Ramones: End of the Century
Says one of the interviewees in "End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones," testifying to the seismic shock he felt upon hearing the pioneering punk band's 1976 self-titled debut, "It instantly made half of our record collections obsolete."
In point of fact, the Ramones made 99 percent of rock music obsolete, a truth that was studiously ignored in the United States even as it was embraced by British fans who went on to form the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Would Talking Heads, Blondie, or Patti Smith have made it big if the boys from Queens hadn't planted the punk flag at CBGB's on the Bowery in the early 1970s? Would Green Day, Rancid, and countless other alt-thrashers be playing folk music? Would punk rock even exist? Maybe. But it wouldn't have looked or sounded remotely the same.
The new documentary by Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields is an essential addition to the growing (and inherently ironic) field of Punkology, taking its place alongside the 1999 film "The Filth and the Fury," about the British punk explosion, and the great 1996 oral history "Please Kill Me," by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Because "End of the Century" focuses on one group, though, it has its tawdry "Behind the Music" aspects. The latter half of the film is a chronicle of bummer entropy, as two of the members stop speaking for two decades and a third departs for one of the most ill-advised rap careers in music history.
Ah, but the first half of "Century" devotes itself to the Big Bang that broke rock in half. "The Story of the Ramones" is the story of four losers from Forest Hills who rebelled against what passed for pop music in the early 1970s and concocted a sound and an image that burned the house down to its foundations: two-minute/three-chord guitar assaults with titles such as "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" and "Blitzkrieg Bop," no solos, indecipherable vocals, black leather jackets, absurdly identical bowl haircuts and surnames, and an air of menace that was only partly a goof.
The antecedents were obvious -- Iggy and the Stooges, the New York Dolls -- but the Ramones were on to something wholly new. Recalls Tommy Ramone, nee Tommy Erdelyi, the drummer-turned-producer who's the most thoughtful of the founding members, "I had never heard anything like this. This was futuristic."
Perhaps, but in the end it benefited everybody except the Ramones, who as the advance shock troops of the punk revolution were shunned by US radio and never had an album or single that sold in any great numbers. This had nothing to do with the songs, which remain tightly constructed delights -- great pop, really -- and everything to do with the group's resolutely unpretty image, no matter that they had a better sense of humor than anybody who followed.
"End of the Century" unearths the expected footage from the crypt -- including a hilarious live video of the band arguing onstage over what to play next. The anecdotes are pungent and revelatory, such as the late Joe Strummer of The Clash remembering the Ramones pulling him and assorted future Sex Pistols through the back window into the group's groundbreaking gig at the Roundabout in London (July 4, 1976, without which your kids wouldn't be listening to that Good Charlotte album).
The personalities that emerge are caustic, extreme, and more than a little sad. The Ramones were made up of ill-fitting parts: guitarist/major-domo Johnny (a.k.a. John Cummings), the stone-faced control freak; lead singer Joey (Jeff Hyman), the fragile, obsessive-compulsive geekboy; bass player/songwriter Dee Dee (Douglas Colvin), the one true punk of the bunch and a lovable train wreck who survived as long as he did by the grace of God. All are interviewed on film, ducking and weaving: Clearly, they hated each other in the way only men who have played thousands of shows together can. When the Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, Dee Dee thanked himself and no one else.
Two months later, he was dead of a heroin overdose. Joey died of lymphatic cancer in 2001. Johnny is fighting prostate cancer. "Blitz-
krieg Bop" is used to sell cellphones, beer, and cars on TV.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
Video
