Ramones: Leave Home (or 'What If The Ramones Were The Beatles?')

Leave Home

Best song: Pinhead

Worst song: Commando

Overall grade: 4

I like this album slightly less than the first one. In a perfect world, there would be a meaningful reason for this along the lines of its being less revolutionary and not changing the face of rock music, but in actual fact that’s a sidenote, and the truth is that I like this album less because it doesn’t have ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. That song should be on all the Ramones albums. Or maybe it should just BE one of the albums. I’d definitely listen to a 30 minute version of Bop, and I’d enjoy it too.

The most important thing for getting into this album, and the next one, is acceptance of the fact that the Ramones’ best song was the first song on the first record and technically it could only go downhill from there. Lower your expectations just slightly to discover the also-great material on album number two. The more I listen to this the more I like it, and in that way a 4 seems harsh, but a 5 seems like too much, and I still consider 4 a good grade, so there.

One of my favourite tracks here is ‘You’re Gonna Kill That Girl’, often said to be a parody of the Beatles’ ‘You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’. This only adds to the fact that I see a lot of similarities between the early careers of both bands. The Ramones were angrier, but both groups were made up of four guys who wrote short catchy pop songs about random topics whose main intention was to be a good time, both had two central members who had a lot of conflict, both never intended to be particularly important or influential but were… and this got me thinking about what if there were more similarities between the two groups.

After the success of ‘Leave Home’ in 1977 the Ramones star in their first film, ‘Rocket to Russia’, a quirky comedy about the band themselves embarking on their first Russian tour but having a lot of problems with the personnel and equipment on their rocket. After their next studio effort, ‘Road to Ruin’, they work on a slightly more ambitious film, ‘End of the Century’, about a cult who are planning a mass murder for the year 1999 only to realise that the sacrificial boating shoes are being worn by Marky Ramone. Over this period the Ramones discovered a growing interest in expanding their musical vision, learnt a few more chords, and incorporated folk and soul influences on ‘Pleasant Dreams’ in 1981, which has now become the indie controversialist’s pick for the best album. This period also marked Dee Dee Ramone’s growing interest in sampling, something he had first hear while filming ‘Rocket to Russia’, a technique which he would incorporate into a number of later songs.

It wasn’t until 1982’s ‘Subterranean Jungle’ that the band truly cemented their own place in rock history by pioneering an up-and-coming musical movement of the time, hip hop. The critics loved how they used rhythm, production and the spoken word to create effects never seen before, and even bigger was in 1984 when amid the growing singles climate of synth-pop, the Ramones released the first rap concept album, ‘Too Tough to Die’. The album focuses on a group who suffer a simultaneous near-death experience while performing, but pull through, only to have these events repeat themselves later, and the cover features a painting of the band surrounded by many famous serial killers. This concept was partly inspired by the fact that the band had recently stopped touring or playing live after a few instances of deaths during their shows due to overexcitement: they wanted to protect their fans and themselves from this fate.

It’s worth noting that ‘Too Tough to Die’ singlehandedly inspired 75% of rock bands of the mid 80s to write their own concept albums. A staggering number of these concept albums, however, were about sex, and all of these were written by hair metal bands.

The Ramones push the boat out further on 1986’s sprawling double album ‘Animal Boy’, featuring a plain red cover, over thirty songs in over twenty musical styles, and provoking a debate that rages to this day about whether or not it would have been better as a single album. Things go downhill for their next and final film, ‘Halfway to Sanity’, a cheery, colour-themed singalong about patients in a mental hospital, accompanied by a maligned soundtrack album. This, the realisation that they were unlikely to make any more significant developments to music, and the growing conflict between leaders Joey and Johnny and the marginalised Dee Dee caused the Ramones to seriously discuss splitting.

On 30 January 1989, the Ramones performed their final live show on the roof of the CBGB club during recordings for ‘Mondo Bizarro’ (provisional title Poison Heart) which would become their final album. However, the album’s sessions were torturous for all involved and consequently the project was temporarily abandoned, and the group returned to the studio to record their swansong, ‘Brain Drain, the second side of which constituted ‘The Pet Sematary Medley’ of interlinked songs packed with distorted fuzz guitars and angsty lyrics and consequently is said to be one of the first grunge songs. For the cover, the band photographed themselves striding confidently over an elongated drain, seemingly unaware of the brain tissue below.

‘Mondo Bizarro’ was eventually released in 1992, although Johnny Ramone was reportedly unhappy with it and later recorded ‘Mondo Bizarro… Without Clothes’ for his own personal satisfaction.

I had way too much fun writing this.