The 1980 album Joey Ramone called “a living hell”
In 1980, New York punk pioneers the Ramones would win their highest-charting album in the States, at the cost of the band’s patience and sanity.
For such a lauded punk stature, the Ramones never fared well commercially. Their 1976 eponymous debut dwelled in a lowly 111 on the Billboard 200; the highest of the decade being Rocket to Russia, which peaked at a respectable 49 but still failed to meet the Sire label’s expectations, as well as the drummer Tommy Ramone, who left not long after.
They knew how to write pop. From ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘Sheena Is a Punk Rocker’ and ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’, a love of The Dictators and The Stooges’ turbo-garage from the early 1970s enjoyed just as much footing with an affection for the hot 100 hits of their youth, bubblegum pop, girl-groups, the British invasion, and the Wrecking Crew singles factory all scoring the Ramones’ muscial identity as much as anything from Detroit’s Grande Ballroom or New York’s Max’s Kansas City during glam’s peak.
It wasn’t a surprise that one of the biggest pop producers in US history was eager to work with the Ramones. Even as early as Rocket to Russia, ‘Wall of Sound’ maestro Phil Spector had offered his services for the sessions, intrigued by their harkening to the sound he’d created during his early 1960s peak. They refused, with Tommy, fulfilling production credits with Tony Bongiovi, but following Road to Ruin’s low commercial fortunes, an exasperated Sire pushed the band to take up Spector’s offer for album number five due in 1980.
Quickly, the legends of Spector’s erratic behaviour and fastidious studio perfectionism revealed themselves in dramatic fashion. Jumping across different Los Angeles locations, including Gold Star and Devonshire Sound, the sessions for End of the Century would swiftly become bogged down in exhaustive amounts of takes, with reports of Spector demanding hours of one-note drumming from Tommy’s follow-up, Marky, and insisting on Johnny’s guitar parts being performed hundreds of times on ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll High School’.
For a punk band used to cutting records fast and on a budget, Spector’s obsessive production style thinned the Ramones’ patience in swift time.
“I’m a big fan of Phil Spector, but yeah, working with Phil Spector was a living hell,” frontman Joey would reflect to journalist Wayne Robins in 1987, “But on the other hand, enlightening and exciting too. He’s definitely one of my influences, as a songwriter, what makes up the Ramones is a combination of music and living, and experiencing and adventuring and everything, absorbing it.”
The “experiencing and adventuring” End of the Century offered would fuel one of its most dramatic rumours. According to accounts from Johnny and bassist Dee Dee, Spector was not above waving a gun threateningly to either force the Ramones to listen to his playing of The Ronettes’ ‘Baby, I Love You’ on piano until the early hours, or generally keeping the band in the studio to meet his high session demands. Marky dispelled such stories, however, later claiming in 2008, “He never held us hostage. We could have left at any time”.
Still, End of the Century would prove a tough album to soldier through. Sire and the Ramones would get their ‘hit’, the record peaking at 44, but six month mixing sessions, interminable recording schedules, and a cover of ‘Baby, I Love You’ that would all haunt the band left Joey with a sour taste in his mouth, despite crossing paths with a pop maestro who stood instrumental in the road to rock and pop he was destined for.
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