Dogmatic

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.