The birth of punk: Hear the Ramones’ raw demos from 1975
When the Ramones released their self-titled debut album in 1976, it changed music forever. As the first true-blue punk rock record, Ramones immediately legitimized the nascent genre and perfected it before anybody got a chance to match them. It’s rare for a genre’s first-ever album to also be its best, but in the five decades since its release, nobody has even come closer to touching Ramones.
But every band had to start somewhere, and for the Ramones, it was 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York, just north of New York City. The studio had seen recordings from the likes of Dusty Springfield and Bruce Springsteen – in fact, Springstein recorded his magnum opus, ‘Born to Run’, just a year before the Ramones recorded their first professional demos in the same space. The difference in terms of attitude, arrangements, and musical styles couldn’t have been any more apparent.
The raw demos that the Ramones recorded at 914 were some of the grungiest and loudest recordings that anyone had ever made up to that point. While the influence of heroes like the Stooges and the New York Dolls occasionally slipped in, the Ramones were almost completely fully formed by the time they began recording tracks like ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Learned, I Don’t Wanna Be Tamed’. The demos served their purpose, as the demo caught the attention of Sire Records president Seymour Stein.
It wasn’t as if the Ramones transformed into a polished studio band once they began recording their debut. They were given a limited time in the legendary Plaza Studio in the middle of Radio City Music Hall in order to record. The band finished the album in just two weeks, spending a grand total of $6,400 on it. The biggest “show business” touch was that band friend Craig Leon was able to play the Radio City Music Hall organ on ‘Let’s Dance’.
When Ramones was released as an expanded CD in 2001, the 914 demos were included on the track listing. Featuring three tracks that would appear on the album and a few songs that would trickle onto the band’s subsequent releases, the demo proves that the Ramones were in complete control of their sound and identity from the beginning.
Hear the demo recording of ‘Judy is a Punk’, plus early takes of classic tracks like ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’, down below.
