Barbarians Thru the Gates

Ramones and The Clash Overrun Grammy Hall of Fame
Memo from the Rock Desk
By Lou Brutus
Senior Program Director Active Rock Cluster

And so it came to pass in the year 2007 A.D. that two of the greatest albums in all the history of recording would finally be welcomed into The Grammy Hall of Fame. What are these two behemoths of The Industry? Multi-platinum soft rock releases celebrated with $200 anniversary tour tickets on the arena circuit? Albums by golden voiced femme fatales bedecked in jeweled finery and studio polished perfection? Naaah. Just some filthy punks.

The self titled debut album by the Ramones and London Calling by The Clash have been announced as additions to The Grammy Hall of Fame. Fuck yeah.

As with anything Grammy related some people are going to yap endlessly that it means nothing, it means too much, it means the wrong thing, it’s too late, it’s too early, it’s too this, it’s too that and other such meaningless, mindless, meandering moronicisms. The fact of the matter is that two of the finest musical entities to ever exist are getting some well deserved respect. End of discussion.

Wanna hear one of the coolest pieces of musical trivia ever? The instrumental piece the band opened many of their shows with entitled Durango 95 was named by Dee Dee Ramone after the model of car that Alex and his droogs stole in the beginning of A Clockwork Orange. The tune is originally found on the group’s most underrated album (and that’s saying something) Too Tough to Die. That album also holds the distinction of having arguably greatest cover of all time. When it came time for me to launch the first ever, all punk rock radio station in history (XM’s Fungus 53) I chose Durango 95 as the inaugural song. No other tune deserved the honor.

I have always loved the Ramones. From the moment my school chum Steve Baise (later a member of the legendary Devil Dogs) first played them for me I thought they were perfect. Just perfect. I saw the Ramones in concert fifty times. I have the tinnitus to prove it. Actually, the night I realized that my hearing was pooched was a Ramones show at The Living Room in Providence, RI. I had intro-ed the band and darted offstage to go out into the crowd to get drunk and sweaty. Even though the set was underway I was able to walk within a few feet of the stage to a good spot to catch guitar picks. After a few moments I noticed that no one was standing around me. There was actually no one within about seven or eight feet of me. “How odd,” I thought. It was then that I realized that I was half standing inside the speaker column and that my body was being thumped into chitlin by the savage throb of band. However, it did not seem to hurt my ears. The volume was just right. In hindsight that should have perhaps set off a warning flag or two but I was too busy guzzling a highball glass of Jack Daniels and shouting out the words to Teenage Lobotomy. The lumps of useless flesh that used to be my eardrums still throb painfully at the memory.

My friends and I would go anywhere and everywhere to see the Ramones. I remember taking the Lincoln Transit bus up New Jersey’s Route 9 (yes, the one from Born to Run) from near my family’s home in Englishtown up into New York to catch another bus back into Jersey to get to the Capitol Theatre on Monroe Street in Passaic for the Ramones, David Johannsen Group and Shrapnel. I still have the program from that gig. John Scher used to give out programs that had really cool cover illustrations that looked like woodcuts at the shows he produced. I have a few dozen of them from various concerts. They are worth more than gold to me. I also gripped the front of the stage and held on for dear life seeing the band at The Ripley, The Chestnut Cabaret and the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia. I also caught them on the Paramount Theatre and the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ plus a zillion other joints. When I got into radio I always made sure to volunteer to emcee the shows as it not only meant free tickets but a chance to get all my Ramones stuff autographed.

The guys in the band (alternately Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, Marky, CJ and Richie) and their tour manager (the long suffering but incredibly decent Monte A. Melnick) were always hospitable. I was never anywhere near being a band insider or anything like that but they did get to know me a bit as I could always been counted on to show up like a bad penny at any shows within a hundred miles of wherever I was living at the time. The guys were also aware and very appreciative of the gobs of airplay I gave them. I still fondly remember the unhappy shrieks of my Program Director at WHJY in Providence, R.I. Bill Weston as I would launch into thirty to forty five minutes of unscheduled, unapproved Ramones music on show days. I was rewarded several times from the stage by Joey giving me a shout out and having “Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio” dedicated to me. I also always had a blast producing and voicing over the top concert commercials for the shows. “More powerful than a pool of Jack Daniels…the Ramones” or some other such nonsense was used as the opening line. Stupid? Perhaps. Still a ton of fun for me to produce though.

Actually, one of the first dates my future wife Geri and I went on was to a Ramones concert at the Tower Theatre (technically in Upper Darby, PA. Not Philly). As she was (and still is) an upstanding, politically right leaning, church going conservative (very opposite of meself) she had never dreamed of going to see such a motley display of musical flotsam. I remember her incredulous tone as she said, “The Ramones? Aren’t they…punk rock?” The inflection she used while speaking the words “punk rock” were her shorthand way of saying, “These beasts play a sadistic form of audio abuse that can only be called music because seedy fools like yourself insist on referring to it as such and I would rather have my eyeballs plucked out by Satanic crows in a Hieronymus Bosch painting then attend such a sordid affair.” However, my wheedling insistence on her attendance was finally, begrudgingly agreed to and we went to the show. Monte answered the stage door, gave me a warm welcome and happily pointed towards…the chest. The Ramones always had a chest of Yoo Hoo backstage. No water. No Gatorade. Just Yoo Hoo. It was always the pre-show highlight for me. I introduced my date to the band and she struck up what became a thirty minute conversation with Johnny on his far flung knowledge of the Philadelphia Phillies minor league pitching prospects for that season. Seriously, that guy knew more about baseball than anyone who has ever lived. If ESPN’s Peter Gammons ever had to go mano y mano versus Johnny Ramone in a baseball trivia fight he would be reduced to a piddling puddle of petrified pilings by the guy with the white Mosrite guitar. She was blown away by his hospitality and geniality after expecting to be vomited on by a bunch of weirdoes. When the band later hit the stage she shoved her fingers in her ears and asked me, “When is the nice fellow’s band coming out?” I laughed and pointed to the mop of hair madly bobbing at stage right.

The downer part of that evening came as we had just left the dressing room. Geri said, “They all talked to you but never said a word to each other.” It was sad but true. For whatever reasons, the guys did just not seem to like each other. I cannot/will not explain it myself. I would heartily encourage you to read Monte’s phenomenal book on his adventures with the group On the Road with the Ramones to learn more about that and other, happier things. A friend once mentioned that he thought that they would all die early. When I told him that was kind of crappy thing to say he explained that he was not trying to be funny. It was just that they seemed to hate one another so much but spent so much time together that the stress of it all would manifest itself into early deaths for them. Unfortunately, he was proven right.

The Ramones always had a fatalistic sense that they would be come larger than life shortly after their lives ended. I chatted with Johnny Ramone backstage before the band’s last gig in Chicago and he seemed resigned to the fact they were well on there way to immortality…just not soon enough. “We’re gonna be bigger after we’re gone then we ever were while doing a hundred shows a year,” he said. He didn’t seem too happy about it. Joey had stopped by the studio for an on-air interview earlier that day and, while not too ecstatic about it, he seemed a little better with what he saw as the too late wave of glory. I did a rather lengthy interview with Johnny about a year before he passed away and he seemed more upbeat at that time. The compilation of Ramone’s covers, lovingly assembled by his friend Rob Zombie, had brought another wave of fans and he was feeling pretty good about it. I talked to Joey a couple more times before he passed away. A wonderful person. I still have his phone number programmed onto my cell phone as it would only break my heart to delete it. I was supposed to have interviewed Dee Dee about his book Lobotomy but was unable to make it up to New York on the assigned day. “No worries,” I thought. I’ll see him again and get it done. He died soon after. I still see Marky and Tommy from time to time. Monte, too. I still act like a geeky, dopey fan whenever I see any of them. I would not have it any other way.

BTW, did you ever think that the Ramones were a lot like KISS? I do. They both came out of the same basic scene at the same basic time. They were both horribly misunderstood because of their respective, iconic physical images. They both did short, catchy songs that should have been hits. Think about it. The Ramones were actually more sped up oldies music than punk (I mean that as a compliment). Songs like “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” would have fit perfectly on New York’s WABC-AM or WCBS-FM. KISS was more bubblegum hard rock then heavy metal (I mean that as a compliment, too) in the same way as Sweet (who had a nice gaggle of Top 40 hits).

And now we move to The Clash. I never got to seem them nearly as many times as the Ramones nor do I have the volume of meandering anecdotes about them but I do have probably the only story that involves Joe Strummer and a horde of Grateful Dead Heads. No, really.

I had seen The Clash a few times. Once with Burning Spear as the opener at the Class of 1923 Skating Rink on the University of Pennsylvania campus in the Center City section of Philadelphia. Shitty PA sound, great show. The walls there were concrete. Ouch. I also caught two of the shows where they opened for The Who. One at JFK Stadium in Philly and the other during the run of shows at Shea Stadium on Long Island. Anyway, I was working as an intern for WMMR in Philadelphia when Joe Strummer brought the Mick Jones-less version of the band to town to play the Spectrum. As fate would have it the Grateful Dead were also in town that night for a show. It was late on a Saturday morning and I was answering the request lines for DJ Pierre Robert. I seem to remember him being a big hung over that morning but perhaps not. Pierre was looking forward to going home for a long nap to get rested up for the Dead that night. Normally, I would have gone to see them too (I’m no genre snob and will go see anyone good) but Clash shows were few and far between compared to the Dead so I was chomping at the bit to go to the Spectrum. Just a few minutes short of the moment when Pierre could exit…the hotline rang. It was Program Director Charlie Kendall. He brusquely informed Pierre that Joe Strummer was on the way over and that he had to do the interview. I got to help him quickly coddle some questions together and we awaited his arrival. It was then that something very strange happened. We were looking out of the third floor studio window that overlooked Rittenhouse Square and the lovely park therein. With the Grateful Dead in town the park had been taken over by Dead Heads who were using is as a free camp ground. Then, from across the square, we saw the orange mohawked visage of Joe Strummer himself entering the park. Suddenly, he was surrounded by Dead Heads! Dozens of them! The Lord of Punk and the gaggle of hippie kids were face to face! What would happen? What were they saying? We were too far away to tell. When Joe walked in the studio I asked what the Dead Heads wanted to know. He said, “They asked if was coming out tonight to jam with The Dead. I told them, ‘No, man. I ain’t got no fucking acid!’” I hope it’s as funny in print as it was when he said it with his accent. He said it in such an over the top fashion that we were on the floor. The interview went fine and afterwards Joe asked if he could bum one of my smokes. He reached into my box of Marlboro reds and took out two. He put one in the corner of his mouth and the other behind his ear, “For later,” he happily blurted out. Before he left I had him autograph a piece of WMMR letterhead to me. I still have it. It’s a kind of a personally bizarre Grammy kismet for me that The Clash’s London Calling goes into the Grammy hall the same year the Grateful Dead their Grammy honor. Weird.

I never met Mick Jones but did a long phone interview with him a couple of years ago. Nice fellow and very open to talking about anything. Although he and Joe had differences Mick did get to play with Joe one last time when he ran onstage at a benefit gig Joe was playing in the U.K. I believe it gave him a great sense of closure and (my guess) made Joe’s tragic death a lot easier to handle.

Better minds than my own have written thousands (millions?) of words about the Ramones’ debut album and The Clash’s London Calling. Suffice to say here that my life would have been a lot less interesting and somewhat different in tone without them. Both groups have certainly been woven into the fabric of my life.

As for the Grammy honor…too little too late? I think not. I say, “Better late then never.”