There was still no name for this burgeoning scene. It never occurred to most people involved that there needed to be a label, since all the bands had vast stylistic differences. There was, however, a shared sense of community and involvement. While major record labels were always a presence, there was a pride that these bands did it themselves. The word "punk" first made an appearance in music journalism in a 1970 essay, "The Punk Muse: The True Story of Protopathic Spiff Including the Lowdown on the Trouble-Making Five-Percent of America's Youth" by Nick Tosches in Fusion. He described a music that was a "visionary expiation, a cry into the abyss of one's own mordant bullshit," its "poetry is puked, not plotted." That same year, Lester Bangs wrote a novella titled Drug Punk, influenced by William Burroughs' book, Junky, in which there is a line, "Fucking punks think it's a joke. They won't think it's so funny when they're doing five twenty-nine on the island." Dave Marsh used the phrase "punk rock" in his Looney Tunes column in the May 1971 issue of Creem, the same issue that introduced the term "heavy metal" as a genre name. Marsh wrote, "Culturally perverse from birth, I decided that this insult would be better construted as a compliment, especially given the alternative to such punkist behavior, which I figured was acting like a dignified asshole." Tosches, Bangs, Marsh, Richard Meltzer, Greg Shaw and Lenny Kaye used the term to define a canon of proto-punk bands, including the Velvets, Stooges, MC5, the Modern Lovers and the New York Dolls. Ironically, the band that actually inspired the magazine called Punk came from upstate New York -- a bunch of leather-jacketed wise-guys called The Dictators (pictured above). They formed in 1973 and established a small following in a club in Queens called The Coventry. They found American music pompous at the time, so they took the succinct, hooky songs of British glam bands like Sweet, Roxy Music, Slade and T. Rex, and added their own brand of tongue-in-cheek, loutish humor and American junk culture in songs like "Teengenerate" and "(I Live For) Cars and Girls." Singer Handsome Dick Manitoba completed the image with a pro-wrestling star persona. Joey Ramone attended many Dictators performances, soon to take a couple of the ideas and run with it. Sandy Pearlman, manager and producer of the Blue Oyster Cult, helped the Dictators do a demo. Epic Records signed them, they recorded in 1974, and The Dictators Go Girl Crazy! was released in early 1975, al pre-CBGBs. The band did not take the time to flesh out and focus their sound like the CBGBs bands had done. They did manage to reach some key fans, including Legs McNeil and cartoonist John Holstrom. "All summer we had been listening to this album Go Girl Crazy by this unknown group called the Dictators, and it changed our lives. We'd just get drunk every night and lip-sync to it . . . " said McNeil. "I hated most rock 'n' roll, because it was about lame hippie stuff, and there really wasn't anyone describing our lives -- which was McDonald's, beer, and TV reruns." Holmstrom wanted to publish a magazine with Ged Dunn and McNeil. McNeil envisioned the magazine as a Dictators album come to life. On the inside sleeve of the record was a picture of the Dictators hanging out at White Castle, dressed in leather jackets. "So I thought the magazine should be for other fuck-ups like us. Kids who grew up believing only in the Three Stooges. Kids that had parties when their parents were away and destroyed the house. You know, kids that stole cars and had fun. So I said, 'Why don't we call it Punk?" The word 'punk' seemed to sum up the threat that connected everything we liked -- drunk, obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, funny, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side." 
Holmstrom agreed, and became the editor, Dunn, the publisher, and McNeil the resident punk. "And they both started laughing hysterically. Ged and John were both like four years older than me. And I think half the reason they hung out with me was because I was always getting drunk and into trouble and Holmstrom found it constantly amusing. So it was decided I would be a living cartoon character, like Alfred E. Neuman was to Mad Magazine. And Holmstrom changed my name from Eddie to Legs . . . It's funny, but we had no idea if anybody besides the Dictators were out there. We had no idea about CBGB's and what was going on, but I don't think we cared. We just liked the idea of Punk magazine. And that was all that really mattered." Picking up writer Mary Harron, their first assignment was to go to CBGBs to hear The Ramones (pictured above). McNeil spotted Lou Reed, who had recently released the controversial Metal Machine Music. "So I went up to Lou and I said, 'Hey, we're gonna interview you for our magazine!' You know like, 'Aren't you thrilled?' I had no idea of what we were doing. Then Holmstrom said to Lou, 'Yeah, we'll even put you on the cover!' Lou just turned around, real deadpan, and said, 'Oh, your circulation must be fabulous.'" The Ramones proceeded to blow the staffers of Punk away with a roaring 18 minute set of short, fast, loud songs. No solos, no blues or boogie riffs, simply raw energy. Afterwards, the interview went well, as they bonded over comic books, sixties bubble-gum music and deadpan, sarcastic humor. "I really thought I was at the Cavern Club in 1963 and we had just met the Beatles" said McNeil. "Only it wasn't a fantasy, it wasn't the Beatles, it was our band -- the Ramones. But we couldn't hang out with them that long, because we had to go interview Lou Reed, who was old, and snotty, and like someone's cranky old drunken father." Reed was brutally hostile to McNeil, who didn't seem to mind. "I read the Lou Reed interview quickly, and I could see that everything that was humiliating, embarrassing, and stupid had been turned to an advantage" said Harron. "And that's when I knew that Punk was going to work. The crew proceeded to plaster the city with posters that said, "WATCH OUT! PUNK IS COMING!" "Everyone who saw them said, 'Punk? What's punk?' John and I were laughing. We were like, 'Ohhh, you'll find out" said McNeil. "We thought, Here comes another shitty group with an even shittier name," said Debbie Harry. "I always thought a punk was someone who took it up the ass," said William Burroughs. The Ramones' "53rd & 3rd" "is a chilling song," said Legs McNeil. "It's about this guy standing on the corner of Fifty-third and Third trying to hustle guys, but nobody ever picks him. Then when somebody does, he kills the john to prove that he's not a sissy." "The song '53rd & 3rd' speaks for itself," said Dee Dee Ramone. "Everything I write is autobiographical and very real. I can't write any other way." Contrary to popular belief, The Ramones were not non-musicians. Save for the youngest member, Dee Dee, they had all been in bands previously. Tommy and Johnny had a band while still at Forest Hills high school (where all four Ramones attended) called the Tangerine Puppets, who played the kind of garage punk that later showed up on the Nuggets compilation. Tommy had a band called Butch who were inspired by the Dolls' trash/glam aesthetic, and played at the Mercer Arts Center and The Coventry. Joey also performed at The Coventry with the T.Rex, Gary Glitter, Alice Cooper and Stooges-inspired Sniper. "I saw Sniper play with Suicide one night, and Joey was the lead singer and he was great. He was really sick looking. I thought Joey was the perfect singer because he was so weird looking. And the way he leaned on the mike was really weird. I kept asking myself, How's he balancing himself?" When they got together, Dee Dee suggested The Ramones for the name. It was the name Paul McCartney had once used as a psuedonym, and they all took it for their surname. Their debut gig was at the Performance Studio in March 1974, just four weeks after Televisions Townhouse Theater debut. Blondie's Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (pictured below) saw the performance. "It was great," said Harry. "It was hilarious. Joey kept falling over. He's just so tall and ungainly. Joey couldn't see very well, plus he had his shades on, and he was just standing there singing, then all of a sudden, WHHOMP, and he was like lying facedown on this flight of stairs that led up to the stage. Then the rest of the Ramones pushed him back up and kept on going." "About thirty people or so showed up," said Joey. "We were terrible. Dee Dee was so nervous he stepped on his bass guitar and broke its neck." 
After some rehearsing, The Ramones made their CBGBs debut in August 1974. Surprisingly, Hilly Kristal liked them and agreed to retain them, despite informing them that "nobody's [ever] going to like you guys." They began playing double bills with Blondie at both CBGBs and Performance Studio and soon the press proved Kristal wrong. SoHo Weekly News, Rock Scene, Hit Parader, Village Voice all gave positive reviews. They recorded their first set of demos that faithfully duplicated a live set late in 1974. The music industry had not caught on yet, however. The early Ramones did not yet have the look they became known for. Left over from their glam days, Joey wore rubber clothes and Johnny wore vinyl and silver pants. "We used to look great, but then we fell into the leather-jacket-and-ripped-up-jeans thing" said Dee Dee. "I felt like a slob." When CBGBs hosted the first of its festivals of unsigned bands in July 1975, The Ramones drew the attention of The NewYork Times, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, the Aquarian, the SoHo Weekly News, and the NME and Melody Maker from England. While Craig Leon from Sire expressed interest, it would take until January of 1976 for the label to actually gather the guts to sign The Ramones. In the fall of 1975 they recorded a single, "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and "Judy is a Punk." The single convinced label head Seymour Stein that The Ramones' sound could be transferred to vinyl. However, it was pressed upon them that they had to prove themselves to be able to record quickly and cheaply. The Ramones outdid themselves, finishing in a week, spending only sixty-four hundred dollars. "Everybody was amazed," said Joey. The Ramones debut was destined to be a commercial failure, with its trebly sound and buried melodies. However, its highest chart position -- 111 -- equalled the Dolls' considerably more hyped debut. But the band was disappointed. They actually thought they would be a massive hit and revitalize pop music. That destiny would be left to Blondie and the Talking Heads as architects of new wave pop. Patti Smith released three more successful albums, Radio Ethiopia (1976), Easter (1978) and Wave (1979) before taking a hiatus. She would later make a inspired comeback in the 90s. Although most of the CBGBs crew recorded some brilliant albums, commercial success was not in the cards. Television finally released their towering classic Marquee Moon in 1977 and Adventure in 1978 and promptly broke up. After Richard Hell left, Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers released the high-energy L.A.M.F. in 1977, and the next year Thunders released the solo, So Alone. After re-recording ad-nauseum, and possibly leaving their best takes behind, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, with guitarists Robert Quine and Ivan Julian, released the still-stunning Blank Generation in 1977, which ironically sounded a bit like Television, especially their cover of "Walking On The Water." The Dictators released two more albums on two different labels, Manifest Destiny (1976) and Bloodbrothers (1978) before throwing in the cards. Even Suicide managed to distill its chaotic stage act onto tape. While the Ramones were one of the longest-lasting bands, recording albums all the way into the 90s, their biggest legacy were the bands that they inspired. The Ramones first show in England was July 4, 1976, at the Roundhouse. People like Paul Simonon and Mick Jones (soon to be in The Clash) met the Ramones backstage and told them that they now had courage to be in a band. The Ramones encouraged everyone to just get out and play. (Click on More Punk To Continue) |
