The pioneering punk band Joey Ramone called “one of my favourites”
From the sweat-stained walls and biohazard bathrooms of New York’s CBGB club came the sounds of a musical revolution, spurred on by four long-haired blokes from Queens who all shared an albeit fictional surname: the Ramones.
Punk, like virtually every grassroots and DIY music scene, has an endlessly complex and constantly disputed origin story, pinned to everybody from Patti Smith to The Kingsmen. One thing which is not up for debate, however, is the colossal influence of those four leather jacket-clad CBGB regulars and their blitzkrieg approach to rock and roll mastery. For many, the Ramones formed their first introduction to the world of punk rock, with their 1976 debut album helped to establish the endearingly abrasive sounds of the East Side punk scene on a widespread stage.
Ultimately, though, the Ramones didn’t emerge from the ether in isolation. Although their iconic look and Dee Dee Ramone’s unique ability to count to four very quickly certainly set them apart from the rest of New York’s blossoming punk scene, the group were always indebted to the influences that they soaked up along the way. In fact, the Ramones’ distinctive sound was much more expansive than it might appear on first listen, thanks largely to Joey Ramone and his deep adoration for the pop sensibilities of the 1960s.
So, whereas other punk pioneers were aiming to dismantle the musical establishment and rebuild from the rubble, the Ramones actually owed a lot to the mainstream pop of years passed – something which they made no effort to hide, famously covering tracks like The Ronettes’ ‘Baby, I Love You’ to great effect.
Surely, though, if the band exclusively consumed those timeless ‘wall of sound’ pop records, their own discography would more closely resemble that kind of sound. So where, then, did the Ramones’ penchant for distortion and glue-sniffing energy originally arise from?
While the blitzkrieg boppers were certainly within the first wave of artists to establish New York as a punk patient zero, they weren’t the first artists to walk the streets of NYC with a rebellious attitude and otherworldly sound. That accolade is instead awarded to The New York Dolls, a band that arrived just a little bit too early and disappeared far too quickly.
Bursting onto the scene in 1971, with a strange blend of glam and hard rock, along with a lot of other influences that are difficult to really pin down, the Dolls set the standard for New York punk going forward, and the Ramones certainly followed in their wake.
During a 1988 interview with Steve Harris, in fact, Joey Ramone called the Dolls “one of my favourite bands”, sharing, “There are bands that have one or two influences and they stay on that. Not to say that they’re bad. Bands like, say, The Dolls or something. They were very Stones-influenced and it was very obvious that they were.” In many ways, the New York Dolls were a subversion of The Rolling Stones’ mainstream rock sound – “mock rock” as Bob Harris famously called them after an appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Unlike The Rolling Stones, The New York Dolls never really captured the attention of the mainstream, but their lipstick-lined sound soon found its way into the hearts of a new generation of subversive, abrasive punk heroes, including that of Joey Ramone – even if they had to share the space with the frontman’s extensive love of 1960s pop.
