“Very catchy”: The 1978 song the Ramones knew would be a classic
Punk and pop probably wasn’t a combination of genres that many people predicted would mould together so harmoniously back in the 1970s, but such are the simplistic approaches to songcraft that they have always shared that there was never any reason why it shouldn’t work.
Just as inspired by the bubblegum pop of the 1960s and the punk movement happening in New York City in the earlier part of the ‘70s, the Ramones were arguably the first notable band to successfully marry these two styles that were previously thought of as disparate, inadvertently creating the first-ever pop punk record when they released their self-titled debut album in 1976.
It’s still seen as a landmark release, remaining hugely influential 50 years on, and a large amount of that is down to the simplicity of the songs that they had crafted, plus the immediacy with which they were delivered over the course of just shy of half an hour.
However, while it was an exciting display of what they were capable of, they would arguably go on to improve over the course of their next few albums, creating a string of releases that didn’t seem to relent in their intensity or forego any of the brilliance of their debut.
They made it look easy, and frankly, it was. They’d come up with this almost infallible formula for writing songs, knowing that all they needed were four chords, an earworm of a melody, and a brattish attitude to cap it all off. It was bound to work every time, and they knew that they’d created something that could continue to propel them forward for the foreseeable future.
Their fourth album, Road to Ruin, is seen by many to be their final classic album before they began to experience a downturn in fortunes, but within the album’s tracklist was ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’, a song that the group knew from the moment they wrote it was destined to be one of their defining songs.
Even though they initially issued it as a B-side to ‘She’s the One’ in September 1978, drummer Marky Ramone, who at the time had only just been recruited as the replacement for original drummer Tommy Ramone, revealed to Record Collector in 2015 that he had absolutely no doubt over the song’s promise.
“It was very catchy,” he noted, “It’s funny because that was one of the songs I rehearsed to in my home when I got the tape. I couldn’t stop singing it. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I knew the chorus would stick whenever it played and it’s obvious today that song had something special. But back then, I was just able to put it down on records in two takes.”
Given how much they’d already made an impression on the world of music by this point, there was literally nothing standing in their way when it came to ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’, and even though they initially chose not to release it as a single, it was always destined to become a favourite among fans, given how it perfectly exemplified what the group was all about.
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