Did the Ramones hate the Sex Pistols?
When discussing the icons of the first wave of punk, the same few names invariably get mentioned, with the Sex Pistols and the Ramones almost universally hailed as the foremost acts from their respective sides of the Atlantic. Following this, Sex Pistols are often labelled as the most significant of the original movement, with their sound, aesthetic, and attitude noted as the defining symbols of this first chapter of punk.
However, this is a misconception, and Ramones, just like the New York Dolls before them, had laid the foundations of what would become known as punk long before Sex Pistols started to take the UK by storm in 1976 and released their only album, Never Mind the Bollocks, the following year.
In fact, by the time Sex Pistols had released their first single, November 1976’s ‘Anarchy in the UK’, Ramones had already released their eponymous debut album, which featured cuts such as ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ and ‘Beat on the Brat’ and had nearly completed their second album, Leave Home. The US band had also played a London show with Sex Pistols that summer. They were charging head first into the future, setting the scene for everyone else who followed them, leading to the broader argument that the UK stole punk from America.
This was something that Ramones were acutely aware of. One day in August 1977, guitarist Johnny Ramone made his thoughts clear when the band were recording their third album, Rocket to Russia, at Media Sound Studios in Manhattan. He brought in a copy of the Sex Pistols’ single ‘God Save the Queen’ and was extremely annoyed, more so than would be expected from the notoriously cantankerous musician.
Ramone was angry that the band had been “robbed” by Sex Pistols, particularly regarding their buzzsaw guitar sound. In reaction to this perceived slight, he told the engineer Ed Stasium that the production on the album had to be sharper than what the Sex Pistols were producing. He said: “These guys ripped us off and I want to sound better than this”.
Nevertheless, the album’s lead single, ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’, had already been released in May 1977, with punk exploding and the mainstream now lapping it up. The masses were buying the records of the bands tied to it, and major labels were snapping up their signatures.
However, the punk that the Ramones represented was not the one that was now popular. Largely thanks to the Sex Pistols, violence, drugs, and general misanthropy became the primary signifiers of the genre. This only crystallised the Ramones’ disdain for Johnny Rotten and Co., as they blamed the UK outfit for the album resulting in commercial failure, declaring that they changed the image of punk for the worse.
Frontman Joey Ramone even claimed that before 60 Minutes had focused on the Sex Pistols, Rocket to Russia was doing reasonably well. However, after this, he maintained that “everyone flipped out and then things changed radically. It really kind of screwed things up for ourselves.”
Compounding this sentiment is the account from Punk magazine founder Legs McNeil, who explained: “Safety pins, razor blades, chopped haircuts, snarling, vomiting—everything that had nothing to do with the Ramones was suddenly in vogue, and it killed any chance Rocket to Russia had of getting any airplay.”
I wonder if Johnny Ramone making Johnny Rotten drink urine in the summer of 1976 carried more weight than we initially thought.
