“A bunch of junkies”: Johnny Ramone’s savage critique of his CBGB comrades
No revolution is undertaken alone, but there wasn’t a great deal of solidarity within the rock and roll revolt that saw punk burst from its East Village origins back in the 1970s. Even within the confines of CBGBs, where the misfits, outcasts, and junkies of the ‘Big Apple’ found solace, rivalries were rather commonplace, as the Ramones can certainly attest to.
Even within that inherently individualistic New York punk scene, the Ramones were something of an outlier in every facet of their being. Visually, they never adhered to the prevailing fashion of the scene, forgoing any need for experimenting with clothing by adopting their leather jacket and blue jean uniform early doors. Musically, too, they didn’t share much in common with their CBGBs contemporaries, borrowing more from the Phil Spector sounds of the 1960s than their glue-sniffing lyrics might have you believe.
Then again, the Ramones weren’t the only unique outfit in the scene at that time. While there was an abundance of cookie-cutter punk outfits, there were also groups like Talking Heads, who were far more akin to art rock than the abrasive, safety-pinned sound of punk. Blondie were there too, before their disco-fused new wave sound soon made them regular fixtures of the pop charts. Yet, each of these wildly individualistic, innovative groups had one thing in common: Johnny Ramone hated them.
A sober, outspoken Republican, Johnny Ramone wasn’t your typical CBGBs punk, and what’s more, he never seemed overly impressed by the scene itself. Asked during a 2003 interview what he thought of his early contemporaries, the guitarist pulled no punches, delving into the groups he considered ‘competition’ for the Ramones during the infancy of the band.
“Talking Heads were doing something totally different, so it didn’t concern me,” he quickly dismissed David Byrne’s legendary outfit. “It wasn’t really rock and roll.”
Seemingly, the expansive influences incorporated by Talking Heads didn’t endear themselves to the performer, even given the fact that Talking Heads’ first-ever gig was as a support act for the Ramones at CBGBs.
Turning to Blondie, a band that always shared a close relationship with the Ramones, even sharing drummer Clem Burke for a while, Ramone rallied, “Blondie was just a lightweight pop band and no one really cared about them at all. They were just an opening act.”
“They become big later on, but, uh, at the time, the other bands were just, most of the other bands were a joke to me.”
Johnny Ramone
The Heartbreakers were the only exception to that rule for the guitarist, but even his admiration for Johnny Thunders was rather backhanded. “The Heartbreakers are the only other band that I looked upon as, ‘these guys are really good,’” he said.
“But they were a bunch of junkies, so I don’t have to worry about them; their careers are going to be short.”
Ironically, given that Johnny Ramone didn’t view either Talking Heads or Blondie as serious competition, both of those groups dwarfed the Ramones in terms of commercial success, and although The Heartbreakers’ career was rather short, their punk credibility was never called into question.
Regardless, the picture that the guitarist paints of the CBGBs scene is far more competitive and confrontational than the punk history books often disclose.
