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Back in New York City, the band had a record deal but no money. They all
lived with Arturo Vega, their lifelong art director, in his East Village
loft. As their popularity grew through grassroots networks, they became
major rock stars, if only in the eyes of rock journalists. At about this
time, the bands from England that the boys had in a sense began, exploded.
The politically charged lyrics and the highly stylized images of the Clash
and the Sex Pistols drew the attention of the world press and the Ramones
seemed relegated to the background, to the point where the Sex Pistols
were commonly referred to in the secular press as the creators of punk
rock and its origin traced to London, rather than the Bowery. The Ramones
countered the punk invasion with two of their best albums,
Rocket to Russia
(1977) and
Road to Ruin
(1978), although
neither album broke through commercially in the U.S. |
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The stress of touring and the pressure to sell records put a great deal of
strain on the group’s interpersonal relationships. Tommy—drummer, producer
and one of the founders—left the band. In a desperate attempt to release a
hit record, the group enlisted the services of legendary producer Phil
Spector. Joey, who had pushed the band to experiment a little and make a
different kind of album, was the impetus behind the union. On paper, the
pairing of the two made sense, as the Ramones drew much of their
inspiration from the kind of pop songs Spector was known for producing.
But the reality of the working relationship was very different. Almost
immediately, Dee Dee and Phil, both eccentrics in their own right,
clashed, with the veteran producer once forcing Dee Dee to play bass at
gunpoint. |
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The Ramones, who were used to recording an album in one week at the very
most, compared the experience of working with Phil Spector to Chinese
water torture. The strain of the sessions caused the engineer to suffer a
heart attack, while the finished result,
End of the Century
(1980), was to
no one’s liking. The band was never the same after that session, with the
relationship between Johnny and Joey, although strained at the outset of
the Spector session, completely ruptured by the end of recording the
album. Following disappointing record sales for
End Of The Century, the band resigned
itself to the fact that they would probably never be a chart-topping
recording act.
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History
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