Deborah Harry and Joey Ramone
Source: Official Blondie web site
"‘I'm a Teenage Lobotomy'" by Jessamin Swearingen (adapted and edited by Allan Metz)
‘We Created It: Let's Take It Over!' web site, 1999-2001
On the Ramones and New York City punk. An obituary of Joey Ramone (who died on April 15, 2001) plus reflections on Joey by his West Coast contemporaries, the Go-Go's, are appended at the end of this selection –Ed.
Deborah Harry and Joey Ramone
Source: Official Blondie web site
The Ramones were the New York personification of punk rock. In fact, when CBGBs owner Hilly Kristal picked American bands to tour in England, he chose the Ramones. So in a sense, the Ramones were the first American punk band ever seen by the future generation of English punks. The Ramones turned the rebellion of 1950s roots rock into a high decibel and speed assault on the senses. The Ramones put punk rock on the map with such seemingly effortless classics as, "I Wanna Be Sedated," "Beat On The Brat," and "Rock'n'Roll High School." The Ramones put the youth back into rock music, and it permanently stunted the band's growth. It seemed that they never made it out of high school.
While bands such as Blondie and the Dolls slipped into camp and Television and Patti Smith were too poetic and wordy, the Ramones were so punk as to be a parody of themselves. The four young men from Queens, in leather motorcycle jackets and sharing the Ramone surname, gave punk a name much in the same way the Beatles and their contemporaries put the "British Invasion" on the pop map. The Ramones and Beatles connection is applicable on other levels. The Ramones were merely reciting the lessons that rock culture, and the Beatles, had taught them. Early in the Beatles' career, they were the fab four, and were focussed on as members of a band; four young men with similar haircuts and a modest collective image, an image which made them accessible as a commodity. The Ramones used the same tactic, employing the same last names and leather jackets.
"Ramon" was Paul McCartney's alias when booking reservations in hotels during the early waves of Beatlemania (RS, #507, p.135). Ramon became Ramone, and in 1974 they assumed the last name and an image that would typify punk rock for years to come. Their wardrobe of ripped jeans, sneakers, and leather personified punk. Dressing in their day-to-day street clothes made glam obsolete, and brought rock back to the on-the-streets teenage element....