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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
And who can blame him? The Ramones, though universally acknowledged as the pioneers of punk, known the world over, never sold any records in their homeland, and had to watch as the passage of time handed their glorious invention off to younger bands who proudly pledged their allegiance as they cashed checks bigger than anything Joey would ever enjoy. It must have been a bitter pill to be a superstar with none of the perks.
Well, it's all done now. The band, the scene, the man. What he did, like the man once said, will stand, proudly curled, forever.
(Ira Robbins is the founder of Trouser Press magazine and the author of the Trouser Press record guides.)
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Jim Testa:
The first band I ever interviewed was the Ramones. CBGB, 1976. I was a reporter for the Rutgers Daily Targum and then that interview turned into my first professional byline. CBGB was a dark and scary place to a kid from New Jersey back in those days, but Joey and Johnny were nothing like what I had imagined. They were funny and articulate, and gracious hosts. And they were the most amazing band I've ever seen. It was like getting to chat with Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin in 1776. I got to be there watching history being made. The Ramones didn't just change my life; they changed the world.
(Jim Testa is the editor and publisher of the Jersey Beat fanzine, a columnist for the Jersey Journal and a sometimes freelancer whose work has appeared in everything from Maximumrocknroll to Rolling Stone.)
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Freddie Patterson:
It had to be some time in late 1975 when I first heard of the Ramones. My magazine, Back Door Man, had been in operation for several months and I think I heard about them from an article in Rock Scene magazine and, of course, later in the first New York Rocker, which was issued at the beginning of 1976. When their album was getting ready to come out, I was contacted by Sue Sawyer, a publicist at ABC Records, the label that was distributing Sire Records at the time. I went to her office and she gave me a test pressing of the album.
At the risk of quoting myself like moldy fig Leonard Feather, I hailed the record as "a brave new album heralding the end of the Inna-gadda-da-vidda Age." My first line of the review was: "Anybody who hates this record is an asshole." I don't mean to tout myself as a visionary here; I am merely expressing delight in the fact that I was able to recognize this important step in rock 'n' roll when it was happening.
When the Ramones played their first gigs in California, battle lines were drawn. Fans became close friends. (Sawyer introduced me to [writer and TV host] Art Fein and the three of us drove to the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, Calif., to see them and have remained friends through the years.)
