The genre that Joey Ramone proudly battled against: “All that crap”
There is a misguided view of the punk rock scene that sparked during the mid-1970s; namely, that the realm of anarchic, glue-sniffing rock and roll rebellion burst onto the scene entirely out of left field. In reality, looking back upon the mainstream rock world of the era, the punk revolution of bands like the Ramones was something of an inevitability.
For starters, it is important to note that the sonic roots of punk stretch right back to the garage scene of the 1960s, when obscure, DIY outfits were aiming to take rock back to its rawest roots. In essence, that was exactly what the groups of New York’s CBGB scene were doing, rejecting the overproduced, grandiose nature of mainstream rock in favour of a shorter, sharper, and far less polished sound.
Not only were the likes of The Ramones rebelling against the state of the American establishment, but they were also rallying against the musical status quo.
During the Ramones’ heyday, the American mainstream was rapidly becoming dominated by the infectious grooves of disco, which the punk world by and large rejected – although embracing disco later made CBGBs comrades Blondie a household name. “I hate disco music,” Johnny Ramone declared in 1979, adding:
“It’s disgusting. It’s some kind of communist plot to make our brains smooth.”
Despite the band’s hatred for the Studio 54 world, though, their loathing of progressive rock was arguably even more intense. After all, it was prog that dominated the rock airwaves throughout the early 1970s, with the likes of Yes, Genesis, and ELP ushering in a new age of expansive, seemingly endless, and incredibly complex compositions that didn’t seem to relate to the ordinary lives of young people.
Joey Ramone, in particular, was vehemently opposed to prog, recalling in a 1988 interview, “I liked Pink Floyd when they first came out, but groups like Yes and Pink Floyd and all these groups, an album would become six tracks on an album instead of 12 or 14.”
He continued, “It was a total mess of mediocrity and contentious cliché and all that crap, you know what I mean? People lost sight.” In other words, rock and roll was becoming far too self-involved under prog’s reign, slipping away from the raw, youth-focused sound that had typified the style since its first emergence back in the 1950s.
While he certainly wasn’t the only punk with an axe to grind against prog, Joey Ramone’s hatred for the genre is particularly interesting given that the vast majority of successful prog groups hailed from the opposite side of the Atlantic. Very few – if any at all – prog bands were dominating the airwaves of The Ramones’ native Queens.
Nevertheless, across the punk spectrum, few bands encapsulated that battle against prog better than The Ramones, whose songs rarely eclipsed two minutes and did away with any kind of self-aggrandising solos or complexities. Throughout their tenure, the group stayed true to their original ethos of taking rock and roll back to its roots, playing a blitzkrieg style punk rock in defiance of disco, in defiance of prog, and in defiance of the entire mainstream rock landscape of the 1970s.
