The best band Joey Ramone ever saw: “I want to blow people’s minds like that”
Leading from the front of the punk revolution, the Ramones arose from the sticky floors of the CBGB club back in the 1970s, becoming one of the very first groups to establish the abrasive sounds of punk rock. Like any other young upstarts of that era, though, the leather-clad outfit amassed their wild reputation through live performance.
Punk rock, from its earliest proto-punk origins back in the 1960s, was a scene that was built almost solely on live shows – partly because record labels willing to release those abrasive new sounds were very few and far between. During the height of CBGBs, bands would be in near-constant competition for who could put on the most anarchic spectacle of a live show, but the Ramones landed upon their own distinct performance style.
Unlike other frontmen of the era, Joey Ramone was never one to dart manically across the stage or leap into the sweat-soaked crowds below, but that didn’t stop him from being among the defining frontmen of punk rock. Looking out onto the masses from behind his dark sunglasses and mop of hair, Joey always maintained a distinct look that soon became characteristic of the entire punk scene.
In the wake of the Ramones, countless future frontmen attempted to emulate Joey Ramone’s trademark style, but where did the Queens native find it in the first place? While his contemporaries took their cues from the likes of Iggy Pop or maybe even Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, for Ramone, the art of live performance had been perfected by The Who.
The impact of London’s premier mod rock rebels on the punk landscape is colossal; they were, after all, the band that popularised short, sharp, and endearingly abrasive rock anthems geared towards the disenfranchised youth. It doesn’t take a genius to link the band’s anarchic live performances, culminating in their typical end-of-set destruction of their instruments, with the infectious violence of the punk age, either.
“When I was 16, I saw The Who,” Ramone told Entertainment Weekly back in 1990. “It was the first time they played America. It was a Murray the K show at the RKO theatre on 59th street [in New York City] – like 30 bands and The Who and Cream for the first time in America,” he continued.
Other notable highlights on that unbelievable bill included Wilson Pickett, Smokey Robinson, Simon and Garfunkel, and Phil Ochs – so it is fair to say that the young Joey Ramone got his money’s worth.
“Cream were great, but The Who blew my mind,” the frontman explained, striking envy into the hearts of rock obsessives everywhere at the fact that he attended that legendary billing. “The character and the visuals, Townshend, Keith Moon.”
That landmark show certainly left an impression on the future punk hero. “It was the best thing I’d ever seen,” he declared. “When I perform, I want to blow people’s minds like that.”
Although the Ramones never resorted to blowing up Tommy’s drum kit on live television, they certainly carried forth the torch of wild live performances that Joey Ramone had witnessed back in 1967.
