Joey Ramone, 2024, Starting Over

The other night I watched End Of A Century, a documentary about the seminal New York punk band Ramones. When I was a teenager they were one of the bands I listened to most.

My brother Dorian and I were talking last week and he showed me Stevie T’s parody video on The Ramones. It’s super funny and we both found his take on their style really amusing, but it also reminded me that I’d been meaning to listen to them again.

So I listened to their third album Rocket To Russia while I cleaned my flat this past weekend. It really blew me away, particularly the biggest hit from that record Sheena Is A Punk Rocker. That is such a good song, and I think it’s because it contains a few more changes than the standard three chord Ramones song.

In the documentary, they were talking about how Joey Ramone (lead vocals) in particular had more of a melodic inclination to bands like The Beatles, The Ronettes, etc. I like the Ramones songs where you can hear that side of his tastes shine. Like on the 1980 Phil Spector produced album End of the Century. Apparently, Johnny Ramone (guitar) hated the making of that album as he felt it was ‘watered-down Ramones’. I like it, though. You get to hear Joey harmonising with himself via overdubs, as well as exploring a more romantic style of songwriting.

Joey Ramone was also relatable to me when I was growing up because of his shyness and the fact that he suffered with OCD, which I did too for a time. So often music and the people who make it provide me with such a refuge and space of relatability.

Listening to these records recently has reignited my desire to write songs again after the inevitable lull in motivation post album release. If you missed it, my latest album Racing Alone came out last month. I promised myself some time off, and I now feel recharged and ready to write again.

The simplicity of the Ramones’ writing has spurred me on to write two new songs, ‘I Can’t Wait For Heaven’ and ‘Breaking Away’.

I wanted to share these in their ropiest form to show you how shabby the beginning of writing and demoing can be. These two demos took about 15 minutes each to complete, and were pretty much first takes on all instruments. I didn’t overthink tones or anything, and just got the basic structures down. If I still like them in the months ahead I’ll re-do the songs from the ground up with properly thought through arrangements and more details, but for now I’m happy to be playing around.

Keeping things simple and melodic.

Wishing you a good week!

Roger