Ramones 1st Album

[Jules Altier]

Ramonesis the debut studio album by the American punk rock band Ramones, released on April 23, 1976, by Sire Records. After Hit Parader editor Lisa Robinson saw the band at a gig in New York City, she wrote several articles about the group and asked Danny Fields to be their manager.[1] Fields agreed and convinced Craig Leon to produce Ramones, and the band recorded a demo for prospective record labels. Leon persuaded Sire president Seymour Stein to listen to the band perform, and he later offered the band a recording contract. The Ramones began recording in January 1976, needing only seven days and $6,400 to record the album.

The album cover, photographed by Punk magazine's Roberta Bayley, features the four members leaning against a brick wall in New York City. The record company paid only $125 for the front photo, which has since become one of the most imitated album covers of all time. The back cover depicts an eagle belt buckle along with the album's liner notes. After its release, Ramones was promoted with two singles, which failed to chart. The Ramones also began touring to help sell records; these tour dates were mostly based in the United States, although two were booked in Britain.

Violence, drug use, relationship issues, humor, and Nazism were prominent in the album's lyrics. The album opens with "Blitzkrieg Bop", which is among the band's most recognized songs. Most of the album's tracks are uptempo, with many songs measuring at well over 160 beats per minute. The songs are also rather short; at two-and-a-half minutes, "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" is the album's longest track. Ramones contains a cover of the Chris Montez song "Let's Dance".

Ramones was unsuccessful commercially, peaking at number 111 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart. Despite its poor chart performance, it received glowing reviews from critics. Many later deemed it a highly influential record, and it has since received many accolades, such as the top spot on Spin magazine's list of the "50 Most Essential Punk Records". Ramones is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential punk albums of all time, and it had a significant impact on other genres of rock music, such as grunge and heavy metal. The album was ranked at number 33 in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", maintaining the ranking in a 2012 revision and dropping to number 47 in the 2020 reboot of the list.[2][3][4] It was placed first in the same publication's list of the "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time" in 2022.[5] It was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2014 for 500,000 copies sold in the US.[6]

Ramones began playing gigs in mid-1974, with their first show at Performance Studios in New York City.[7] The band, performing in a style similar to the one used on their debut album, typically performed at clubs in downtown Manhattan, specifically CBGB and Max's Kansas City.[8] In early 1975, Lisa Robinson, an editor of Hit Parader and Rock Scene, saw the fledgling Ramones performing at CBGB and subsequently wrote about the band in several magazine issues. The group's vocalist Joey Ramone related that "Lisa came down to see us, she was blown away by us. She said that we changed her life; she started writing about us in Rock Scene, and then Lenny Kaye would write about us and we started getting more press like The Village Voice. Word was getting out, and people starting coming down."[1] Convinced that the band needed a recording contract, Robinson contacted Danny Fields, former manager of the Stooges, and argued that he needed to manage the band. Fields agreed because the band "had everything I ever liked"[1] and became the manager in November 1975.[9]

In January 1976 the band took a break from their live performances to prepare for recording at Plaza Sound studio.[17] Sessions began later that month and were completed within a week for $6,400;[18][19] the instruments took three days and the vocal parts were recorded in four days.[20] In 2004, Leon admitted that they recorded Ramones quickly due to budget restrictions, but also that it was all the time they needed.[21]

Recording for the album was expanded by Mickey Leigh (Joey's brother) and Leon with percussion effects, which went unmentioned in the liner notes to the album's release.[17] Author Nicholas Rombes said that the production's quality sounded like "the ultimate do-it-yourself, amateur, reckless ethic that is associated with punk," but concluded that they approached the recording process with a "high degree of preparedness and professionalism."[25]

The songs on Ramones addressed several lyrical themes including violence, male prostitution, drug use, and Nazism. While the moods displayed in the album were often dark,[26] Johnny said that when writing the lyrics they were not "trying to be offensive."[27] Many songs from the album have backing vocals from different guests. Leigh sang backing vocals on "Judy Is a Punk," "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," and in the bridge of "Blitzkrieg Bop." Tommy sang backing vocals on "I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You," "Judy Is a Punk," and during the bridge of "Chain Saw."[28] The album's engineer, Rob Freeman, sang backing vocals for the final refrain of "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." Leon wrote in the booklet for the album's 2016 reissue that when layered background vocals appear on the album, they are primarily Freeman's contributions combined with some of Leon and Dee Dee's, and a great deal by Leigh, "all compiled and compressed to create an effective cyborg backing vocal creature."[29] The album's length is 29 minutes and four seconds and it contains 14 tracks.[19] On the original issue of the album, all the original songs were credited to "the Ramones" collectively.

When I lived in Birchwood Towers in Forest Hills with my mom and brother. It was a middle-class neighborhood, with a lot of rich, snotty women who had horrible spoiled brat kids. There was a playground with women sitting around and a kid screaming, a spoiled, horrible kid just running around rampant with no discipline whatsoever. The kind of kid you just want to kill. You know, 'beat on the brat with a baseball bat' just came out. I just wanted to kill him.

"Beat on the Brat" was said by Joey to have origins relating to the upper class of New York City. Dee Dee, however, explained that the song was about how Joey saw a mother "going after a kid with a bat in his [apartment building's] lobby and wrote a song about it."[35]

"Chain Saw" opens with the sound of a running circular saw and was influenced by the 1974 horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. At nearly 180 beats per minute, "Chain Saw" had the fastest tempo of the album's songs and, according to Rombes, is the most "home-made" sounding.[40]

"Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" contains four lines of minimalist lyrics that depict youthful boredom and inhaling solvent vapors found in glue. "I hope no one thinks we really sniff glue," said Dee Dee. "I stopped when I was eight [years old]."[41] Dee Dee also explained that its concept came from adolescent trauma.[41] After several songs by the Ramones whose titles began with "I Don't Want to ...", Tommy said that "Now I Want to Sniff Some Glue" is the first positive piece on the album.[36] The song served as an inspiration for one of the first punk fanzines, Mark Perry's Sniffin' Glue.[36][42]

"I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" is also minimalist, and inspired by horror movies. The entire text is composed of three lines, and the composition was based on three major chords. With a playing time of 2:40, it is the longest piece on the album.[41] (Asked about the bathroom at CBGB, Debbie Harry remarked: "I think that song from the Ramones is partially about that: 'I don't wanna go down to the basement ... ' As kids, we never wanted to go down to the basement cos it was so dark and scary. And that toilet was certainly very scary.")[43]

"Havana Affair" has a lyrical concept incorporating the comic strip Spy vs. Spy by Cuban-born illustrator Antonio Prohias.[46][47] At roughly 170 beats per minute, "Loudmouth" and "Havana Affair" proceed at about the same tempo.[46]

Written solely by Dee Dee, the lyrics of "53rd & 3rd" concern a male prostitute ("rent boy"), waiting at the corner of 53rd Street and Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. When the prostitute gets a customer, he kills the customer with a razor to prove he is not a homosexual.[48] In interviews, Dee Dee described the piece as autobiographical. "The song speaks for itself," Dee Dee commented in an interview. "Everything I write is autobiographical and written in a very real way, I can't even write."[49] According to Danny Fields, "Johnny would never admit to knowing that '53rd and 3rd' was about Dee Dee turning tricks!"[50] The half-sung and half-shouted bridge in "53rd and 3rd" are performed by Dee Dee, whose voice is described by author Cyrus Patell as what "breaks the deliberate aural monotony of the song and emphasizes the violence of the lyric."[51]

"I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You" consists of two lyric lines and three major chords. One of the group's earliest compositions, written at the beginning of 1974, it was the opener on their first demo.[39][52]

Initially, the Ramones wanted an album cover similar to Meet the Beatles! (1964) and subsequently had pictures taken in that style by Danny Fields but Sire was dissatisfied with the results. The art direction was by Toni Wadler and, according to cartoonist John Holmstrom, the Meet The Beatles cover idea came out "horribly".[55] Wadler later chose a photo by Roberta Bayley, a photographer for Punk magazine for the cover. The black and white photograph on the front of the album was originally in an issue of Punk.

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