I don’t want to get sentimental. I really don’t. It’s not a shock, not like we didn’t know it was coming. Nevertheless, the impact is there clawing at my chest, the blow to my gut still very real.

But why?

Well, it’s like this, for every so-called generation there is never just one unifying source that binds people of similar ages. Perhaps The Beatles came close, but I’m sure many would argue that Dylan or JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. symbolized more for them during that time. Or, for some, it is the simultaneous response to all the great forces of work during your time of “growing up.” During my 40 years on planet Earth there have only been two generational themes that have made any real sense to me in terms of being “my generation.” They are the phrases: “TV Generation” and “Punk Rock Generation.”

Now, I suppose, as long as Scooby-Doo and Iggy Pop survive—both of those concepts will still be at least partially safe. However, in the late 1970s, in the time when disco was coming on with all of the overwhelming vigor the shallow masses could muster—there was one band that emerged that literally saved the spirits of many outsider kids that just didn’t understand how to do “The Hustle”—or were too young to get inside the discos to even try to hustle some of that free disco booty shaking under obnoxious cuckoo lighting. Of course there is a price for everything. To be under those disco balls you sold a little piece of your soul, in the file cabinet called integrity and good taste.

And what does punk rock have to do with integrity and good taste? Wasn’t punk the epitome of bad taste?

Nope.

As usual, the mainstream media, mostly interested in reporting what they “know” about from their own generational and heavily politically influenced viewpoints—painted punk rock out to be violent, ignorant, and generally bad voodoo for children in general. Why? Well, you could go with the obvious answer that punk rock seemed as threatening and more so than the crazy b-movie beatnik juvenile delinquents of the 50s, didn’t have the courtesy to mask their madness in love like the hippies, and man—were they ever loud.

But why then wasn’t disco treated the same way?

I wonder how many date rapes occurred in discos when matched against punk rock clubs. I wonder how much drug usage occurred in Studio 54 when matched against The Whiskey A-Go-Go. The key difference is money. Disco was in the hands of the fat cats and punk was coming out of the independent markets. So, punk, of course, was disposable. Even through, in my experience I found the punk rock crowd to be made up of some of the most intelligent, downright fun, and good-hearted people I ever met. Of course there’s going to be creeps in every crowd. That goes without saying. There have been many cases of child molestation in the Christian and Catholic churches. Does that make every Christian or Catholic a pedophile? No, of course not. Neither were all punk rockers ignorant and destructive.

Disco seemed safe, innocent, mainstream, but the bottom line is it didn’t last, and an interesting thing happened. By the end of the 70s disco bit the big one and punk kept right on rollin. In the eyes of the “media” both disco and punk had gone the way of perilous fads and the fat cats—in their girthy wisdom simply took some punk bands, watered them down, and offered up New Wave music for the ever growing corporate controlled entertainment world. But in garages all over the world, in basements and attics, in abandoned warehouses, and open-minded clubs—punk bands could be heard screaming, laughing, and moving assuredly into the future—whether we wanted them to or not.

And we owe it all to one band, and more so, to one man.

His name: Johnny Ramone.

Oh yeah?

Really?

What about Iggy?

Well, Iggy, bless or curse him, before The Ramones, was a part of a hardcore New York scene called “glam rock.” Iggy & The Stooges, The New York Dolls, and other cohorts would wear women’s clothing, crazy wigs, or play naked with glitter glued to their bodies. Yes, the music was there, like a mutant child born, but it didn’t have the right look. Not yet. You had to take that wild, simple, three-chord crunch and inject it with every other cool thing that had ever gone down in rock & roll. That was the key to punk: eclectic fusion. You needed to kick Jimmy Page out of the band. Thank him for carrying you through some bad trips, but it was now time to speed things up. Half-hour long guitar solos would not kill disco. You also needed the right clothes. Well hell, why reinvent the goddamn wheel every time? Rock & roll with a little extra weavos rancheros needed to go back to its roots and put on the Eddie Cochran and Elvis leather jackets. Black boots or cheap sneakers, something you could kick butt in or run like hell in. Then for laughs, The Ramones gave themselves some Beatle haircuts but kept them extra long just to look that much crazier. Of course, you can easily argue this was not all due to Johnny Ramone but a team effort. Of course it was, and truly Dee Dee Ramone had as much to do with the creation aspect as anyone, including coming up with the name for the band, cribbed from Paul McCartney who once went under the pseudonym of Paul Ramone. But the point I want to make (and now I’ll make it) is that Johnny Ramone was undeniably the heart of soul of The Ramones that worked fiercely throughout his career to maintain the sound and the look of this great rock & roll creation called punk—despite record producers wanting them to change their image for varying musical fads. Johnny Ramone held the line. He drove Dee Dee bugshit with holding that line, but as time will surely tell—we, the grateful fans of this musical quartet, would never have wanted it any other way. Only the insane Phil Spector was able to get those leather jackets off for one album cover, End Of The Century, and it was The Ramones best selling album overall, reaching No. 44 on the Billboard charts. Even so, Johnny immediately got the band back in their uniforms and never looked back.

This man’s passing, this hero, for me, signals the death of an era more clearly than any other death has ever laid grief against my heart. I lamented Frank Sinatra, heavily; he was more than a generation. I lamented Johnny Cash, whole-heartedly, again, more than a generation. But now the skeleton hands have taxed MY GENERATION. First Joey, the incredible voice and front man, then Dee Dee, the artist, the writer, the “Wart Hog” bassist, and now Johnny, the man who set out to “play the fastest guitar on Earth.”

You achieved your goal, Johnny, and so much more. You said you wanted the “airwaves” but you got something better, the undying gratitude of the people who really mattered, the people who listened to the fastest guitar on Earth and screamed,

“Gabba gabba we accept you we accept you one of us!”

We love you, Johnny Ramone. That’s the bottom line. You gave us something that will last, something for the time capsule in all of us that will never be buried.

So—R.I.P. (Really Important Punk) and don’t forget the legacy of Scooby-Doo. This is only the beginning for you, and we’ve got some work to do now.

--Bradley Mason Hamlin, September 16, 2004
brad@retrocrush.com