Monthly Archive for January, 2005

Johnny Ramone Statue Revealed

Published on January 30, 2005 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: Johnny Ramone, Ramones, The Ramones.

Johnny Ramone Statue Unveiled
Several of Johnny Ramone’s friends – including Rob Zombie, Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Pete Yorn, John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Nicolas Cage – gathered at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Friday, January 14th, to unveil a four-feet tall bronze statue of the guitarist, who according to Cage’s speech, “willed the Ramones to happen.”

About a thousand fans gathered for the mid-afternoon ceremony, to hear speeches by many of those closest to Johnny Ramone (whose real name was John Cummings), and to see the $100,000 statue, which Ramone bought himself. “He saw it as something for the fans to come see,” former Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone said in the makeshift backstage area of the cemetery just behind a cathedral.

Rob Zombie, wearing a Ramones T-shirt, explained how the statue came to be. “Every Christmas trying to find Johnny a gift was impossible,” he said. “So I thought what I would do is have my friend Wayne [Toth] sculpt an award that just said ‘legend,’ and I would present it to him at Christmastime.” Zombie then recalled how, as a joke, he suggested to Ramone that he make a giant version of the award. “Now this joke is sitting over there. It weighs 50,000 pounds, and it’s made of bronze.”

Though it’s been about four months since Johnny Ramone passed away after a long battle with prostate cancer, the day stirred a lot of emotion in his friends, starting with former bandmate C.J. Ramone, who broke down several times as he recalled the influence Johnny had on his life.

Frusicante was also visibly shaken as he recalled his friendship with the guitarist. “Johnny Ramone had an immense heart and was as sweet and kind as can be,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist said from the podium. “No one has ever been consistently kinder to me. The music he made, as well as his thoughts about music will always have a powerful effect on any music I will make.”

Vedder gave one of the most moving speeches, as he opened up to explain the profound influence Johnny Ramone had on him: “He wasn’t just a friend, he was a teacher. I don’t think there’s anyone else I’ve learned as much from in my life, having grown up without a father. I really can’t imagine who I would be today, what my personal makeup would be if it weren’t for the personal relationship I had with John.”

With his wife and baby daughter Olivia sitting in the front row, the Pearl Jam singer became choked up at the end of his toast as he thought about Ramone’s death at the young age of fifty. Referring to the fact Ramone should’ve lived until he was eighty, Vedder said multiple times, “I want those thirty years.”

Following a speech by actor/musician Vincent Gallo, Ramone’s widow, Linda, led everyone to the statue for its unveiling.

Lisa Marie Presley, who did not speak during the ceremony, told Rolling Stone that Ramone would’ve loved all the attention. “This statue was really important to him,” she said. “When we drove up and I saw the cars, the people, the cameras and the fans, I went, ‘Johnny would be happier than a pig in slop right now. He’s just grinning like there’s no tomorrow.’”

The inscription on Johnny Ramone’s memorial

l-to-r: Rob Zombie, Eddie Vedder, CJ Ramone pay their last respects

Eddie Vedder, Rob Zombie, Nicholas Cage, Vincent Gallo and others join Johnny’s wife Linda Cummings around the memorial

Some hi-res photos of the statue:

Johnny Ramone

Ramones: End of the Century

Published on January 17, 2005 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: Ramones, The Ramones.

Weird Tales of the Ramones

Jon Fortgang from Channel 4 Film reviews the new Ramones documentary ‘End of the Century – The Story of the Ramones’.

It’s Malcolm McLaren and The Sex Pistols who are credited with creating punk in 1977, but New York’s The Ramones beat them to it by nearly three years. An inspiration to the Pistols and the Clash, The Ramones mined a seam that combined the relentless energy of The Stooges with the pop sensibility of The Beach Boys.

Beginning and ending with the band’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002 (six years after they’d split up), Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields’ detailed documentary celebrates ‘da brudders’. As well as looking at their sound and their style, it also gets behind the united front to explore the divisions that at first drove the band, and later broke them apart.

Born in the working class neighbourhood of Forest Hills, Queens, The Ramones were an extraordinary mix of contradictory personalities. Bassist Dee Dee was the charismatic clown whose belligerent attitude concealed a keen wit – and a long term drug problem. Leader Johnny’s work ethic propelled the band but his right-wing conservativism was at odds with the group’s counter-cultural cachet: at the Hall of Fame bash he’s seen bigging up Bush. But it was singer Joey, the romantic geek steeped in rock ‘n’ roll history, who most completely embodied The Ramones’ misfit image, and who sums up the band’s unique chemistry with a simple “opposites attract and all that crap.”

During the course of the film there’s extensive footage of the band playing live, new and archive interviews, plus recollections from those on the scene. These include Joe Strummer, in his last recorded interview, remembering how The Clash and the Pistols attempted to break into The Roundhouse at The Ramones’ first London gig. Initially, says Joey, it looked as if punk might elevate The Ramones to the status of the Beatles or the Stones, but the movement proved double edged. The Pistols got the attention. The Ramones just got banned from the radio. Even at this early stage in their career, commercial success seemed out of their reach.

here are all the rock ‘n’ roll war stories you’d expect. The band’s 1979 collaboration with producer Phil Spector, ‘End Of The Century’, remains a fantastic collision of punk and pop, Johnny’s memory of the session marred by the fact that Spector spent 12 hours listening to a single chord, then attempted to take the band hostage. And when the band weren’t fighting the world, they fought each other. ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’ was how Joey responded to Johnny’s affair with his girlfriend. They kept on playing together, but the rift was never healed.

Amid all this is plenty to remind fans and newcomers of the band’s enduring appeal, and though Joey’s death from lymphoma in 2001 was followed by Dee Dee’s fatal heroin overdose in 2002, just after the film was completed, former drummer and producer Tommy does get to unveil a fitting tribute to the singer: Joey Ramone Place, now at the corner of New York’s Second Street and Bowery.

Loaded with interviews and fascinating archive material, this is a thorough and affectionate profile of The Ramones that is unafraid to explore the reality behind the cartoon image.

Weird Tales of the Ramones

Johnny Ramone Inspired By Ronald Reagan

Published on January 2, 2005 in Music. 1 Comment Tags: Johnny Ramone, Ramones, Ronald Reagan, The Ramones.

Johnny Ramone Statue

The Guardian is reporting on the forthcoming Johnny Ramone tribute statue being inspired by former US President, Ronald Reagan.

The unlikely connection between a Republican president and a punk icon was highlighted yesterday when it was revealed that a statue of Johnny Ramone inspired by the lavish funeral of Ronald Reagan will be unveiled this week.

Ramone, who died in September last year, was the guitarist with the Ramones and unofficial leader of the group. But, unlike his colleagues – and in contrast to his rebellious image – he was a committed Republican.

“We were watching the [Reagan] funeral from Cedars-Sinai [hospital], and Johnny had always loved Reagan – he was his favourite president and his favourite actor,” Arturo Vega, the band’s artistic director, told the Los Angeles Times. The grandeur of the Reagan funeral led Ramone to consider the memorial to his own mortality.

“And we were admiring how well it was going and how everything was done. I suggested some kind of monument … He agreed right away. The monument was my idea; the statue was his idea.”

Ramone was cremated at the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles. The cemetery hosts many early members of the Hollywood aristocracy, including Tyrone Power, Rudolph Valentino and Cecil B DeMille. The band leader Woody Herman is also buried there.

The 4 ft bronze statue, which will be unveiled at a two-hour ceremony on Friday, shows Ramone from the waist up. Based on a small figurine given to Ramone by the rock musician Rod Zombie, it shows the late guitarist wearing a leather jacket and playing a Mosrite guitar.

The statue, by artist Wayne Toth, bears the inscription: “If a man can judge success by how many great friends he has, then I have been very successful – Johnny Ramone.”

Many of Ramone’s greatest friends are expected to attend the ceremony on Friday, including Nicolas Cage, Lisa-Marie Presley and Eddie Veder.

Ramone, whom Vega described as a “control person”, vetoed an early suggestion that the statue might be of the entire band. “He discarded it right away,” said Vega. “Really, what it is, is this is a very personal thing.”

Joey Ramone, the band’s singer, died of lymphatic cancer in 2001 and Dee Dee Ramone, the bassist who is buried in the Hollywood Forever cemetery, died from a drug overdose in 2002.

The drummer, Tommy Ramone, is the only surviving member of the original band.

Ramone’s widow, Linda Ramone, said he had great hopes for the statue. “He wanted people, the fans, to come from all over the world and get to see it. He wanted it to be bigger than Jim Morrison’s grave.”