In her classic 1969 essay "Trash, Art, and the Movies," Pauline Kael wrote of "trash" films that when "you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The well spring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable."91 While it could be said that punk fought long and hard against respectability, there is no denying that the early to mid-1970s New York scene from which it emerged was a heady mix of artists and performers. It's almost impossible today to imagine a contemporary music scene as peopled with artists, writers, and filmmakers as the early punk movement was, with people like Andy Warhol, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Mary Harron, Arturo Vega, Amos Poe, Ellen Willis, Gerard Malanga, and others all part of the scene. As Dick Hebdige has noted, "the New York punk bands had pieced together from a variety of acknowledged 'artistic' sources-from the literary avant-garde and the underground cinema-a self-consciously profane and terminal aesthetic."92
This isn't to suggest a calculated effort, at least not by the Ramones, to draw on artistic sources, but rather that part of what made the band great was its emergence from a vibrant New York movement in which distinctions between pop culture and art were blurred. A friend of mine always likes to point out that British punk was more "authentic" than American because it came from the working class, as opposed to the suburbs. But leaving aside the problems of this distinction (claims of authenticity are always tricky and a little condescending) what I think he misses in that view is that it was the very impurity of punk-its mixing of suburban and down town, of high art and "stoopid," of camp and sincerity, of humor and violence-that made it so radical. Arguments about purity or authenticity of punk inevitably end up excluding the messy, impure, hybrid qualities that keep it sounding fresh thirty years later.
In fact, prior to his involvement in the band, Tommy Ramone had even made avant-garde films: "I was [getting] into film-making. I guess I was jumping around. I went to work for this film company. I was hanging around the Museum of Modern Art 'cause the company was right next to the Museum. I would take three-hour lunch breaks and watch all the movies there and I got into avant-garde films. I started making some stuff like that."93 The Pop Art movement of the 195Os and 60s-of which Andy Warhol was the American Giant-had already smashed distinctions between "high" and "low" culture; by the 1970s it wasn't that what punk was doing by mixing styles was new, rather that they had re-infused the process with a sense of fun and danger.
According to Craig Leon, most of the work with the band was completed in seven days: "It took just three days to get the music down, four for the vocals."94 In the era of bloated, super group excess, $6,400 was a paltry amount of money. "Some albums were costing a half-million dollars to make," Joey noted, "and taking two or three years to record, like Fleetwood Mac ... "95 At first, the process sounds like the ultimate do-it-yourself, amateur, reckless ethic that is associated with punk. In truth, however, the Ramones approached the re cording process with a high degree of preparedness and professionalism and a fiercely self-contained, unified sound. But this had not always been the case. In July 1974 Tommy became the Ramones' drummer, and the band's sound underwent a change: "To them it was just a hobby," he told Punk in 1976, "to me it was an avant garde thing. Then we started getting really good and I said, 'This isn't avant-garde, this is commercial!' And that's when I started playing drums. When I saw the $signs$ ... [we] changed the whole sound of the group into the way it is now-you know-hard rock."96
Near the end of 1974, the band recorded fifteen demos in one day. These were "just basic tracks and vocals and mixes of most of the songs that made up their first album."97 In September 1975 they cut the two Marty Thau demos ("Judy Is a Punk" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"). The sound on the Thau demos is somewhat richer and warmer than on the other demos, and it hints at a more pop-oriented, melodic sensibility that shows how, with a slightly different approach, the Ramones' sound could be less assaultive.
Although the band wanted to suggest the intensity of their live performances, the album was in no way intended to be "live." As Craig Leon notes, "capturing the energy of the live shows was quite important. But if you jump to the conclusion that the sound of the recording was just the sound of the band live you would be mistaken even though that was what I was trying to convey. The album is quite layered and structured and took full advantage of the studio technology of its time without being obvious."98 This tension-how to transfer the spirit of live performance without simply replicating it-was something that haunted punk, and in some ways worked against it. For if progressive, virtuoso rock encouraged deep, repeat listenings and a cultivated appreciation for complexity, punk assaulted the listener in a way that almost begged for a live audience. One of the reasons punk did not move gently into the mainstream or receive more radio play was precisely because it was always about more than the music on the album: it was a stance, an attitude, that was difficult to transfer to vinyl.
Yet the band, and Craig Leon, were determined to create a live feel to the album. "I actually toyed with the idea," says Leon, "of the recording being one long band with no breaks" in a way that would capture the no-break-between-songs live performances. There are hints of this at the end of the album's second side, where "I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You" is followed by "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World" with no break. There were other experiments that didn't happen, either, according to Leon: "[T]here was a quadraphonic version that I played around with doing. I did a lot of quad encoded work in those days and almost did the Ramones album that way."99 By the time they went into the studio to record, the Ramones had developed an archive of songs and had honed their sound before audiences at numerous shows. "We had the songs for the first three albums when we did the first one," Johnny has said. "We already had 30 to 35 songs, and we recorded them in the chronological order that we wrote them. I didn't want the second album to be a letdown by picking through the best songs for the first one and using the lesser songs for the second album."100?
Before considering details of the album's production, it's worth noting how difficult it was-then, as now-for a good band to make the transition from live act to meaningful recorded presence. Indeed, the pages of the underground music press in New York City in the mid-1970s are full of ads and enthusiastic write-ups for enormously popular punk bands at the club level that subsequently failed to transfer that spirit to vinyl. In "The State of Pop Music in New York: A Symposium" from the Village Voice, musician and record producer Tony Silvester noted that the "reason a lot of great acts don't happen on records is because they don't feel that tension that they feel live-9 out of 10 times on a record they try to duplicate the club scene and it doesn't happen." What's missing, Silvester claimed, is "simplicity from the standpoint of production."101
Here is Craig Leon addressing the album's production:
The album was recorded purely. Nothing covered up. The same way that you would record a classical or jazz work. We use the same mic placement techniques on the London Symphony Orchestra or the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra today that we used on the Ramones in 1976. These techniques are the same as what you would have gotten on classical or jazz recordings or for that matter good pop recordings in 1956. The sound of the music in the room. Minimal effects other than those created naturally. But it was not "cinéma vérité" all live and raw.
We did a lot of overdubbing and double-tracked vocals, going for a bizarre emulation of the recording values of "A Hard Day's Night." The stereo image was inspired by that as well. Due to the limitations of 4 track recording in the 60s the image on the old Beatles records in stereo used to have the entire backing track on the left and vocals and tambourine overdubs or whatever on the right. This fit the thee-piece sound of the Ramones perfectly. There was a conventional mix of the recording but it wasn't as effective. Also, a mono mix. Some of those tracks surfaced on singles. The mono version is quite powerful....
Notes...
91. Pauline Kael, "Trash, Art, and the Movies," p. 115.
92. Dick Hebdige, Subculture, p. 27.
93. Tommy Ramone, quoted in Clinton Heylin, From the Velvets to the Voidoids, p. 169.
94. Craig Leon, interview with John Holmstrom, Punk no. 3, 1976.
95. Joey Ramone, quoted in Legs McNeil, Please Kill Me, p. 229.
96. Tommy Ramone, interview with John Holmstrom, Punk no. 3, 1976.
97. Jim Bessman, Ramones: An American Band, p. 38.
98. Craig Leon, personal interview, 13 September 2004.
99. Craig Leon, personal interview, 26 May 2004.
100. Johnny Ramone, quoted in Monte Melnick, On the Road with the Ramones, p. 194.
101. Tony Silvester, in "The State of Pop Music in New York: A Symposium," Village Voice, 8 September 1975.
