Though the Ramones were celebrated as the quintessential New York punk band, ostensibly a band of brothers playing short but explosive sets of brutally minimal songs, there was method behind their facade of mindlessness. Their drummer and producer Tommy Ramone, who has died of cancer aged 65, explained it like this: "First of all, it wasn't four morons; second of all, none of it was an accident; and third of all, it's four talented people who know what they like and who know what they're doing."
Tommy played on and co-produced the band's first three studio albums, Ramones (1976, though the production credit here went to Craig Leon), Leave Home (1977) and Rocket to Russia (1977), and was sole producer on the 1979 live album It's Alive. These were the discs that created the imperishable Ramones sound, with their frantic pace and skilful deployment of the band's simple guitar-bass-drums format in tracks that sometimes lasted barely a minute and a half.
Continue reading...