The bizarre moment the Ramones supported Toto
At one stage or another, every notable band has been the opening act. It’s a right of passage to play to half-filled, half-arsed audiences who would rather be at the bar, and the Ramones were once left in this unwanted predicament when they opened for Toto.
Surprisingly, it took local promoters a long time to trust the Ramones as the headline act, and they earned their stripes the hard way. Despite the obvious talent, the Ramones weren’t permitted to take their show across the country. In all honesty, the punk pioneers were a product of the New York scene, and it was difficult to anticipate how people from other areas would react to their ferocity.
In their early years, the Ramones suffered from their ingenuity, and if they had been less original, perhaps, they’d have been easier for promoters to market. Instead, the CBGB’s favourites didn’t fit into any of the scenes outside of their home city, which left them in an unwanted position and supporting an ensemble cast of bands.
Danny Fields, their former manager, confessed to Uncut: “One way to sell records is to open for bigger bands and steal their audience. But the Ramones were a terrible opening act. They were always getting things thrown at them.”
Their first chance at performing outside New York came in 1975 when they opened for Johnny Winter in Cincinnati, which ended in disaster. Thomas Erdelyi (Tommy Ramone) remembered: “We were doing our thing, which meant we didn’t stop between songs until we’d done about six, when we took our leather jackets off. There was silence. Then slowly this noise, this rumbling, came up from the audience and they went crazy – ‘What the hell is this! Get off the stage!'”
Monte A Melnick was the band’s tour manager and found himself in some unwanted situations thanks to the actions of local promoters. One night, they’d be supporting Black Sabbath, an impossible gig to play. The next evening, they’d be stepping up to perform with Toto, which was equally unenviable.
“We’d be on crazy bills opening for Black Sabbath, it was painful. The audience didn’t want to hear it, they threw batteries, coins, ice picks – they weren’t kidding,” Melnick painfully recalled. “Ted Nugent’s audience were a little easier, they just threw sandwiches. We opened for Toto, who were so laidback that by the time they worked out what was going on, the Ramones had played their set and were off.”
Unsurprisingly, the audience of the ‘Africa’ soft-rockers expressed less violence than Black Sabbath’s baying crowd, but that doesn’t mean they liked them. Many were likely mortified on the inside, and it may have even caused some to suffer sleepless nights.
