to hang onto.
Back in the day, I'd hear it, or just about any Ramones song, and jump up and down so much that my teeth would rattle inside my head. It felt good when I did it, and it felt good when I stopped. It was pure pleasure boiled down to a few hard minutes and a couple of swinging seconds, fast and sweet, like teenage love. That must be why a flowery elegy for Joey Ramone feels all wrong. The only thing to do is jump up and down -- and then stop.
(Stephanie Zacharek is a staff writer at Salon.)
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Ira Robbins:
I'll confess: I didn't get the Ramones at first. Unlike the bands I already liked on the New York underground scene -- the Dolls, the Planets, the Fast -- the brudders sounded too unfamiliar, too high- (well, low-) concept for my '60s-bred sensibilities. I wasn't ready for such wholehearted embrace of simplicity in place of power-pop intricacy, and it took me a few 25-minute, 15-song shows to stop griping and grasp the joyous spirit of their enormous achievement.
We used to stand around clubs like CBGB, my scornful scene pals and me, counting off songs with Dee Dee and collapsing in laughter. I called Joey "the amphibian" because he was so limpet-like, an elongated figure of pale skin, shade-hooded eyes, his flexible spine curled around mic stands like a snake being charmed. His pronunciation of lyrics like "next time I'll listen to my heart" was another source of amusement at the outset, since he curved them too, into unarticulated sounds like "nextimelistentomma-a-a-rt." Until I was played the first album in Sire publicist Janis Shacht's office, I had no idea what most of the songs were actually about.
By then I was a fan, and remained one, even as the band's albums ceased to achieve magic every time. I wrote about them (my New York Newsday profile was titled "Grumpy Old Punks," an unflattering but accurate headline I had to hear complaints from Joey about for ages afterward) and got to know Joey as a result. He was a sweet, uncomplicated guy who told you what was on his mind in a humble grumble and a self-deprecating chuckle. He threw himself birthday parties at the Continental and was never too busy to talk. He was punk's Jewish grandmother, a lonely guy who -- despite the acclaim -- never felt appreciated enough.
