


The Ramones first played London on the Fourth of July, 1976-“On the 200th anniversary of our liberation from England, we went back and gave ‘em something in gratitude,” says Mr.

Fields in turn negotiated the band's contract with Sire Records, and helped steer it through shrewd guidance and clever promotion to its present, growing eminence.Īpart from their own success, the Ramones take credit for sparking the whole British punk‐rock scene, and their claim is worth taking seriously. Fields is a veteran of the American underground‐rock scene, a man who has written extensively about the music and who at various times managed Jim Morrison, the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges. Fields and the signing of a record contract. The two big steps after the group's formation were the acquisition of Mr. Our music didn't really change we realized we could be successful by being avantgarde.” But as soon as I understood that our songs could appeal to the general public, I figured we could try to reach everybody. “We wanted to take the heart of it and then simplify it. “We had kind of an artistic vision of rock music,” he said. Fields took over, says freely that the band had serious esthetic ambitions from the start. Tommy Ramone, the drummer and original manager of the group before Mr. The Ramones-all together there are Joey, the singer Johnny, the guitarist Dee Dee, the bassist, and Tommy, the drummer, and even they concede their common “Ramone” surname is assumed -say they're in their mid‐20's and come from the Forest Hills section of Queens. Their manager, Danny Fields, says now that in fact: “Everyone in the group has a good sense of humor, and everyone is pretty smart. The Ramones helped create their own image by playacting their “dumb” role to the hilt. There was a time not so long ago when the Ramones had bottles thrown at them. Now, if you have a penchant for Mad Magazine‐type humor, this stuff seems both funny and cute, and that's how more and more audiences are finding the Ramones, in this country and especially in Britain, where the band is a solid concert attraction. Slugs and snails are after me DDT keeps me happy Now I guess I'll have to tell em That I got no cerebellum. Or, finally, this verse from “Teen‐Age Lobotomy” from the group's third and most recent disk: I don't wanna walk around with you I don't wanna walk around with you I don't wanna walk around with you So why you wanna walk around with me? I don't wanna walk around with you. The classic “I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You,” from the first album: When their first record appeared in early 1976, one could read the words. Jostling one another on stage in black leather jackets, torn T‐shirts and jeans, they began every song with Dee Dee Ramone, the bass player, bellowing out “1‐2‐3‐4.” The songs themselves were short and aggressively simple, strung together in a mostly uninterrupted chain of howling feedback and twanging dissonance into one mosaiclike, half‐hour set. By the following year they had established their style. Palladium tomorrow night, first burst onto the CBGB's circuit in 1974. The New York punk rockers, who will be at the. In a world in which teen‐age tastes seem gratified by the fancified likes of Queen and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, it's hard not to love the Ramones.
