When Marky Ramone anointed Debbie Harry as the “punk queen”
It was a remarkable time in Ramones‘ history when Marky first joined the pioneering punk group in Spring 1978.
They were already three albums in when the fateful drummer’s vacancy first beckoned. Playing New York’s famous CBGBs as early as 1974, the leather quartet from Queens had long kick-started punk across the country and the world – Ramones’ nostalgic pilfer of yesteryear’s bubblegum pop wrapped in the city’s glam swagger yielded a stripped-down garage attack pulling the rug firmly from underneath classic rock’s bloated self-parody.
Yet, after 1977’s Rocket to Russia, founding drummer Tommy to decided to call it quits, opting to manage the band instead and swap the drum stool for the producer’s chair for their upcoming album. In came Marky. At this point, he was plain old Mark Bell, yet to adopt the Ramones’ stage surname, but his punk pedigree was without question.
Having cut his teeth with the more hard rock-leaning Dust, a pull to the city’s emerging punk underground and a near recruitment in the New York Dolls would eventually lead to drum duties for Wayne County & The Backstreet Boys and laying down his beat for Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation.
It was the Ramones that Marky would be remembered for, however. Swooping in for 1978’s Road to Ruin, the new drummer found the first session with the punk group, cutting the immortal ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’. He’d ended up staying with the band for two lengthy stints, behind the drum kit for their farewell ¡Adios Amigos! and their final shows in 1996.
Marky was a key witness to punk’s ground zero, casting his mind back all those years ago on his radio show. “We all admired our music because we were all different,” he reflected to SiriusXM in 2017. “There’s always fun being in CBGB, seeing everybody there every other night, because you had to have a day to recuperate after the night before. But yeah, everybody used to hang out, and we would all commiserate and just talk about music and what was going on with our touring, etc…”
When asked about his thoughts on Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Marky was quick to bestow a winning title, “She was punk queen.”
It’s hard to argue. While no such ‘King’ can be easily gleaned, Harry’s crown’s without question, led Blondie away from the CBGB and Max’s Kansas City punk clubs to the lofty heights of the Billboard Hot 100, selling as many as 40million records and standing as the face of the broader new wave era to even the passing layman. While Talking Heads may endure as the critical favourites, Blondie offered the pop world a little slice of punk in even the most mainstream corners of the music world.
Ramones and Blondie’s paths would cross in summer 1987, when Marky’s replacement, Richie, suddenly called it quits right before a show in Rhode Island, prompting Blondie drummer Clem Burke to pick up the sticks, adopt the moniker Elvis Ramone, and play the show plus the following gig at New Jersey’s Trenton.
