[nitpick]
It was Dee Dee that started the songs, not Joey.
[/nitpick]
C.J. lives in my community - about 2 years ago, his band did a Ramones set at a PTA drug awareness concert (for the school district his son attends). They blew the doors off the auditorium - kids and adults of all ages were thrashing in the aisles. If you closed your eyes you could feel the vibe. (I’d seen the Ramones in '79 so I had something to compare them to).
Aye, C.J. is an okay guy; he does a lot of autism awareness stuff because of his son. Did you know that he used to be married to Marky’s niece?
I lived outside NYC and didn’t visit CBGBs until mid-1978 or so. By then, most of the “famous” bands had moved on or the place was just too packed for an out-of-towner to get in.
I saw the Ramones in a small club in Connecticut in a room the size of your kitchen. It was too small for anyone who had much of a name in the metro area, and the Ramones were completely unknown to us. My only other brush with greatness at the early level was with Twisted Sister, who had a fanatical following in Westchester County a few years before hitting it big. I saw and hung out with a lot of bands that could sell out any club within 25 miles and we thought were going to make it but they bombed 50 miles from home.
I saw a lot of good bands and I thought I was a punk rocker, but it turns out I was only new wave. As most people were.
Interesting. I live in Westchester, but only since 1998…I can just see Twisted Sister at some of the clubs I have been to in Westchester…
I was gonna quote all of Apocalypso’s post here and reply to the various parts as warranted, but it was really breaking up my stream of consciousness, so I’ll just try and reply to a couple of things specifically, then get into the nitty gritty.
I’m a guy, and thanks for the compliments. It’s not often I get to talk about music with anyone who gives a shit about music, so I’m always happy when the opportunity comes along. It’s nice to know that I’m not perceived as just some douchebag who’s talking out of his ass (at least not perceived that way all the time).
Ok, first, lemme start by saying that I also think you’re right that many bands had more of a direct influence on metal musically than The Ramones.
But let’s look at the bands you picked out:
With the exceptions of Sabbath and Kiss, all the bands you mention were the epitome of what punk rock was seething against (well, not Hendrix but only because he was dead and thus had stopped producing music). By 1974, The Who, Led Zep, and Alice Cooper were at the top of the rock & roll arena players. They had long songs with what could arguably be called “movements” and featured all sorts of pretentious crap like orchestras and strings. Sabbath had a couple of long songs like that, but they lacked the art-house angle of “trained classical musicians”. Kiss was the only band you mention that had a pure pop oeuvre, except they cranked the volume to 11 so they were rocking.
All of the bands you mention, tho, had a bloated stage show that they dragged around with them (again, except the dead guy).
Note that I’m ignoring Van Halen because they didn’t release an album until 1978. Plus they were never a heavy metal band, they were a rock band with a kick-ass guitarist.
Okay, now let’s look at Motörhead.
Lemmy started the band in 1975 after getting kicked out of Hawkwind. They played a bunch of gigs thru 1976, but by early 1977 Fast Eddie and Philthy Phil were ready to call it quits. They were tired of squatting in abandoned flats and going nowhere fast. They were unable to release their single “Leaving Here” because it was recorded for a small label (UA, who they were under contract to at the time, blocked it’s release) and UA had refused to release the material they had recorded in December 1976 because it was “unacceptable” (it was later released as On Parole in 1979). In fact, in December of 1976, NME printed the results of a poll that gave Motörhead the dubious honor of being “the best worst band in the world”, and that was just based on what people saw from live gigs.
Now, The Ramones first played the UK in 1976 (July 4th, as a matter of fact), about 10 weeks after their first album was released. Their first UK single was released on 9 July (“Blitzkrieg Bop” b/w "Havana Affair). Cite. They played the UK for a couple of weeks, then came back to the US. Lemmy met the band during that brief tour.
[
](Thirsty : July 2007 : Lemmy Interview)
They toured the UK again in 1977, so it’s possible that Lemmy didn’t meet them until 1977.
BUT
People in the UK were up in arms about the Ramones and their song lyrics. A few people wrote letter-to-the-editor type harangues about their talent (“none”) and image (“delinquents”) but it really got into the public consciousness when they were denounced by Labor Party MP James Dempsey for their song “I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”. He wanted their record banned in the UK and pulled from store shelves, so this made headlines and newscasts.
Of course, this just led people to want to hear The Ramones for themselves, and their popularity skyrocketed.
Okay, now we go back to Motörhead. In April of 1977, Lemmy agreed to shitcan the band, but talked the guys into doing one more show that they would record “for posterity”. The mobile recording truck never showed up, and the guy they had set that up with apologized backstage and offered them 2 days in the studio with a real producer (Speedy Keen). They took that offer, recorded 11 tracks, and managed to wangle some extra time to finish the vocals. That album was released in September 1977.
So, what I’m saying is that The Ramones, by way of already being known in the UK by Sept 1977, paved the way for Motörhead. UK audiences were already intrigued and infatuated with loud, fast, raw music, otherwise Motörhead might have just dropt into the cutout bins while the guys went on to boring, regular lives. As for how big and influence the band had on Lemmy musically and when, I can’t say, but I suspect it was pretty huge because of the song he wrote for them, “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”,. That’s from Motörhead’s 1991 album , 1916. Here’s the first verse:
*New York City, N.Y.C., pretty mean when it wants to be
Black leather, knee-hole pants, can’t play no high school dance
Fuzz tone, hear 'em go, hear 'em on the radio
Misfits twilight zone
R A M O N E S, R A M O N E S, Ramones*
So, I’m not making a claim that The Ramones influenced Motörhead’s sound as much as I’m saying that they made the market a viable place for a band like Motörhead, just like they did for Sex Pistols, The Clash, and countless other bands. And if Motörhead hadn’t released that album and sold some copies, then heavy metal would have been doomed to the bloated crappiness that it would have been influenced by. (To be fair, I do think that they prolly also showed Lemmy that yes, a band could play fast, loud & raw and be a success.)
What I mean by that is that I think Iron Maiden might still have happened, but Venom might not. Metal would be ruled by Saxon and Diamond Head and Girlschool and Def Leppard and other bands that we now think of as power metal, with those annoying high pitched Plant-like vocals and long, obviously classical passages. It would be nothing but Beethoven and Mozart cranked up to 11. No thrash, no hardcore, no death metal, no black metal, because the building blocks, musically, economically and popularly, would not be in place.
That’s my argument, and I’ll stand by it.
I forgot to say: I’m sorry I couldn’t reply to your post yesterday, Apoc, but I knew it would take me more than a just a couple of minutes to do properly, and I’ve been busy mutating my zombie parts so I can go back to work soon.
Oh, and Lemmy didn’t write “R.A.M.O.N.E.S” for The Ramones to play, he wrote it for Motörhead… but yeah, that’s him onstage with The Ramones at their last concert in NYC, in 1996.
With occasional exceptions. I was lucky enough to see them in 1980 (in Dallas) and they started off with “Pinhead”, Marky banging the drums and Joey shouting “Gabba gabba we accept you!”
On a side note, I knew nothing about them before the show, and had been talked into going by friends. Up to that point I’d only seen arena concerts by Jethro Tull and Yes (my 2 favorite bands besides the Who)…but seeing the Ramones hugely changed what I wanted out of music. Talk about having your head re-adjusted.
I agree with the rest of your post, but at heart Saxon are a kick-arse rock’n’roll band. They went a little off the boil in the late 80s, but have been back on form for nearly 20 years, almost entirely avoiding hair metal preening or operatic wankery. They’ve toured with Motorhead many times over the years.
Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things in the right place, but that place is probably not a Ramones thread!
The Ramones rocked.
I feel like I could spend hours discussing music with you. Once I hit my late 20’s/early 30’s I realized my taste in music (and some other areas) was pretty thin, so I made an efffort to broaden my horizons. The last 5 cd’s I bought were from Ayreon, The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Rascal Flatts (my gf got me into a few of their songs), Paul Simon, and an old Misfits cd (replacing one I lost). You seem pretty knowledgable about a wide range of stuff, so its always nice to talk to people who aren’t squeezed into a narrow little viewpoint.
I see what you’re saying (but don’t necessarily share the same opinion). I started listening to music in probably '79-80 through my older sister and a few other relatives, and the huge elaborate productions of the first few concerts I went to (AC/DC, Ozzy, etc) just blew my mind. Anyhow the point was that these bands had more of a direct influence on metal than the Ramones.
Well that may be, but I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had over the years that went "Ok, AC/DC/Kiss/etc are hard rock, this band is classic metal, that band is thrash, that band is dark metal, etc. Do punks feel the need to divide their music into 1000 different categories the way some metal fans do? At some point I realized how idiotic it was, we’re all brothers in metal, and if you bang your head to it, it’s metal
You know, I’ve owned the Motorhead album with that Ramones song for something like 25 years, but forgot all about it until your post 
Good point!
Fair enough. I grew up in a Pittsburgh suburb, well away from the big city scenes, but I don’t remember seeing or hearing of that much crossover until at least the mid/late 80’s. In my experience, metal was about technical ability, screaming vocals and wailing solos. Punk was raw brutality punching you in the face. Metal was long hair, leather/jean jackets, sex, drugs, and rock and roll x10. Punk was mutilated clothes drawn on with magic markers, spiked hair, not giving a shit, fuck authority, fuck the establishment, and fuck you too. Both forms of rebellion, both ways to fit in with each other while pissing your parents and teachers off, but both very different in look, form and execution. I do remember a good bit of animosity between punks and metalheads, lots of fights. But I don’t know how widespread that was. I think at some point there was a lot more crossover, but metal had been around for a good while by that point and had evolved independently from punk. Not saying there weren’t bands on the fringe from the beginning, but when thrash started to become popular was (IMO) when the lines really started to blur.
You, my friend Bo, are a **CMG **- Certified Music Geek. I enjoy your work and wish to subscribe to your newsletter ;). I wish I got to your website more often; I have so little fun time on the web and most of it goes to the Dope…
Apocalypso, I’ve added some more quote tags to your post so it is easier to tell what Snowboarder Bo wrote and what you were responding to. We prefer that people respond that way (using more quote tags to break up a post) instead of inserting long replies inside the quote box, which can make it look like they were written by someone else. It’s a little extra work, but if you’re quoting multiple times from a single post, please add quote tags like this - [noparse]
[/noparse].
I did indeed.
And I always then take that and talk about the famous Sex Pistols gig in Manchester that inspired Morrisey, The Buzzcocks, Joy Division, and The Fall. Without the Ramones, those bands might not have happened.
It goes even further than that!
Among the 42 people present at that gig was Tony Wilson, a broadcast journalist type who hosted a little TV show called So It Goes. That gig convinced him to start promoting concerts, which shortly led to him starting a small record label called Factory Records.
Factory Records gave us Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays, Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark, plus a whole slew of other great Manchester bands.
The scene in Manchester that Wilson nurtured was a huge part (if not the single biggest part) of the birth of raves and rave culture.
I hope that Inigo Montoya is still reading, because it’s just amazing how influential The Ramones were. They were like the first domino in a chain, the first snowball in an avalanche that we’re still hearing today (thankfully!).
ETA: If I remember correctly, diku, The Buzzcocks were on the bill with Sex Pistols that night, but didn’t perform; they were already a band at the time, tho.
I’m humbled, WordMan; I can think of no compliment I’d be more pleased to see! Thanks!
Some of the happiest times I ever spent occurred in back in the late '80s and early ‘90s when I lived in Tallahassee, FL. I had many friends amongst the local musicians at the time, and spent countless excellent hours sitting around listening to music and talking about not just the music but the people involved in it while, um, getting in tune, ya know what I’m saying’?
Not everyone had the same taste, but everyone was knowledgeable and happy to share their music with everyone else. I learned a great deal from those people and will forever appreciate their friendship; I’m still in touch with quite a few of them, in fact.
Also Simply Red so, y’know, swings and roundabouts 
Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto helped organize the gig.